What is Beyond Zork: The Coconut of Quendor?

From the mind of Brian Moriarty, one of Infocom’s creative designers, comes the latest addition to the Zorkian canon. Unmistakably a sequel to the million-selling Zork series. Beyond Zork offers plenty of exasperating puzzles, ferocious grues and humorous asides. These Infocom hallmarks are satisfyingly familiar, yet this isn't just another one of your typical text adventures: Beyond Zork incorporates many standard roleplaying components as well as several new program features.

In an age when magic fails and the Enchanters' Guild lies in ruin, the monster-ravaged kingdom of Quendor cries out for a savior. You, a lowly peasant, are nominated. Your task is to find the fabled Coconut of Quendor, the repository of magic.

As in more orthodox role-playing games such as Ultima, you begin the quest by allocating a limited number of attribute points to your alter ego. Your player character assumes a unique identity as you juggle varying amounts of endurance, strength, dexterity, intelligence, compassion and luck (alternatively, you may select among six preset characters).

Loosed upon the countryside with nothing but a single zorkmid and a pack, you must explore villages, collect treasures, solve puzzles and bash monsters. Of note is a certain pacifist slant toward confrontations in this game. Although you certainly must defeat attacking monsters, you cannot kill them — injured creatures usually slink away into the mist. There are scrolls, wands and amulets to discover, and shops to visit for potions, armor and weapons. As your character survives encounters and unravels mysteries, the attribute levels increase. And as the attribute levels increase, you're better able to overcome opponents and solve problems plays of place descriptions, inventory and attribute levels (depicted via a barchart); ten player-definable function keys for frequently used command strings; movement by keyboard, keypad or mouse; an UNDO command that permits erasure of one previous move; and setup options that allow the player to customize screen display and output.

The Beyond Zork package includes the game disk, a Macintosh-specific reference card, a clearly written instruction manual, a humorous and nicely illustrated 'lore and legends' booklet (with information about dust bunnies, lucksuckers, dornbeasts and chocolate truffles) and a foldout map of the Southland of Quendor. A separate disk is required for saving games.
Due to the number of difficult puzzles and the random nature of their solutions. Beyond Zork must be considered an expert-level game. However, familiarity with the earlier Zorks is not required of those looking for a challenging and unique adventure.

Fitzgibbons, Patricia. (April 1988). Beyond Zork. MacUser. (pgs. 98, 100).

Download Beyond Zork: The Coconut of Quendor for Mac

Architecture

Motorola 68K

Compatibility notes

Minimum Requirements

• 512K RAM

Emulating this? It could probably run under: Mini vMac