showing 2 games
| name | publisher(developer) | year arrow_downward | description | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zork Nemesis: The Forbidden Lands | Activision | 1996 | In the last days of the Great Underground Empire, four of the Empire's greatest Alchemists disappeared into the Forbidden Lands on the day of the Solar Eclipse, supposedly searching for the secret of the Quintessena, the Eternal Life. An imperial spy, Bivotar, was dispatched to locate them. He never returned. Now, the task has fallen onto you. You soon discover that the Alchemists are dead, slain by a horrible demon known only as the Nemesis. You manage to get on the Nemesis' nerves, and soon find yourself allied with the spirits of the dead Alchemists, attempting to finish their work before the Nemesis can finish you. But all is not as it seems, and as you unravel the secrets of the past through old letters and ghostly flashbacks, you begin to realize the full horror of the events which transpired under the Eclipse all those years ago. Zork Nemesis: The Forbidden Lands is a graphical first person adventure game in the style of Myst, mixing logic puzzles with live-action FMV sequences which advance the story. The player views each location from a first-person perspective, and can rotate the camera 180 degrees to get a full view of your surroundings. Like other Zork installments, the game contains humorous elements, but in general its story and atmosphere are darker, including images and themes such as decapitated heads and human sacrifice.*** [84] | labelimagesubject |
| Zork: Grand Inquisitor | Activision | 1997 | Magic is banned in the Great Underground Empire, and the Grand Inquisitor Yannick (with the kind help of Frobozz Electric) has a stranglehold on the world of Zork, establishing a totalitarian regime. According to his own words, the goal of the new state is to "shun magic, shun the appearance of magic, shun everything, and then shun shunning." Any opposing forces will be "totemized", which is apparently a rather unpleasant procedure. The player character in the game is just that - the player character: Ageless, Faceless, Gender-Neutral, Culturally-Ambiguous Adventure Person (abbreviated AFGNCAAP), as the politically correct designation by the Dungeon Master Dalboz defines him/her (it?). Naturally, it is the hero's duty to save the world by collecting a Cube of Foundation, the Skull of Yoruk, and the Coconut of Quendor, so that magic can return to the land and the Grand Inquisitor falls victim to his own shunning policies. Zork: Grand Inquisitor is the third in the row of graphical Zork games. It utilizes the same engine as its predecessor, with first-person perspective, 180 degree camera rotation, pre-rendered backgrounds, and live actors. Compared to the previous game, it is more similar in tone to the early, predominantly humorous Zork adventures, containing plenty of references to them. The gameplay is puzzle-oriented; most of the puzzles are inventory-based, though there are also a few that require manipulating the game's environment. Casting magical spells is an important element of the gameplay. The protagonist discovers spell scrolls and learns spells from them, which must be frequently used on objects and items to solve puzzles. The spells range from simple magic that can open locked doors to exotic variations such as "making all purple things invisible". The player can also cast spells backwards, in which case they will have an opposite effect; in the aforementioned examples, casting the reversed spells will lock a door or magically make an object visible, provided it was purple before that condition was inflicted upon it.*** [84]*** [53] | labelimagesubject |
