During the 80s, game developer Infocom created many text adventure games, with Zork being their most famous series of games. Towards the end of the decade, Infocom made some poor business decisions and it also become tougher to make text adventures commercially viable so they were acquired by Activision and eventually closed. However, this didn’t mean the end of the Zork series and there were three commercial Zork games released in the 90s, Return to Zork in 1993, Zork Nemesis in 1996, and Zork: Grand Inquisitor in 1997. At the time Zork Nemesis was a bit of a divisive game, it did well critically and sold well but a few fans were put off by the game’s darker tone, which was a change from the heavily comedic tone of the previous game or two in the series. Some people were also put off by the game being influenced by Myst, a highly popular adventure game at the time. It seems like people have come around since then and appreciate the one-off change in tone, which still has dark humor but isn’t as silly as the games before and after it.

If you’re an adventure game or Zork fan, I think it’s worth playing. I think Zork fans will appreciate the change in tone while still feeling like a Zork game but even if you’ve never played a Zork game, fans of the genre should find it enjoyable. There’s a lot of variety in the environments, the plot is interesting, the acting in the FMV scenes is the right level of camp, it has an incredible soundtrack and for the most part the puzzle feel challenging but fair. If you’ve never played a Zork game before, the game does make references to the world established in previous games and you might get a little more from the game if you’ve played other Zork games, but it’s very standalone and doesn’t rely on playing other games to understand the story..

I included this game in a list i titled “myst-clones” as a joke, so you can get an idea about what’s this game about pretty easily.

Going further in detail: Zork Nemesis is essentially a darker take on what Myst and Riven previously did. The Zork franchise was originally a collection of text adventures in the 80’s. During the 90’s, they decided to go full point and click, and they went for an fmv-based first person approach.
Actually, the first game from that period, Return to Zork, was released before Myst, so it had a bit of the same luck that The 7th Guest had. What matters here, is that anything included within the Zork universe had shown the darkness and gloom of Zork Nemesis, which of course might have been a big surprise for long-time fans. It feels like a completely different game which was labeled as a Zork game in the last minute just to sell more copies.

Thematically, the main focus of the game is based around alchemy. Nonetheless, they bring elements from a wide variety of different backgrounds: pre-socratic philosophy, astrology, baroque art, phrenology, classical music, and probably some others. To borrow from such an heterogenic selection and be able to bring up something that is not just cohesive but also beautiful, shows up that there’s not just ambition but also real talent behind the writing of this game. The basic story might share many elements with Myst, but overall works just fine. Certain twists might not be very well handled, but it’s no big deal, since the main goal here, which is unfolding a mistery in a progressive way, it’s delivered right.

Puzzle design is excelent in my opinion. Except for a few tricky puzzles, everything here is straight regular logic, and every solution is hinted at some point of the game. Is just about looking carefully and having enough patience, but i think this game can be solved almost entirely without the need of a walkthrough. I would even say that, overall, Zork Nemesis is easier than Myst, and in a very good way.

Probably the biggest achievement of this game is the overall atmosphere. Both the sound design and the visuals (they created incredible pieces of architecture in here) range from mysterious to straight out disturbing and horrifying. After the first part of the game, you’ll wander through four different worlds, each representing a different element. And oh boy, it’s in the air world where things get almost horror-like. Don’t want to spoil things for you, only gonna give my own advice here. Try to explore the worlds in the following order: first, earth; second, water; third, air; fourth, fire. This is the order i did, just randomly, and it worked just fantastic for the progression of the story. After some serious thought i’m still convinced that this order was crucial for my enjoyment of the game, and probably a different order would have somehow lowered the whole experience.

If you’re a fan of the Myst games, and you’re looking more stuff like that, be sure to check Zork Nemesis, a forgotten gem, a very underrated piece of gaming art, and for sure, one of the darkest takes on the genre.