♦ Livestream of 2 ZZT worlds. ♦
♦ Stream Contents ♦
• (2:00) "Vegetable Takeover" by HAZARD (2002) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/vegetakeover/]
• (55:37) "Vegetable Takeover Part II" by HAZARD (2003) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/vege2/]
Vegetables! Can't live with em, can't live without em?
A pair of odd action games where the first game in the series began as an unfinished 24 Hours of ZZT entry. Alien vegetables are invading the Earth and plan to take over with their superiority to humans. Enter, some guy, who opts to not let that happen.
The first game gives players an open-ended exploration of a few locations: farms, nuclear waste disposal sites, and such. The goal is to find a rock which can be used to enter the vegetables' spaceship and put a stop to the invasion. Needless to say it's a goofy game that doesn't take itself all that seriously. Having seen some of the author's previous ZZT releases under an older alias, this is pretty par for the course.
The action is pretty difficult! Enemies move extremely frantically and it's easy to lose a ton of health. The saving grace is that there aren't all that many instances of combat, and a bug causes a source of healing (a fresh cow carcass) to be eaten indefinitely for as much health as needed. A few other "puzzles" can be rather rough as well, with boards where you navigate paths that can only be made visible briefly, and straying from them yeets players back to the start. It's kind of a messy game, but it's clearly trying to do something at least.
The sequel is much more focused, with players now aboard the UFO and fighting their way through the ship after escaping from the brig. A weapons system is in place to make combat get easier as the game goes along, though I was unable to find the key to the first weapon upgrade, and by the time I got the next one, the game was basically over.
This is a shame as the combat is even more brutal here, and healing is very hard to come by. The game is a lot more straightforward, lacking the variety that made the first game appreciable despite its flaws. Chat was in agreement that the first game seemed better, which is rough given the original game's origins as a 24 Hours of ZZT entry.
Interestingly, the sequel did win a community award back in the day, with some rather generous interpretations of the game's flaws. Definitely an odd one to revisit now.
♦ Play these worlds directly in your browser ♦
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/vegetakeover/
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/vege2/
♦ Originally streamed on June 28th, 2024 ♦
