Return to Zork

The year was 1993. I fired this game up on my first Pentium processor computer. My dad told me not to tell Mom of the filth we we were playing. First wrong turn around the lighthouse leads to death. You don't drink the Rye correctly it leads to your death. You click the wrong button you die. This game defined me as a child and taught me valuable life lessons. Want some rye, course you do.

it's a zorkin' good time

My dad bought this game when it first came out, gave it to me when i was 7, said I was smart enough to figure out what to do, said its a lot of writing things down and noticing everything. "look at all the things, its all important" he said. I bought this game again a few years ago because Markiplier was playing some point and click games and reminded me of Zork. This game was prime puzzle gameplay back in the day. it still is so cool to see how much work they must've put into rendering this game and the love and dedication it took to really pull a game like this together

They don't makes games like this anymore. The simple fact Steam has this game is half the reason i paid for it again. The other half is due to the fact that I can actually play it ll the way through without having the CD ROM skip and fail to load and NO it doesn't skip during animation cuts. : ) This game is not easy and really really makes you think outside the box. To save you some time these are the days of the week : Sand day Mun day Grues day Wands day Birthday Frob day Star day.

Want some rye? 'Course you do! A point and click classic, and the first graphical Zork adventure, RTZ is a first person perspective adventure game where you play as an anonymous sweepstakes winner that travels to the Valley of the Sparrows for vacations, only to find out all is not well in the Valley (now renamed to the more appropriate "Valley of the Vultures"), and some sort of magical evil entity is messing things up. It's your job to find out what's wrong and help the residents of the Great Underground Empire to set things right once again. While it didn't age that well in some regards, and has some very frustrating elements (the forest maze, some unexpected deaths and the sliding puzzle...), I was actually surprised how well thought and relatively generous RTZ is in some places. You actually get a lot of hints on how to progress and solve puzzles if you take your time and read things, as well as show photos and items to the characters you meet. Some puzzles can also be solved in more than one way, which is a nice touch. You can also re-do some of the actions if you mess up (most notably the bonding plant if it withers), but you still have to be careful, as there are some places you can permanently screw yourself over, so having multiple saves is definitely advised. Voices and acting are rather cheesy, yet they emit that characteristic 90s FMV game vibe, which I really appreciate. I'm also really digging the school-band style CD audio tracks. Too bad they don't play that often in the game. Considering the nature of the original text adventures, RTZ is just a product of its time (1993), so don't expect it to be a smooth ride nowadays. But if you like relatively difficult (and sometimes cryptic, if you don't pay attention) old adventure games, or the universe of Zork in general, I'd say definitely give this one a try!

If you played it back in the day you'll love it. If you're under 30 you probably won't.

Unbelievably difficult game

This game is a piece of weird, wonderful early 90s nostalgia.

As I see it, the big problem with this game is not the fuzzy graphic or clunky interface (I'd expect both from a game this old). The big problem is that the plot itself doesn't seem to be coherent. There's just no reasoning behind what happens, which makes already difficult puzzles impossible.

Old school fun. It is challenging if you do not use cheats as I did back when it first came out, but it is hard to resist cheats now with such easy access. Still fun to see the story unfold.