Grues in Comic joins two historical Microsoft open-source projects, released seventeen years apart, so that one narrates and the other draws: Zork I's original ZIL sources, and Microsoft Comic Chat's comic-strip layout engine.
Not a source port
This project does not recreate either historical runtime. Zork I's ZIL is understood, then its semantics are extracted into an intermediate representation (the IR) that stays independent of ZIL, browser APIs and rendering technology. A browser-native engine executes that IR. Comic Chat's C++ layout logic — how panels are chosen, how balloons are placed, how figures are posed — is read and cited, then rebuilt for the browser; nothing of the original binary or its bundled art ships here.
Parity with the original game
The engine's output is checked turn-by-turn against dfrotz, a reference Zork
I interpreter, across 143 full walkthroughs covering the game's puzzles, combat and
endings. Every one matches byte for byte. That figure is a developer's credibility claim
more than a player's reason to click, which is why it lives here rather than on the
landing page — but it is the strongest evidence the reconstruction is faithful to the
original game, not just inspired by it.
Licensing and trademarks
Zork I's ZIL source (© 2025 Microsoft) and Microsoft Comic Chat's C++ source (© Microsoft Corporation) are both released under the MIT licence. Zork is a trademark of its respective owner; this project is not affiliated with or endorsed by Microsoft, Activision or Infocom. No Microsoft, Infocom or Zork logo or wordmark is used anywhere on this site — names appear in plain text only. See THIRD_PARTY.md for the full attribution set.
Source
The project's own code, IR and authored dialogue are on GitHub.