Portable Executable Zork

About

Zork is a 1977 text-adventure game originally written for the PDP-10, later commercialized as a trilogy by Infocom from 1980 onward and considered one of the most influential works of interactive fiction. Portable Executable Zork is a research toolkit — not a single clone — that packages interactive-fiction authoring, compiling, and playing tools (vim, the Inform6 and DialogC compilers, and z-machine interpreters like Mojozork, Frotz, and a revived build of Infocom's own original ZIP interpreter source) into single cross-platform executables using Cosmopolitan Libc. Its releases include a self-contained build of the Zork trilogy running through this toolchain, though the author notes 'Zork' is used here as shorthand for interactive fiction generally, not an exclusive focus.

How it differs from the original

Rather than reimplementing Zork's gameplay, the project modernizes and recompiles Infocom's own original interpreter source code (and other historic IF tools) to run natively on today's machines via Cosmopolitan Libc, with no platform-specific builds required.

Getting started

The releases include a self-contained build of the Zork trilogy with the game data and interpreter embedded in one executable, playable directly with no extra files needed; the repo also documents building your own standalone games from the included tools.

History

The project grew out of the author's research into using Cosmopolitan Libc to build historic interactive-fiction tools, including a rescued and modernized build of Infocom's own original z-machine interpreter source code, which wasn't publicly available until a few years ago.

Additional notes

Trivia

The interpreter build is based on Paul Gross's modified version of Infocom's original Unix ZIP interpreter source code.