Hidden Empire - Unofficial Zork Game for AI Clients
https://youtu.be/uU102qnGLe8?si=rDCc0pDIjejNuvlM
What if you could play Zork — the legendary 1977 text adventure — just by having a conversation with your AI?
That's exactly what I built. The Hidden Empire is a full Z-machine game engine running as an MCP server, connected directly to your AI assistant. You don't type parser commands. You don't memorize syntax. You just talk. Your AI translates your plain English into game commands, handles the retry logic if something doesn't work, and keeps your progress auto-saved after every single move.
In this video I walk through how I took the MIT-licensed open-source release of Zork I, wrapped it in a real game engine backend, and published it as an App for AI on my mctx.ai platform — so it works with Claude, and any other MCP-compatible AI client.
What makes it actually cool:
The game engine is real — not a simulation, not a summary.
Every room, puzzle, and item behaves exactly as the original designers intended.
Natural language play — say "head toward the forest" instead of
GO NORTHAuto-save after every move — close the window, come back next week, you're right where you left off
Undo any move instantly Run multiple named playthroughs in parallel
Batch commands — "go north, grab the lantern, head east" runs all at once
🎮 Play it yourself: https://hidden-empire.mctx.ai
🛠️ mctx platform: https://mctx.ai
