How to play Zork: The Undiscovered Underground on Mac

Game summary

The purpose of the game is to explore and emerge successfully from the Undiscovered Underground. The player begins only with a low-quality Lantern and plastic imitation sword, a parody of the starting items from Zorks I, II and III. Upon entering the Undiscovered Underground, the adventurer is trapped by a freak avalanche. The only way to escape is to release the mutant Rat Ants (an echo from Starcross) and to direct them to the avalanche, which they dispatch in a manner reminiscent of Aesop's Fables. The player must demask the Grue vendor to gain the four candy bars and place the relevant objects in the Mud Forum on the appropriate corresponding floor symbols. This unleashes a mutant chase reminiscent of Planetfall where the adventurer stays one step ahead of the Rat Ants because of the shrewdly placed candy bars. However, the escape comes at the cost of unleashing a Rat Ant epidemic onto the empire and forces the adventurer to flee from the wrath of the Grand Inquisitor.
First released: Aug 1997

Play Zork: The Undiscovered Underground on Mac with Parallels (virtualized)

The easiest way to play Zork: The Undiscovered Underground on a Mac is through Parallels, which allows you to virtualize a Windows machine on Macs. The setup is very easy and it works for Apple Silicon Macs as well as for older Intel-based Macs.

Parallels supports the latest version of DirectX and OpenGL, allowing you to play the latest PC games on any Mac. The latest version of DirectX is up to 20% faster.

Our favorite feature of Parallels Desktop is that when you turn off your virtual machine, all the unused disk space gets returned to your main OS, thus minimizing resource waste (which used to be a problem with virtualization).

Zork: The Undiscovered Underground installation steps for Mac

Step 1
Go to Parallels.com and download the latest version of the software.
Step 2
Follow the installation process and make sure you allow Parallels in your Mac’s security preferences (it will prompt you to do so).
Step 3
When prompted, download and install Windows 10. The download is around 5.7GB. Make sure you give it all the permissions that it asks for.
Step 4
Once Windows is done installing, you are ready to go. All that’s left to do is install Zork: The Undiscovered Underground like you would on any PC.
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