During the pandemic I decided to work through Zork, and ended up completing the first three Zork games with minimal "looking things up" (actually, much to my chagrin I had to look up something precisely once per game, and in each case it was a small puzzle right near the and of the game, almost perfect!).
I'll go ahead and second Planetfall though, which I saw someone else mention. For anyone else curious, I would put it on the "easier than Zork" side and is a rare text adventure I completed without any look-ups. I really really liked it. Save often. RTFM (in particular you'll want to look up the list of allowed verbs any time you get stuck). Those are the two helpful hints I would give to anyone thinking to themselves that they might want to try a classic text adventure.
Actually maybe more helpful would be to play something like Space Quest which has the same sensibility as text adventures (in that they often feel cruel to the user intentionally...) but is somewhat more accessible. Space Quest in particular shares a lot of DNA with planetfall all the way down to starring space janitors.
Space Quest is rated the maximum "Cruel" under this system, as it's easy to render the game unwinnable with no feedback that you're in this state. Almost all modern adventure games are less cruel.
I’m looking at you KQ5 - “Failing to rescue this rat will result in yet another DMW. This is probably the single most infamous puzzle in King's Quest 5”
Planetfall was great, it’s the only infocom game I managed to complete. I think I might enjoy a mind forever voyaging more now than I did at the time, but I remember being terribly confused. Hitchhiker’s Guide is so manifestly unfair that it loops back around to being funny again, but I couldn’t even manage the babelfish, so I didn’t get much play out of it.
Out of curiosity, do you think you realized any benefit from some of the puzzles entering into common knowledge by now? And/or the Seinfeld Effect?
I could see how that would be true. By on the other hand in objective terms it’s pretty obscure pop culture knowledge so could also see it providing zero benefit
I'll go ahead and second Planetfall though, which I saw someone else mention. For anyone else curious, I would put it on the "easier than Zork" side and is a rare text adventure I completed without any look-ups. I really really liked it. Save often. RTFM (in particular you'll want to look up the list of allowed verbs any time you get stuck). Those are the two helpful hints I would give to anyone thinking to themselves that they might want to try a classic text adventure.
Actually maybe more helpful would be to play something like Space Quest which has the same sensibility as text adventures (in that they often feel cruel to the user intentionally...) but is somewhat more accessible. Space Quest in particular shares a lot of DNA with planetfall all the way down to starring space janitors.