O tempora is a series of retrospective posts where I play games from ages before to see if they stood the test of time.
I’ve never played Zork games. Neither did I ever like Myst-like adventures. Yet, Zork: Grand Inquisitor is one of the best adventure titles I’ve ever played. If this sounds familiar you may have read this wonderful retrospective by Richard Cobbett last year. I’ve decided to give this game a go specifically due to that retrospective. And I’m very glad that I have.
I don’t even know where to… Okay, let’s start this way. Imagine your typical Myst-like with its logical puzzles and super serious (or even almost absent) storyline. Now forget it all because Grand Inquisitor isn’t like that. Most of the puzzles are solved in a very unconventional way and the game is constantly poking fun at its own story or the usual adventure tropes. Yet, unlike what you’d expect from a 90s “parody” (kind of?) game, this isn’t trash, rather it’s a bit Python-esque. Very silly and very funny. I mean, the screenshot in the post header is a puzzle, just let it soak in. Or during one of the sections you’re playing as a short orc-like stone eater who can eat stones and break things. You see an important item you need locked behind some complicated chess puzzle. Your character, quite obviously, isn’t good at solving complicated logic puzzles so the solution is to smash the puzzle cage and grab the item, problem solved.
The game is full of this unconventional silliness. Your character is most likely a door to door salesman selling vacuum cleaners. Most likely, because you’re never told, but you do have a gigantic vacuum cleaner in your inventory. Either way, you’re usually named AFGNCAAP (Ageless, Faceless, Gender-Neutral, Culturally-Ambiguous Adventure Person) in the game and everyone’s fine with that. Especially your partner lamp. I’m sorry, he’s not really a lamp, but a dungeon master who unfortunately got his soul locked in a lamp, but that’s just details. And he’s a really fun companion too. The voice acting is spot on and his comments are always a joy to listen to.
There are moments that might feel complicated and using the walkthrough is a bit complicated if you’re playing on modern systems, since if you collapse the window the mouse pointer will go wild fast when you get back. Which is unfortunate, since you can both die and get into the dead man walking situation in this game. And it can get annoying despite the classic approach to the adventuring (you even get points for actions). But at least you have a spell to simplify the instructions for puzzles and it works in a lot of situations. Oh yeah, you get spells. Like “make purple things invisible” or “create a lock and a key on the door”. And these are far more useful than you might think. In fact, the only spell that sounds extremely useful is used once in the very end.
I’m a bit sad that I’ve completed the game. It’s so good, so high quality in its humor. And that’s not something you often see, especially among the Myst-likes. It’s far more often you get some crappy parody with really primitive humor. So, if you like good and funny adventure titles, definitely check out Zork: Grand Inquisitor at GOG.