Breaking Open the Cave Challenge

Did anyone else get old school "Zork" vibes, when your character was climbing down the cave.  Part of me expected to see a pop up reading "turn on the lantern" or else "you are likely to be eaten by a grue" to be displayed. 

To Those who have never played it

Zork is the grandaddy of Text adventure games, though some would call it "google Maps for masochists... if Google maps was written in 1977 by English majors with too much time on their hands."

Picture this: you're dropped into a world with no visuals, no tutorials, and most certainly no mercy.  Your only tools? A blinking cursor and the blind optimism that typing "go north" won't immediately get you eaten by something.  Spoiler alert: it will.

The game opens with the iconic line:  "you are standing in an open field west of a White House, with a boarded up front door."  This sounds peaceful, doesn't it?  WRONG!!!!! That house is a portal to Hades disguised as a fixer-upper.  Inside are puzzles that defy logic, mazes that would confuse rats, and a thief who steals your stuff with the frequency of a raccoon on espresso.

Let's not forget: THE GRUE--a nocturnal monster whose entire job is to eat you if you even think about walking into a dark room without a light source.  It's like playing a game where every mistake is met with "Oh you don't know that? Too bad, you're dead now."

In short: Zork is like reading a choose-your-own adventure novel where every choice leads to your inevitable doom, and yet somehow you can't stop playing.  If you've ever wanted to yell at your computer for not understanding "USE SWORD ON TROLL", this would be the game for you.