AWKWARD ZOMBIE

I don't?

(One-time items like the leaflet, which are just meant to be seen once and that you can't do anything important about just disappear. There's no leaflet in the front of the house eithe, probably. It's like it acts as scenery.)

Our Score: Your score is 0 [total of 585 points], in 2 moves. (west, then east)
This gives you the rank of Beginner.

Puzzles:
How to get in the house
Tree with low branches
Getting lost in the forest

Items:
Nuthing

>Look at tree

>climb tree

Stupid game...


(You may not know, but this Egg is Really, really important. Not only it's our first treasure, but it's also one we'll be stumped with through most of our adventure)


(Some versions of Zork allow you to break the egg by doing everything with it. We don't have a weapon yet, so we won't be able to break it quite now.)


Puzzles:
How to get in the house
Jewel-Incrusted Egg (May have something inside) [also, examining it does nothing]
Getting lost in the forest

Items:
Jewel-Incrusted Egg (worth 5 points)

>Die

>E

(apparently I'm with a sucky version of the game, because it's not letting me do a bunch of things, next update will be with a better version, and I'll do everything we done thus far, and more) (We'll also go E next update)

I remember one version of the game I killed myself by choking on the egg.

I also think I stabbed myself with something blunt. And I remember trying to kill myself with my tongue. Can't remember what happened.

Yes, exactly. I remember breaking the egg with my hands too, thing that is not happening in the version I'm playing. So I'm changing to a better one (that can also save/restore with ease, so I can mess around)

First things first. There are a few versions of the game available on-line. They would be the best for me, as I could just copy/paste the actions, and add some commentary. However, one version does not allow saving, which is needed since I intend to show mistakes, and the other one is a really old one with not even half of the true "ZORK". So we're going with a downloadable DOS version, which will allow us to do EVERYTHING. Except copy/pasting. I'll have to transcribe everything. Darn it.


So we're here, lost in the woods, in front of The not in Washington White House, with little to no supplies, and with death ahead of us.
ALRIGHT LET'S GET THIS PARTY STARTED


It probably has some relevance to the story?


That was... interesting? Breaking the fourth wall already, game?

>Yes, this game breaks the fourth wall quite a lot. In the Game "ADVENTURE" - the text adventure which Zork is based on - there is a magic word called "xyzzy". If we input that, we get...


>...Which is also a reference to Adventure, in which this hollow voice would tell you another magic word, "plugh". Writing Plugh gives us the same result, though. It's a nice little addition, still. Now back to the main plot. And since we got a leaflet, all we can do is...


>Since we don't have the leaflet in our inventory currently, ordering the character to eat it made him grab it, too. Yes, eating it is pointless, but I wanted to show that mechanic.


>Another new mechanic. The game keeps track of certain orders. Killing needs an object, so the game will ask you "with what?". Since later in the game we'll have a few fight scenes, and since I think...

>kill
>with hands

...counts as two actions, always input: "Kill *thing* with *weapon*". I could be wrong, though. Whenever we get there I'll explain it in further details.

But whatever. We have our stuff. The house is EAST from here, but is locked. Maybe going WEST will help?


GOD NO. A FOREST.
That's GREAT, because that means we're LOST. Let's hurry back east.


SEE? I told you. I told you! We're lost! We are not at "west of the house" anymore! Goddarnit.

>reason? going west from "west of the house" basically means "go to forest", and not actually going "west". We can venture as much as we can "east" and "west" from Forest #1 (there are multiples of this Forest room, all with the same description, but with different exits) and Forest Path, and we won't get lost. Those two are strictly connected.

We can get back to the west of the house by going south from the path (which will lead us to "North of House", and then going West, returning to our starting point. Going North from "West of House" leads to "North of House". This does not makes any sense, and I mean it.

For some moments I thought the house could be diagonal, but that would still not make any "sense". In a cave, where tunnels from one room to the other are twisty, yes, this could be true, but not in the open.

>sometimes in the forest, it will say "you can hear in the distance the sound of a chirping bird". I'm quite sure this is also a reference to ADVENTURE, as there is also a Chirping Bird in that game, that you can get, and we'll see more into who "is" that bird pretty soon.

Well, let's explore that tree, shall we? And then complain more about being lost.


An egg, huh? LET'S TAKE IT!


>Before we proceed, I'm gonna say some things about the egg. It's an item that we're gonna hold on for most of the game. We can't open without breaking it, and to get most score out of it, we must. Any weapons (hands, or swords) that we get early in-game are completely useless to open it. It's kinda like a toned-down version of the Chinese Vase in the original ADVENTURE game. When you took the vase from it's standing position, you NEED to carry it around until you find a place to rest it (a single pillow), otherwise you can't drop it without breaking it. While we can put the egg somewhere quite early, we'll be hanging onto that puzzle FOR A LONG TIME.

Next Update:
> We'll break into someone's house!
> We'll explore more our surroundings.
> We'll show the first way to screw yourself out of full score!
> And you can say some silly stuff for me to do along the way.

Until then...

Puzzles
How to get into the house
Forest Maze
How to open the egg

Inventory
Leaflet
Jewel-Encrusted Egg

Score
Your score is a 5 (total of 350 points) in 7 moves.
This gives you the rank of Beginner.

Sheesh, it seems we have a LONG way to go.

Map of the Update:

Awesome. I always loved the egg in this game. Made so much more of an "arc puzzle" to solve through the game.

Indeed. Even though the "Vase Puzzle" in ADVENTURE was more complex than this, I didn't like it as much as the egg because since you were carrying the vase around the game, and you couldn't drop it anywhere safe, you had 3 slots (vase, lantern, sword) of your -if I'm not mistaken- 7-slot inventory already occupied, so it could render the game unwinnable if you were not careful.