Original artwork, not a still
Narrator
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
— Zork · 1980
Behind the line
What it means
Our interpretation.
The line is the sound of text adventures. It threatens you with something you can never see, since nobody meets a grue and lives, and the cure (carry a lamp) is the whole game's logic in a sentence. It became a joke about darkness and dying stupidly, worked into other games and software as a wink, and the grue is the best-known monster that exists only in a sentence.
Context reviewed
In context
Spoilers for ZorkShow the scene
The warning appears in Zork whenever the player moves into a dark place without a light source. The game began as a 1977 mainframe adventure and reached home computers as Zork I: The Great Underground Empire, published by Personal Software for the TRS-80 in December 1980. Grues were added to replace pits that killed players in the dark, after the author Dave Lebling noticed his own character fall into one in testing. The name was taken from the works of Jack Vance, though the monster itself was original to Zork. The same phrase was reused in Infocom's Starcross.
Sources (2)
- Wikipedia: ZorkDevelopment and ReleaseReference checked
- Zork Wiki: GrueLead and Starcross sectionReference checked
Context reviewed