Beyond Zork

Beyond Zork (full title: Beyond Zork: The Coconut of Quendor) was an interactive fiction computer game written by Brian Moriarty and released by Infocom in 1987. It was one of the last games in Infocom's Zork series; or, rather, one of the last Zork games that many Infocom fans consider "official" (titles such as Return to Zork, Zork: Nemesis and Zork Grand Inquisitor were created after Activision had dissolved Infocom as a company and kept the "brand name"). It signified a notable departure from the standard format of Infocom's earlier games which relied purely on text and puzzle-solving: among other features, Beyond Zork incorporated a crude on-screen map and use of character statistics and levels.

Plot

The player explores the Southlands of Quendor somewhat aimlessly at first. Soon, however, a task is bestowed by The Implementors, a group of godlike creatures jokingly based on Infocom's game designers. The Coconut of Quendor, an incredibly powerful artifact that embodies the whole of Magic, has fallen into the claws of an incredibly foul beast: an Ur-Grue. Rumored to be the spirits of fallen Implementors, Ur-Grues can surround itself in a sphere of darkness that only sunlight can pierce. The player must recover the Coconut from this monster's grasp or face the unthinkable consequences.

Feelies

Almost since the company's beginning, Infocom's games included "extras" (called feelies) in the packages, often serving a dual purpose of entertainment and copy protection. Beyond Zork is no exception. The game package contains:

• A large fold-out map of the "Southland of Quendor"
• A small book titled The Lore and Legends of Quendor, a field guide of sorts to the flora and fauna of the area (several entries contaid information necessary to defeat or incapacitate creatures in the game)

Notes

Beyond Zork bears many similarities to a simplified role playing game or Multi-User Dungeon, particularly in the implementations of character statistics and levels. The "attributes" that affected the character were endurance, strength, dexterity, intelligence, compassion, luck, and armor class. These attributes could be manually allocated by the player at the beginning of the game or randomly set by the computer. Additionally, there were several "pre-set" characters that could be used. The values of these attributes affected combat and other aspects of the game; the values could be changed by gaining experience levels, eating or drinking certain things, or wearing or using certain objects. (Humorously, repeated typing of profanities would lower the player's intelligence.)

The game's most obvious cosmetic enhancement is the addition of an onscreen map, which shows the room the player is in relation to the surrounding rooms. In addition, game navigation could be accomplished via mouse clicks on the map. Some other features of Beyond Zork previously unseen in Infocom's games include semi-randomized combat and area maps in which the same set "rooms" appeared in game-dependent random configurations.

This was possibly Infocom's largest game in terms of map size. Many locations, creatures and events encountered in other Zork games were referenced in Beyond Zork, although the earlier games are in fact set later chronologically.

A short section of the game involves the magical land of Froon, "the setting for a series of beloved children's books by L. Frank Fzort, and later became a successful movie musical starring Judy Garlic." This is a not-very-subtle tribute to (or parody of) L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

Beyond Zork was one of 20 Infocom games bundled in the 1991 compilation The Lost Treasures of Infocom published by Activision.

External links

• MobyGames' entry on Beyond Zork
• Beyond Zork overview and information
• Scans of the Beyond Zork package, documentation and feelies
• Infocom-if.org's entry on Beyond Zork