Zork Zero: The Revenge of Megaboz

Zork Zero: The Revenge of Megaboz from 1988 is the last major text adventure released by Infocom and, at the same time, the most extensive game of the whole Zork series in terms of the number of puzzles and play time. Unlike the original trilogy, it is a prequel that tells how the once mighty and flourishing Empire of Quendor was plunged into ruin by the curse of the wizard Megaboz, and the player, in the role of a young prince, sets out to break the curse before it is too late and before a once prosperous land turns into the ruins players know from later games.

In terms of gameplay, it builds on Infocom's traditional text engine, that is, typed commands and rich descriptions of the environment, but in the number of puzzles and in play time it surpasses everything the company had released until then, as it offers several independent groups of puzzles connected by one large castle. Zork Zero also adds graphical elements to the series for the first time: simple illustrations and a map of the Megaboz castle, which complement the text and help players find their bearings in a complex environment full of interlinked puzzles, whether it is a garden maze, an alchemist's laboratory or a throne room. The game also contains smaller minigames and number puzzles that could be played separately from the main adventure to exercise logical thinking. It was precisely the scale and difficulty of the game that led to it being shipped with accompanying hints, because without systematic note-keeping and a map of your own it was easy to get lost in such a vast castle.

Zork Zero was received as a worthy full stop to the golden era of Infocom's text adventures and is still valued by fans of the genre as one of the studio's most ambitious works, comparable in scale more to later graphical RPGs than to the company's earlier, shorter titles. At the same time, it is seen as the symbolic end of an epoch, because shortly after its release Infocom practically ceased to exist as an independent studio, and the text adventure on the PC receded into the background in favour of graphical games.