Zork I

Zork I (subtitle The Great Underground Empire) is the first of a series of three text adventure games of the same name that play in the Zork universe. It was written by Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels and Dave Lebling and published in 1980 by their newly founded company Infocom.

Plot
Zork I does not feature a real plot but provides a basic setting:

"Zork is set in the ruins of an ancient empire lying far underground. You, a dauntless treasure-hunter, are venturing into this dangerous land in search of wealth and adventure"

The player is placed the game world, the Great Underground Empire, and is supposed to obtain 20 treasures and deposit them in a trophy case. While starting above ground, the player soon discovers the entrance to a vast system of caves full of attractions and creatures one would not normally expect to find underground.

Technical Details
The map of Zork I is 110 rooms large. The game contains 60 objects. The parser understands 697 words.

Packaging
Zork I is the game with the most differing packagings because it's the first game Infocom published.

The very first edition, published by Personal Software for the TRS-80 and the Apple II, contained nothing but a printed 30-page manual. It came in a zip-lock plastic bag and is hence today called the zip-lock edition.

Development
Inspired by the first wide-spread text adventure, Colossal Cave Adventure by Will Crowther and Dan Woods, MIT students Marc Blank and Dave Lebling decided to create their own text adventure.