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Zork I: The Great Underground Empire
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About the game
Zork I begins in an open field west of a white house, with a small mailbox nearby. That is all you are told. Somewhere below lies the Great Underground Empire, a ruined civilisation of caves, rivers and machinery, and the goal is to bring its treasures back to a trophy case in the house.
There are no pictures. The game describes each place in a few lines of prose and waits for you to type what you want to do, and it understands far more than its age suggests: whole sentences, several objects at once, pronouns. It is funny, often unfair in the way of its time, and full of details that reward trying odd things.
A few rules to remember: light matters, because in the dark you are likely to be eaten by a grue; objects can be heavy, fragile or alive; and nothing you carry is safe forever.
Playing it here
Click Play now and the story starts in the player. Everything is typed: write a
command after the > prompt and press Enter. The game understands short English
sentences, such as open the mailbox or take lamp.
Commands
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
north, south, east, west (or n, s, e, w) |
walk; also ne, nw, se, sw, up, down |
look (l) |
describe where you are again |
inventory (i) |
list what you are carrying |
take / drop something |
pick up or put down an object |
examine, open, read something |
look closer, open, read |
again (g) |
repeat the last command |
score |
how far you have got |
save / restore |
keep your progress in this browser and load it back |
verbose / brief |
full or short room descriptions |
A few things worth knowing
Draw a map. Directions are not always reversible, and some passages twist. Paper and pencil are part of the game.
Keep the lamp on, but not forever. Light is limited, and dark places are deadly.
Save before anything risky. save stores your progress in this browser;
restore brings it back.
Credits and licence
Zork I: The Great Underground Empire was written by Marc Blank, Dave Lebling, Bruce Daniels and Tim Anderson and published by Infocom. In 2025 Microsoft, which now holds the rights, released the game under the MIT licence, which allows it to be shared freely. The licence does not cover the Zork trademark. The licence text is linked from this page, and the game runs in Parchment, a free interactive fiction player.