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ZorkSoftware

by Infocom

Who uses, recommends or left Zork, in their own words: each a verbatim quote with a link to where it was said.

2 people

Tim Sweeney
Founder and chief executive of Epic Games, maker of Fortnite and the Unreal Engine.
liked

And then the other game that I really got immersed in was Zork, which was a text adventure game. It would tell you where you are and what you see and you type in commands like go north or pick up sword or open door and explore a world that way. So the game didn’t have any graphics, but in your mind you had this elaborate picture of what you were seeing there, and it really brought in [inaudible 00:16:09] inspired imagination more than other things.

Lex Fridman Podcast #467, at (00:15:13); transcript published by the host. Asked when he first fell in love with video games.

2025-05-01·lexfridman.com ↗

Jeff Kaplan
Game designer; led quest design on World of Warcraft and directed Overwatch at Blizzard Entertainment, which he left in 2021; now making The Legend of California.
recommended

Yeah, Zork was fantastic. I think it might be open source now, which I think is fabulous. But I highly recommend Zork.

Lex Fridman Podcast #493, at (00:08:51); transcript published by the host.

2026-03-11·lexfridman.com ↗

What they also use

Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.

The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.

A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.

The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.

The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Fully green is recent. It drains a quarter at a time as the post gets older, and is empty once it reads as dated.

What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The shading is gone after about:

Stripes mean the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no shading.