Overflow 2.0

Centipedes are a rather unique kind of enemy in ZZT in that they tend to be the easiest to avoid. In large spaces like these it's honestly a mistake to even shoot at them as the more they split up the more of a danger they are, but they do serve as a gentle welcome to Charlie that he's left the settlement and entered the jungle. We're back to the action-oriented gameplay here.

Combat is pretty simple throughout the game. Charlie is quickly ambushed by a pride of lions and a sloth/sleuth of bears.

There's an impressive lava flow just begging to have the 1 Object Fire effect added to it, though in practice it remains static other than some animated bubbles.

The path splits here with no real indication of where to head next so it's up to the player to make that call.

I like the sort of shrug and acceptance that ZZT's regular items leaves empties beneath them when collected. Expect black residue on a lot of boards throughout Overflow. Objects have the option to turn into fakes, but Drelick sticks with with ZZT provides.

There is of course this one other oddity on the board of a small cyan "o".

Ah. Charlie begins to carry a boulder.

Speaking of classic design we get a big "SAVE!" sign before this puzzle. It can't entirely be action after all. Overflow definitely favors action over puzzles like these though, so if you can't find any entertainment in shooting lions, tigers, and bears (don't say it.) these sequences won't happen enough to keep you invested.

I do appreciate that what you're doing here is explained in-universe with these being strange creatures Charlie is sliding around and not an abstract puzzle of pushing arrows that make a path.

The puzzle isn't that complex, the swiftmuds travel once touched until they hit a wall and leave a path for the player to walk on behind them. When they strike a rock they'll disappear. The player's job is finding the right order though for many of the swiftmuds it won't make a difference when you deploy it which really simplifies things.

Take this for example. This bottom swiftmud is always going to travel the same distance regardless of whether it's the first one touched or the last. If the swiftmuds didn't disappear when they hit something it would allow for a more challenging puzzle design, but let's be honest, this is perfectly fine as it is.

It's brisk, and it's unique. I'm on board with this puzzle.

The reward is a second boulder that can't be collected until the first one has been used for whatever the boulders are for!

...and another phone number to call.

Turning around and following the southern coast introduces the player to some new enemies. On the right we have snakes using a pretty typical character that matches up with the snakes in Super ZZT that replaced its bears. They aren't much of a hunter though with their code solely being to move randomly until the player comes in contact with one.

While you can probably guess "snake" based on the appearance, none of the custom enemies in Overflow have their names revealed to the player. To learn what you're fighting, you need to actually look at the code.

So these other enemies... are "Beanmen". They're a bit more focused on getting near the player, with a 60/40 split of moving towards the player and moving randomly in their main loop. Interestingly, they only check if the player is next to them once in their loop which means that even if a player gets too close, they might get away unscathed.

The object-based enemies are a bit strange. In some ways Drelick really aims to make these fit in with ZZT's own creatures. They take one hit, do ten damage, give a single point, run at cycle two, and produce an "Ouch!!" message when they do harm the player before disappearing. It would be about as faux-creature as ZZT objects allow save for two differences. Firstly, they don't react to a player touching them like a lion would if a player foolishly stepped on one. Secondly, they leave a red fake wall bloodstain behind!

A helpful scroll explains that the mess of cyan on the bottom of the board is shallow water than can mostly be stepped on as its made from fakes. I certainly appreciated it as otherwise my assumption would have been that this was some kind of obstacle like a wall of ice to melt.

While the shallow pools are communicated in a way that could be confusing with the explicit explanation, I think it's a nice touch. I've ran around many a ZZT beach before, but I think this is the first time I've gone wading like this. These little bits of uncommon details in common setting help Overflow attain a style that sets it apart from most typical adventures.

Here Charlie is introduced to another new enemy, "Algae". They move quite peculiarly, with a mix of stepping towards the player and shuffling randomly to the east or west followed by randomly to the north or south.

These are the kind of movement patterns that do stand out when you're looking for them, but when you're on this board shooting everything in sight they don't feel all that different from how creatures in ZZT move normally.

