Zork: The Undiscovered Underground

This game - released to promote one of Activision's graphic-adventure Zork titles (Grand Inquisitor), is my favorite thing Activision ever did with the Zork rights: tap two of the Infocom implementers to briefly revisit one of my favorite fantasy worlds.

The game is, in every sense, a kind of Zork Lite ... lighter humor, lighter-weight puzzling, quick and small without being trivial, self-referential without being indulgent. The environment is small but more densely-implemented than in the classic games, and the writing is clever and engaging.

It is, in the end, only a little game ... But as far as I'm concerned, it's the real deal. The last true Zork adventure, and one I'm much more likely to replay than any of the original trilogy.