An Astra remake of the 1977 text adventure, created with Threejs. It lacks polish but compares favorably with some early 3D games. Quite amazing.
Code: https://github.com/emollick/zork-underground-empire
Play: https://zork-underground-empire.netlify.app/
Blurb: https://bsky.app/profile/emollick.bsky.social/post/3muqcwa4j4s2i
deleted by creator
Why are you showing us slop?
Slop
OP is likely to be eaten by a grue.
Feels too much like it was made with AI.
How did you develop a feel for that? I can tell the style for text, images, …, but here I can’t tell if the mistakes aren’t just cause it’s an alpha. I hardly get around to gaming anymore. Is there somewhere where vibe coded games are showcased?
Well in this game, there was the chair (see my other comment) that no human would sit in.
There are other tells that process that doesn’t understand the continuity of solid objects created the game, not a person.- You can walk through most of the walls and half of the scenery. Walls don’t normally work like that.
- The explorer skeleton in the twisty maze room simply is not there. He should be sitting beside the key that’s nearly fukin impossible to find because there’s no skeleton next to it, despite the room description saying he’s there.
- The paddle for the inflatable raft is in two pieces, the blade sits about a foot from the shaft it should be attached to.
- The diamond mill output is … nothing. It’s just a spot on the floor, uncomfortably far away and disconnected from the mill.
- The area where you have to deal with coal gas is just a complete fail, the AI did not understand and just made some crap.
.
There were two other questionable bits where I don’t remember the original game, but it seems the AI flubbed. The 4 button dam controls were wonky: stop, start, bust the pipe, and what? And the cyclops room has a door you never get to open, no info about it.
All together, these seem like things no human would get wrong. Like, maybe a human would make a shitty chair, but they would almost certainly ensure that all the pieces fit together before they published the game.That’s some great testing/feedback. I hope Ethan sees that.
A human sees the errors immediately but fixing still takes time. One would prioritize getting a working prototype out before polishing away such issues. Rationally, it’s more important to get feedback on the mechanics and such than making sure the models and collisions are good.
I believe you are right that a human wouldn’t make at least some of these errors. But I think one needs some experience with 3D modelling software or alpha stage games to really be confident about what errors humans plausibly make.
Honestly, it’s just become my default for anything that hits the surface level “huh, that’s cool…but how or why?” check nowadays. LLMs generate material that matches surface level interest without the ‘why’, because there’s no actual thoughts or emotions to give a reason. So whenever I see a “cool” remake of a game in a different way, I start out assuming it’s an LLM project driven by some slop-happy inhuman fleshbeast that doesn’t understand what human elements made the old thing cool in the first place.
So basically it’s just a gut feeling that something is ‘off’.
Because it is
This impressed me: GPT-5.6 Astra turned Zork (the classic 1977 text adventure) into a full 3D playable action-adventure game It kept the original plot & puzzles, added fight scenes, and built all of the characters & environments directly in Threejs code
There’s all kinds of weird stuff, like being able to move behind the Fireplace or the window “in the corner of the house” being smack dab in the middle of that face of the building.
My favorites are the Round Room that is square and the chair beside fireplace in in the house.
Like wtf is this cubist nightmare?
One thing I do NOT miss is navigating the twisty passages. The maze has been compressed to one room.
Like wtf is this cubist nightmare?
It’s MoDeRn (magical star sprinkles not included)
I think I figured it out.
Look where the legs are. The chair started out facing parallel with the floorboards.
And then the AI turned it to slightly face the fire.
The AI doesn’t understand continuity and what components are connected, so it all came apart.
Kinda like if you took a square construction of loose wooden blocks and squished it to a parallelogram.
I played Zork a lot back in the day. You know, before the dawn of time.
This adaptation has one thing going for it. It plays a LOT faster than the original text game.
So far, I’ve not been told I’m likely to be eaten by a Grue. (This happens when you turn out the light.)Finished it. About 2 hours of playtime.
The whole game is absolute shit. I cannot recommend it. But I did have fun.
I like that the Github states that the image is slop.
Images and code are all slop
Was shocked to discover I could play this on my mobile browser. Amazing! Brings back memories of playing this from a floppy in the 80s. God, I feel old.
Where is @grue
Hit L to turn out your light.
If you are holding the ivory torch, it just switches between the lamp and the torch, but if you only have the lamp, the light goes out.
And then the grue shows up.I saved this for last. After I finished the game, I left the light off.
The grue shows up like three times and finally just eats you.
Upon further reflection, I think dying to the Grue was my favorite part of this game.
I love Zork Grand Inquisitor, so more 3d Zork is more better!