They're a little more special though, in that they deal 15 damage and don't die after doing so. To compensate, they're a bit slower and can't attack Charlie directly. The player has to actually touch the algae to be harmed.

While the game is full of gems which provide health as well, Drelick occasionally uses heart objects to quickly give the player a more significant 10 health at a time. You see this in countless ZZT worlds, but it's a bit of a relief here since this game seems to strive to use what ZZT provides already. I wouldn't have been surprised if shops and gems were the only health source, and picking up dozens of gems is a lot more tedious than grabbing a few hearts.

Just when I thought I reached the end the purpose for the boulders showed up. Some deeper water that looks no different than the shallow water being walk on requires the boulders to create a makeshift bridge. Next time just grab a swiftmud.

A walk back to collect the second boulder allows the lever to be pulled, but there's still one more deep tile to cross before continuing south. The perks of my ZZT mod letting me see board exits definitely pays off here as the design of this board really makes it seem like the goal is the lever and that there's nothing beyond.

Back north, the lever reveals a hidden path in the forest that was previously impassable.

Leading to this neat little private beach. Well, it was private to these lions and beanmen, but it's Charlie's now. There are plenty of items to collect in addition to the final boulder.

This leads to the guardian of this area's keycard: "Barracuda". The barracuda is a gentle introduction of a boss, moving randomly and constantly firing at the player. When a boss is this aggressive, it can be difficult to land hits, but with more than 400 ammo already Charlie is more than able to fire his own onslaught. The boss goes down in six hits and the door to the keycard opens. There's no dialog to give us any motivation as to why this creature has it out for Charlie. Whether they're in some way associated with Achalon or just a particularly strong beast is left for the player to decide.

One admittedly frustrating part of Overflow is the return trips. Right now it's not too bad as the structure of this area didn't put the keycard too far off from the parked mini-fortress, but eventually there will be some fairly lengthy walks.

The return trip is also made a little better by virtue of the extra phone number collected. It gives Charlie something to actually do on his walk back to the ship. There's a strange conversation with a character Charlie is already familiar with. They give him another code that for now is useless. I thought it might be another series of numbers to enter on the phone even if it wasn't actually a phone number, but no dice.

The keycard is inserted and it's time to pick a new destination!

Smuggler's Shanty is next, and carries a similar vibe to Native's Island in that there's a starting village before actually questing for the next keycard.

Amatena village is smaller in size, but the buildings are of a nicer quality. I appreciate that everything fits on one screen rather than the four that made up the previous town as it means a lot less walking to get through a similar number of citizens.

This guy (who is indeed named "Guy") provides some oddly critical information. Charlie's mini-fortress has slots for keycards, but it hasn't actually been explained in game what will happen if you collect all of them. I guess it's some weird sort of authentication for the pirate fortress where the time machine is located.

Some trouble is brewing between these two: Nick and the leader of the pirates, Captain Kurt. It's the player's first proper introduction to the villains that are terrorizing this world post-Achalon apocalypse.

I don't really get what this conversation is meant to be about, but it does indeed end with Kurt shooting and killing Nick for the insult.

This scene establishes Kurt as being a bad guy, but I don't really get what Charlie's relation to Nick is. We were able to call him on the first island, and despite the murder you can still call him up thereby betraying an expected order to a non-linear game.

The residents here do a much better job of being helpful at least.

Unlike the huts, most of the buildings on this island can actually be entered. This includes another shop which maintains the 1:1 pricing, but sells ammo and health in larger quantities. Though admittedly I'm already loaded on health and ammo.

This home can be entered just to talk to one person who gives more detail about the Shanty's treasure, revealing that it's a grappling hook stored on the very top of the structure. This would be a pretty redundant board, but it serves to differentiate this island from the refugees of New York living in much rougher conditions.

You might think I've reading too much into it, but this village is full of "rare Asian ferns" which is wild and bring an unexpected touch of classism as to how these two groups live. It makes me want to know more, but alas it's beyond the scope of this game.

