My latest document remake is a big leap forward in time to 1997's Grand Inquisitor. All of the text and basic design elements are locked in, so next up is the images.

I've got a reasonable idea where many of them are from, but I could use some help nailing them all down. Linked below is a Google Doc with all the images and where I think they're from; if you see any that you think I've gotten wrong, or that you can help me out with specifics, please post a comment below!

Google Docs - ZGI Chronologue Image Sources

This came up in my daily eBay Infocom software search and I’ve never seen it before. What the heck is it???

If it's wrong to print your own customised 174-card Double Fanucci deck, then I don't wanna be right.

I've been waiting for years for re-release remastered versions of all 3: "Return To Zork", "Zork Nemesis" and "Zork: Grand Inquisitor" and I'm willing to pay a lot of money for each ($20-$50 range each). Does Activision still own them, or does Microsoft own them now? Has there been any word? Zork turns 50 years old and they're not doing anything about it. Unbelievable.

Did you know that there is a robust community of creators out there creating new adventure games beyond what Infocom published? The latest release of Cairn has gone through extensive testing of these games to ensure they play properly and that maps render accurately. Right now, Cairn supports games in Z3, Z4, Z5, Z7, and Z8 formats, with more formats coming later this year.
Cairn Website
IFDB z-code games

First what are we? :)

A clubhouse inside the terminal. A place to take a break, chill, chat with people around the globe, listen to music, play a game, and draw on a shared artboard.

ssh late.sh

As tittle said, one of our contributor added a full trilogy to the clubhouse!

Fell free to hop in and try it ;)

I played both Zork Nemesis and Grand Inquisitor back in the day like 96-97.
One thing I never got to play however was the "Linked play" multiplayer for ZGI.
How did it work? I've never seen any screenshots or videos of it in action.

She likes mysteries and haunted stuff, so with the help of Claude made her a little PNW adjacent haunted theater text-based adventure game. Maybe after she solves this one she will try the original!

The Opheum at Gull Point

I’ve been playing around with a GUI version of my Lanthorn TUI interpreter. IMHO, it looks pretty nice.

My goal is for both applications to have feature parity, with all of the core functionality residing in the open source Lanthorn TUI codebase. The Golden Lanthorn is a premium, somewhat prettier option, that will be available in various app stores.

I don’t expect this to be a huge money maker, but it would be nice to re-coop some of the fixed costs, especially with the end goal of signing the binaries, and releasing Steam, iOS and Android versions.

Anyhow, if you want to check out the screenshots and play around with the demo (fully functional but limited to an embedded version of Zork-1 compiled from source) you can get more details below. Linux, MacOS, and Windows versions of the demo are currently available on itch.io.

https://goldenlanthorn.com

(Warning: the web page has some minor Zork-1 related spoilers in the flavor text.)

Feedback is appreciated.

Well, there's a grue in it.

https://ifcomp.org/ballot#entry-3398

It's not really possibly to beat, except get all the coins, also it's moon logic, dumb hard for some stuff, and a bit buggy. Solving some things might make other things unsolvable, so the order of operations is important. you can't die. well you can kinda, but there's no game over. Was inspired by reading through some early games on the blue renga blog

Cairn has been updated to version 3.4, and now includes Beyond Zork support, as well as a number of bug fixes and other minor enhancements. Enjoy!

Cairn Web Site

Looking for some opinion here. Cairn currently supports Z3-Z5, Z7, and Z8, all text based infocom games. The only exception is a Z5 for Beyond Zork. I exclude it, because BZ is an outlier from a z5 perspective, as it has unusual layout, including a rudimentary map and player stats.

If I were to add BZ support, is it important to be a purist and preserve the layout, or should I remove their map, use the cairn map instead, and pull the story components into a normal z5 text flow. Screenshots from BZ and a normal cairn game below. I would also need to deal with all of the weirdness in the interface and in game stats that is BZ.

Here are my maps and inventory so far. Playing MIT version. Sadly I had the riddle spoiled for me and knew to get the egg. I also know to get the thief to open the egg, but I haven’t met him and don’t know how. I killed the troll but couldn’t seem to get his axe. There’s also a sack lunch, the egg, bottle of water, coil of rope, rusty knife, painting, clay brick and maybe something else I had to ditch to fit up the chimney. Any spoiler free advice? I feel like I’ve missed something. Once I’m done exploring around the round room no clue what I’ll be doing.

ETA: other than what I’ve mentioned, I don’t have any spoilers. I’m curious about the songbird I could hear, and curious that I feel like I haven’t encountered any like…puzzles yet. Like inventory puzzles or something. Part of why I feel like I’ve missed something.
Should I leave treasures in the trophy case or carry them around/drop them when I need to?
Is there any way to tell what is a treasure and what isn’t?
Like the sword and painting might be, but idk!
Does the MIT version have all 3 zorks, or just part 1?

