Knight Orc

Knight Orc is a text adventure, with limited graphics on some platforms, by Level 9 released in 1987. It comes with a short novella by Peter McBride ("The Sign of the Orc") explaining the background to the story.

After a night of heavy drinking with friends, Grindleguts the orc awakes to find himself strapped to a horse and about to joust with a human knight. His "friends" are nowhere to be seen, and he must somehow escape from his predicament and get even with them. Grindleguts must survive in a world of hostile humans while seeking revenge against his tormentors.

After the first chapter, the game switches to a science fiction setting, where Grindleguts is revealed to be a malfunctioning non-player character in a futuristic massively multiplayer online role-playing game. Using his power of transitioning between fantasy and reality, he convinces several other bots to join him, and escapes from the simulated reality facility.

The game is a text adventure with limited graphics on some systems. Gameplay is similar to the later Level 9 adventure Gnome Ranger, which uses the same game engine (KAOS). The game flows in real time; each person and creature goes on about their daily lives and follows their schedule. The player must explore the settings while collecting useful items and interacting with various non-player characters to solve puzzles and problems.

Sinclair User had this to say:

Computer Gaming World stated that the graphics were a waste of disk space and the puzzles were "uneven". However, the excellent parser and other virtues resulted in an "above average" game.

Your Computer magazine said it was "Disappointing", while the Atari magazine Page 6 said it was excellent value for money about the Atari 8-bit version.

Computer and Video Games gave the Knight Orc the C+VG HIT! award, praising the story and the unique protagonist perspective, additionally noting that the accompanying novella, The Sign of the Orc, is "a good read in its own right."

• Knight Orc at SpectrumComputing.co.uk
• Knight Orc at MobyGames
• Knight Orc at Lemon Amiga
• Knight Orc at Lemon 64
• Knight Orc in the Interactive Fiction Database