It's hard to discern what accounts for the enduring popularity of the games set in the Zork universe; that it was the first commercially available full-parser interactive fiction probably has something to do with it, but it's still remarkable that a game released in 1980 should still be inspiring sequels. For Daniel Yu's Spiritwrak is certainly a sequel--the magic system is suspiciously reminiscent of the Enchanter series, and the humor captures the Zork style. It's a well-crafted homage, sufficiently so that, if you liked the originals, you'll almost certainly enjoy this.

The plot, in true Enchanter-series style, is save-the-world crossed with collect-the-objects: you have to retrieve the four pieces of an ancient rod to defeat an evil demon-type fellow. Just as typically, you don't set out into the world knowing where to look for the pieces; you just start solving puzzles and let things fall into place. The puzzles are unrelated to the plot, naturally; some of them are classic logic puzzles cribbed into the game (including a variant on the old some-statements-are-true-and-some-are-lies bit), and some are mechanical puzzles (the best of them is an elaborate seesaw), and others are just apply-the-clues or apply-the-magic. There's a twist in the plot toward the end, but it's not an especially remarkable one--partly because the plot has so little effect on what you do. Changes in the storyline barely affect how you tackle the game, after all, so the surprises don't impact gameplay. One nicely done touch, however, is the fragments of a manuscript that you find scattered through the game, some of which hint at the eventual direction of the plot, some of which just impart background information. The likely sequence of the fragments develops the story well, unfolding it bit by bit. For a largely irrelevant plot, in short, Spiritwrak develops it well.

The game design doesn't fare so well. The layout is wide, in design parlance, meaning that, fairly early on, lots of puzzles open up, so there's lots to work on at any given moment--though not all the puzzles you're working on may be solvable at that time. Moreover, there's a transportation system that requires coins, and coins are a finite resource, so it's possible to simply run out if you spend a lot of time trekking around experimenting with puzzles. There are significantly more coins available than you need, of course, but they're not all available right away, and it's not at all unlikely that you'll have to go back to an earlier save position because of the coin problem. It's also just a nuisance to use the transportation system to travel between areas of the game. There are other problems as well--for instance, your inventory is limited, and while there's a rucksack-type object, you'll run out of inventory space long before you encounter that object. Several other puzzles involve mind-reading of one form or another, and one logic puzzle simply doesn't work (fortunately, there's a walkthrough on GMD). In most respects, the game is forgiving; it's difficult to render the game unwinnable without realizing it (other than wasting coins, of course). But it's also player-unfriendly in some ways that were somewhat more acceptable in 1996 than they are now.

On the other hand, player-unfriendliness along those lines was fairly standard in the early '80s, and it's not only in that respect that Spiritwrak follows Infocom's example. Rather than a spell-casting system, you have a prayer book with prayers that you intone after first learning them--which almost precisely recalls the approach of the Enchanter trilogy, and the names of the prayers are suspiciously familiar. (Along with GNUSTO, FROTZ, and ESPNIS, lots of silly spells mentioned in the Enchanter trilogy--like FOBLUB (glue audience to seat) and TOSSIO (turn granite to pasta) are included.) The place names (Gurth City, Borphee, etc.) are taken from the Zork universe, and to some extent the same casual blending of fantasy-medieval and modern goes on (though the modern element has the upper hand here). Absurdist and fourth-wall humor abounds, occasionally in ways that recall Infocom--at one point, for example, you have to get past a guard by baking a cake--and there's even a self-referential Implementor appearance. Not all the jokes work, and the world-building is sometimes shaky--it's often obvious that a scene or character was patched in for the sake of a puzzle. But the whimsy and the gonzo humor are captured nicely, enough so that this works well as a nostalgia trip.

Expect to spend plenty of time with Spiritwrak--it's long, many of the puzzles are difficult (and a few are just tedious), and the aforementioned game design problems may have you backtracking more than you'd like. If you didn't grow up enjoying the Zork and Enchanter universe, there's no reason to try Spiritwrak, really; it was a fair game in 1996, but the IF scene has changed considerably since then, and there are much better things out there. But the game does succeed more often than not in recreating the Infocom feel--usually, though not always, a good thing--and I'm confident it'll push the right buttons.