April Fools’ be damned, Zork makes its return

Apparently the folks over at Jolt Online have a keen sense of humour, as they managed to launch the latest iteration of the Zork franchise on the one day of the year that most wouldn’t contemplate launching a new product — aside from a statuatory holiday, of course.

If you happen to be a fan of stick-man mainstay Kingdom of Loathing, Jolt’s Legends of Zork is right up your alley. Except it has a much nicer interface and a solid IP behind it. Not to discourage you from trying out a Pastamancer, but Zork is a pretty familiar franchise to anyone who grew up gaming in the ’80s and early ’90s like myself. The latest entry in the series is unlike the previous point-and-click adventures produced by Activision in the mid-’90s in that it’s a completely web-based “casual massively multiplayer” environment, much like the popular MUDs (multi-user dungeons) of old.

Here’s the catch: nothing good in life is free. The latest of the Great Underground Empire’s offspring operates using a variation of the freemium business model now prevalent on the web — you can get a taste of the game for free, but if you want the advanced features, you’ll need to shell out some real-world dough. The game provides you with 30 Action Points a day that you can utilize to your heart’s content, but after that, you’ll need to either pay or earn those extra Zorkmids via a nifty system of surveys and other devious means (i.e. they actually make money with this thing somehow!)

If you’re smart about it, you won’t let it become too much of a habit; play casually, as the game was intended, and your Action Points will pool up on the days you don’t happen to show up, so you can play longer when you actually have more than a few minutes to sit down. In the meantime, you can always keep tabs on what’s going on via the official game blog, or Jolt’s twitter feed.

I’ll write more about the game when I have a little more time (and APs banked) to sit down and explore it fully. In the meantime, don’t let that grue eat you on the way out.