- When I was 14 or so, in the early 1980s, a friend and I who had been playing Zork thought it would be fun to design a game ourselves. We actually wrote to Infocom with a proposal that we write a new game for them and they let us use ZIL and the Z-machine to implement it. Surprisingly, they actually wrote back to us and politely declined our offer. In hindsight, while we knew how to program in BASIC and assembly language on our Apple IIs, we would have been lost making a game with ZIL. That’s to say that Infocom made the right call. Still, it said something about the company that they treated a couple kids with respect and didn’t laugh in our faces. I wish I still had the letter.
- This literally gave me goosebumps. It's hard to convey how much Zork (and the rest of the Infocom portfolio) means to me. This was my first entry into gaming on my Commodore 64.
For anyone out there who had anything to do with bringing these games to market, know that you impacted so many lives in a fun, meaningful, heartfelt way.
- https://github.com/historicalsource/zork1 Direct link to the repository
- I've seen a few things called 'Zork source code' in various places over the years (even on a CD that came with a game programming book of some sort), and copies like this:
https://github.com/MITDDC/zork
What's the lineage here?
by MPSimmons
2 subcomments
- I like playing Zork via docker:
https://github.com/clockworksoul/docker-zork1
> docker run -it clockworksoul/zork1
by AdmiralAsshat
6 subcomments
- Why does Microsoft own the rights to Zork?
- The repository is part of https://github.com/historicalsource, which has code for a bunch of Infocom games, although at a quick glance most of them aren't open sourced. Still, very cool resource.
by VikingCoder
2 subcomments
- The thing I want is probably very stupid -
I'd like Zork I through III ported to Inform 6...
I don't specifically know why that appeals to me. I guess it's because I'd like to tinker with it and understand it better. And if I were going to write Zork I from scratch today, I'd want to use the most modern tools available. [checks notes] Okay, but not Inform 7. I have an aversion to Inform 7. I want my code to look more like code, and less like an LLM prompt.
by NecroTechno
2 subcomments
- it's pretty grim that this announcement, which is in part celebrating the legacy of an incredible artistic endeavor, was written by an LLM. reading this feels like my head is continuously being bashed in by a brick.
- It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
by boomboomsubban
2 subcomments
- When EA recently made Command & Conquer free software, it was clear that the various art assets were not covered under this.
Is there something similar for a text based adventure game? Does the writing count as code?
by ChicagoDave
0 subcomment
- Scott: Do the whole library of Infocom games!
by Aman_Kalwar
3 subcomments
- Wow, didn’t expect this from Microsoft. Amazing to see classic game code being made accessible for learning
- This is great, but I'd rather they make Windows 11 open-source instead.
- If you ask Claude to simulate Zork you get a text adventure that is loosely based on Zork, but entirely different.
- If I'm reading this right, the source code has been available for all the Infocom games in https://github.com/historicalsource for at least six years, but what's changed today is the license?
- Looks like someone made a project to hook LLMs to Zork with some learning along the way: https://github.com/gudlyf/zork_ai_player
by jasonjmcghee
0 subcomment
- Pretty huge milestone, congrats. I can imagine how much time / effort it took to get there!
- Waiting impatiently for World of Warcraft to be Open Sourced.
by throwaway81523
2 subcomments
- How did Microsoft get to own it in the first place? And the original MDL version of Zork has been around forever. I wonder if Microsoft has any of the other Infocom games and might release them too.
And, "A game that changed how we think about play"? Um, that was ADVENTURE. Zork was arguably better, but it was in the same vein, and later.
by PaulHoule
1 subcomments
- … right, Activisiom bought Infocom in the 1980 s…
- There's also Frotz and other Z Machine interpreters, and the actual Zblorb game file. But I guess this would be the source code that compiles to the zblorb.
So this is useful to modify zork, but not much changes if you want to build something around zork, as you will most likely be building something that interfaces at the z machine level.
by katspaugh
4 subcomments
- So Zork was written in Lisp? It had to be!
---
<ROUTINE V-ADVENT ()
<TELL "A hollow voice says \"Fool.\"" CR>>
- The license says it’s copyright 2025. How does that work? Shouldn’t the copyright be something like 1977?
- So how good are the latest coding agents? Like if I asked Gemini 3/Claude/ChatGPT 5.1 to convert it into something that could run from a Python interpreter, how far would they get? (I assume Zork Implementation Language is not well represented in the training corpus)
by williamDafoe
0 subcomment
- I have an original line printer printout of 1970s "Adventure" (translated from Fortran into C for UIUC's CAC PDP-11/70 running UNIX v7.) Adventure is the father of Zork. Zork is a clone of Adventure.
by theoldgreybeard
3 subcomments
- So derivative works are possible, who will be the first to attach Zork to the OpenAI API?
- Great, I remember a page which stated that it was sad to have free as in freedom ZMachine languages and interpreters (Inform6, Frotz/Fizmo...) but there were very few text adventures under a libre license. So far, the most known ones:
- Spiritwrak
- All Things Devour
- Calypso
- Tristam Island
by PilotJeff
2 subcomments
- I would love to see the Apple ][ source code made available for a lot of these classic games. In this case what I really want to see is the Z-Engine or interpreter itself not essentially the data files only.
- Hasn't the code to Zork been available for ages? For instance: https://github.com/MITDDC/zork
- Appropriate to release it under an MIT license.
- how could they not title this article GIT FORK ZORK
by VikingCoder
1 subcomments
- Can ZILF just compile this?
https://zilf.io/
by thebeardisred
0 subcomment
- Easter egg from back in the day - (podman|docker) run -it quay.io/games/zork
- Who's going to be the first to port to arduino + LCD?
by sigmonsays
3 subcomments
- bummer
> The code relies on old internal Infocom toolchains (ZILCH compiler, WATFOR,
> mainframe environment) that are not open and likely not preserved.
by classichasclass
5 subcomments
- It's not just Zork: a number of games, including Hitchhiker's, are open source now. https://github.com/historicalsource
by MrZongle2
1 subcomments
- The cynic in me believes that this only took place after numerous meetings during which the question "is there any way we can still make money from this" was repeatedly answered with "no".
- Didn't know MSFT owned Infocom
- Make AoE open source please. I am sure Microsoft Empire won't crumble.
- awesome
- Can we get a GPL (or even MIT) release of id Tech 7? Pretty please.
by fortran77
1 subcomments
- xyzzy
by lloydatkinson
6 subcomments
- I wonder how long before someone hooks up AI image generation for the scenes with this. It could either be very tastefully done or complete slop. Probably the second option.
- (URL changed from https://www.theverge.com/news/824881/zork-open-source-micros..., which points to this)
- [flagged]
by jamesgill
1 subcomments
- I kinda hate that Microsoft gets to take credit for being magnanimous with yet another product they never created.
The TL;DR: The Zorks were created by several guys at MIT who later formed Infocom. Infocom eventually sold to Activision, Microsoft bought Activision and voila--"Microsoft is open sourcing Zork".
- “ When Zork arrived, it didn’t just ask players to win; it asked them to imagine”
Sigh… it’s all ChatGPT nowadays ain’t it.
- Reads like ChatGPT wrote it.
- Getting a lot of GitHub errors trying to look at the source code.
Still, pretty cool; I remember playing work as a kid.
by planckscnst
0 subcomment
- Whenever I use LLM-generated content, I get another LLM and pre-bias it by asking if it's familiar with common complaints about LLM generated content. And then I ask it to review the content and ask for it to identify those patterns in the content and rewrite it to avoid those. And only after that do I bother to give it a first read. That clearly didn't happen here. Current LLM models can produce much better content than this if you do that.
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