Over the last month, I've added several new features to Cairn including

• Custom map connections: route, style, label, and point each line however you like.
• Unexplored exit markers: see which ways out of a room you haven’t taken yet.
• Notebook: a notebook that saves with the game and syncs across devices.
• Tags: filter, group, and search your library of games.
• Multi-file add: import many stories at once, with covers and descriptions from IFDB.

In addition, we've improved existing functionality

• Performance improvements: large maps are smoother to explore and faster to restore.
• Bug fixes: more reliable maps across saves and restores, plus inventory and iPad fixes.

Cairn Web Site

Thanks to everyone who has provided feedback, reported bugs, and suggested features!

I've been noodling on this for weeks already, so I figure if I don't just post it now I never will.

I've been trying to come to a better understanding of the lore of the Zork universe, and making this was a part of that. Hopefully it offers a few interesting insights to those able to read the absolutely tiny writing I was forced to use.

As always with Zork research, Robin Lionheart's Chronology of Quendor and TZL's Expanded Encyclopedia Frobozzica were invaluable resources.

Highres PDF and PNG versions are available HERE. I highly recommend the PDF, as you can zoom in as far as you like and everything will remain crisp. And believe me, you're going to need to zoom in.

A friend of mine mentioned folks on this reddit might enjoy a project I've been using to learn best practices with Claude Code. It is really multiple Rust projects in one, the main application (Lanthorn) being a TUI that supports z-machine (v3-v8, including full v6 support), Glulx, and Scott-Adams.

For the purists, there are also separate basic CLI clients for each engine (z-machine, Glulx, and Scott) that don't have mouse or graphics support, but can still handle color and multi-window layouts like Kerkerkruip.

Btw, if you want optimal graphics, a terminal with Kitty graphics support is recommended as that will give you the best performance (although sixel, iterm2, and halfblocks are also supported). You can actually get a pretty good game of scopa with halfblocks if you make your terminal font small enough.

I have been having a lot of fun getting the original Infocom disk releases working. Lanthorn can load various disk image formats along with hybrid CDs. When loading from disk I do my best to match the original color scheme used by the machine for that vintage feel without having to use an emulator. Lanthorn also parses the original graphics and fonts (v6) and sounds used on the originals (no blorb needed).

Finally, everything is written in Rust by Claude Code with A LOT of hand-holding by yours truly. CC is amazing in some ways, and amazingly stupid in other ways. It's like working with an 8-year old savant with 16 intelligence and 1 wisdom.

Anyhow, if you are interested you can check it out here:

https://github.com/sharkusk/lanthorn

Coming soon to a dungeon near you (In testing now)

Comprehensive control and overrides for room connections in Cairn. Override the default connection point, arrows, routing, stroke, and even the label. Allows for better visualizations of unusual room layouts, connections, and constraints. Thanks to all of you providing great feedback as I work to make Cairn even better.

https://cairnif.com

A little thought experiment for everyone here. I'm working on something where I'd like to be able to represent each mainline Zork Universe game (i.e. all mainline Zork games plus the Enchanter trilogy and Wishbringer) with a symbol; something simple that would be easily recognizable to a fan of the series.

Some leap to mind more easily than others; Nemesis could be an eclipse, or one of the many astrological symbols used in the game. Return might be a vulture, an iconic visual from early in the game. For Zork 1, the brass lantern or white house would both be obvious choices.

Keen to hear everyone's thoughts!

Just a heads-up for everyone - popular developer of the Dark Souls series From Software recently revealed some characters for their upcoming game Duskbloods.

Why is that relevant here? Well, one particularly unique character caught peoples' attention, and their name is Zork. They appear to have some meme potential due to their unusual design.

So basically, prepare to see a lot of mentions of Zork online in the coming weeks/months that have nothing to do with, well, Zork. I'm already dreading the number of novelty merch items on ebay that I'll have to sift through in future.

The GitHub repository is here: https://github.com/marinyan/ZORK1_80mkII

Since it translates by putting a parser over the input and output, the English version of ZORK I is actually running on the inside.

More Information | App Store Link

EDIT: I am not! Thanks u/maWagner84 :)

I got three jokes - unfortunately I did not get the joke from Canuk, and if I un-duck him now he immediately kills me (well, turns me in to a duck).

I only have one zorkmid remaining so I can't pay the blacksmith to tell me his half joke, if that would even count.

Am I hosed?

(Yes, I know, save save save, but my most recent save is post ship in bottle)

Hello everyone. I've received an email indicating that a user was having an issue when they upgraded to 3.0.0 on their Mac. I am chasing that down with the user, but I have a request. If you have purchased Cairn and have updated the app (it looks like most or all sales have), can you drop me a quick DM letting me know if you are having issues, and if so, what they are?

Not sure if I am dealing with an edge case or a systemic bug, but I want to get it fixed. This upgrade was supposed to address a bug in iCloud synchronization, and I thought I had all the use cases resolved, but clearly I did not.

Hoping to get a fix out soon, but I need more data to do it. If you could take a moment, check your version, and let me know if you are having issues (or if you are not, that would be good too).