Zounds, Zork and a bit of Xery

Look what I finished this past week!

I’ve been working on this pattern, acquired from the Clue of the Broken Needle, for quite some time. I haven’t, I will admit, worked on it with a lot of diligence. Cross-stitch is my “keep my fingers busy when I’m sitting for a long time” hobby. So church, watching the kids at martial arts, occasionally on family car trips (necessary to be family ones so I’m not the one driving), watching a show… that sort of thing.

Now, I’ve had to explain the joke to pretty much everyone who said “Oh, what are you working on?” Are you familiar with the growth of video games? Way back when they were first coming out, most games were played as interactive stories. VERY interactive stories. By that, I mean we’re putting emphasis on the story part, not the interactive; they were text on a screen that you could type out a response to.

If you read “Howl’s Moving Castle,” there’s a scene where [spoiler!] Howl visits his family in Wales and gives his nephew a video game of this style; the kid is excited because he gets a cool game no one else has. It’s described as green text on a screen that describes Howl’s own house with a door that opens 4 different ways. Anyway, this small dive into video game history is to say:

Zork is one of those very early text adventure games. At the beginning, you come to the house described in the above image. No image, all you see is that blocky text and a cursor blinking waiting to know what your next move is. It has to be carefully worded and relate to a programmed response. For example, you can open the mailbox and find a pamphlet welcoming you to the game with some other options. However, if you are not careful during the story, you may end up in the dark and run into a monster unique to the game, a grue.

What’s the grue do? It lurks in the dark and eats you.

And that’s the whole joke of this piece: If you expose it to some nice UV rays…

and then turn the lights off…

You get a surprise.

I’m pretty pleased by how it turned out. I will say that I was not 100% accurate to the colors on the pattern except the white, the black, and the glow, because I figured the rest of it was just aesthetic choices and I wanted to use the colors I already had. If I were to do anything different, I’d put the piece on off-white or gray fabric possibly; filling in the house with white, which was important to hide the joke, was tedious and hard to see what progress I’d made.

I will also admit that I have not personally played Zork, though I’m relatively familiar with its progeny, Zork: Grand Inquisitor (which actually has pictures! and clicking!). However, I have hung out with enough geeks and grognards and listened to their conversation that I’m actually reasonably familiar with, if not conversant in, quite a few obscure references.

Anyway, hope you enjoy my little project and sometime, if you’re over at my house at night, you might see a message watching you from the walls.

Also what are you doing over at my house? And during the night?? Get out! Good grief! A little privacy, please!

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