Quest for Zen

History

Quest for Zen was the first adventure game written by someone other than Scott Brinker and/or Tim Stryker. Quest for Zen was designed by Jeffrey Kobal, who was a student of the martial arts, and interested in eastern culture. Zen was also one of the first games whose primary goal was battle; in many ways, it was the very first MUD game for The Major BBS. It lacked computer controlled enemies or monsters (non-player characters or NPCs), but, on larger systems, this was not a problem. At the time of the game's development, NPCs were not yet developed.

Quest for Zen was, however, based upon the same code structure created by Tim Stryker and perfected by Scott Brinker for the previous Quest games from Moonshae Telecomm and Galacticomm. Quest for Zen was sold by Moonshae Telecomm/Galactic Innovations until the acquisition by Galacticomm.

Story

From the pages of Japanese folklore springs this game of survival of the fittest in an age of mythical warriors. Set in a mystical Oriental land of mental strength and physical power, Quest for Zen is a thrilling challenge of wisdom, strategy, and skill as players vie with each other for the title of #1 Zen Master ninja! Starting out as beginning ninjas, players must solve their competing students of nin-jitsu to advance through the nine levels of power. Once players actually achieve the title of "Zen Master", the highest level of power, they are rated by a score of "kills" that will keep the competition going for as long as you keep the module online. With 60 different attacks and defenses, as well as several special Zen Master abilities, Quest for Zen offers a detailed and realistic battle system that will have players locked into hours of excitement.

Attacks

To give you an idea of the thoroughness, here is a list of the 30 regular "attacks" within the game...

hook punch     elbow thrust   palm strike        
uppercut       hook kick      jump high kick            
front kick     back kick      hammer fist       
knee thrust    ridge hand     straight punch    
head butt      crescent kick  spinning back kick
axe kick       power thrust   jump spinning kick
side kick      palm of fire   jump back kick    
tornado kick   groin pull     roundhouse kick   
lion's roar    tiger claw     open-hand chop    
backfist       spear thrust   dragon talon      

Gameplay

Gameplay within Quest for Zen is fairly typical of text "adventure" games (now more commonly called interactive fiction games) like Zork, Colossal Cave, etc; and MUD games, like Dungeon, Rogue, etc. Players issue simple verb-noun command pairs, such as "north", "get object", "backfist username", etc. Players can interact with other players in the game, as well.