Zork I: The Great Underground Empire — play the 1980 text adventure free

You stand in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. Beneath it lies the Great Underground Empire: caves, a maze, a river, a thief who wants your treasures and, in the dark, the grue. Find the nineteen treasures, bring them to the trophy case and score all 350 points.

Zork I is a text adventure: the game describes where you are, and you type what to do in plain English. Your game stays on this device: come back later and it is where you left it.

How to play

• Move with directions: north, south, east, west, up, down (or just n, s, e, w, u, d, and ne, sw…).
• Look around with look (l), and at a thing with examine or read.
• Handle things: take lamp, drop sword, open mailbox, turn on lamp, put egg in case, and see what you carry with inventory (i).
• Fight with attack troll with sword; check your health with diagnose and your progress with score.
• Before a risky move, save; if it goes wrong, restore takes you back there (one save per game, on this device). restart starts over. The up arrow repeats your last commands. A light source matters: it is pitch dark down there.

The Zork trilogy

Zork was written at MIT in the late 1970s and released by Infocom as three games from 1980 to 1982. In November 2025 Microsoft released the source code of Zork I, II and III under the MIT license. RetroGM runs the original story files, unchanged, in JSZM, a public-domain interpreter.

Zork I, II and III © 2025 Microsoft, MIT license (source). Interpreter: JSZM by Zzo38, public domain. All licenses. RetroGM is not affiliated with Microsoft, Activision or Infocom.

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