Rare ferns and VR headsets.

The next home isn't quite as grand, but still has those ferns.

Drelick is really deviating from what you expect out of a house in ZZT. The shapes are very non-rectangular and the backgrounds place them on a sky despite being grounded. It really makes them look like nothing else.

The information you receive is still the same thing, but because of how unusual the homes are I appreciate getting a chance to go inside and check them out.

The fireplace is also amazing in that it has multiple objects with multiple high quality responses.

I respect immensely this game's willingness to throw out realistic architecture. A sign outside the building the leads to here just says "Shed". It's also the one building in Amatena that looks like the homes in Native's Village.

Drelick also has fun with it by not just making the shed full of items to pickup, but by including this weird conveyor gate. A switch nearby is used to reverse the direction. It's unnecessary but provides an interaction for the player rather than just providing the items to them directly.

And credit where it's due to not just have the shed be full of ammo and gems. There are some things you'd actually find in a shed included. Also using a beta for a hose is a very good choice of character.

YES

Why is there a bowling alley in this town? Why is there a bowling alley in this game? I have no idea, but I am thankful it is here. Upside-down exclamation marks make an excellent pin to be sure.

It's certainly looking like Drelick knows his bowling. I managed to find a nice ad for the "Hammer" referenced here.(Source)

Talking to Tom here will result in him bowling a few frames with the ball being a bullet. He pulls off a turkey. This is the Tom mentioned in the readme that has a famous line.

This is the famous line.

It's good.

But enough bowling, it's time to return to something more serious. Back in the village this path is normally blocked off with a simple "I have no need to visit the graveyard!" kind of message. Once Nick is killed by Captain Kurt the funeral is immediately underway. There is a bit of tonal whiplash between the previous screen and this, but really that all comes down to the order the player explores the village.

This is genuinely one of the most beautiful boards I've seen in a ZZT game.

Some of the oldest toolkits include a "sunset" blend of dark red to dark purple, and numerous more expand it with a fade to dark green as a way of doing a horizon. Tseng's vstk is a good example that has both the classic blend and the full horizon though numerous others include it as well. I've seen so many ZZT sunsets that use that blend, and nine times out of ten, it isn't actually "blended" in any way, with perfect horizontal stretches of each tile running across the screen. It's iconic enough to me that I even included (what could fit of) it in the pinned Tweet for the Worlds of ZZT Twitter.

What Drelick does here though, is truly outstanding. The colors are much more vivid than the traditional blend, and the way its mixed together makes it so much more natural than rigid rows of each component tile. I gasped seeing this board which stands out even among what is already a great looking ZZT game.

And that's saying nothing of how somber a mood it helps create. This is a cliff-side funeral. Overflow's original scope and lack of development in character relations here makes it very difficult to understand what relationship Charlie is meant to have with these people, but the imagery here is so incredibly powerful that I couldn't help but feel sorry for Nick.

There's not a whole lot of depth to the characters in this game. NPCs act as punchlines for jokes just as often as they exist to tell the player "I heard there's a keycard in the [PLACE]". Prior to this board, Nick's murder is simply "welp, rip to that guy I Guess". The limitations of ZZT combined with the young age of most authors when these games were being made make it incredibly difficult to convey strong emotions, but this board resonates extremely well. Consider this: Everybody here is smiling. That's the charset. They have to be smiling, and yet it's so incredibly clear here how dour the scene is. You'll be so caught up into the picture painted on this board that you almost certainly didn't stop for a moment to think about the comical juxtaposition of a funeral full of happy faces.

I don't know. I could just gush endlessly about how this board is emblematic of the power contained in graphics even when limited to such an extreme as ZZT. This has really become one of my favorite boards ever.

And then you talk to somebody and it goes right back to generic video game NPC dialog.

...kind of. Charlie will meet some Nus later, but devoid of context this line feels out of place. With context, it's still a bit odd to get in this scene, but where we'll eventually see a Nu is also a place where spirits of the dead can be interacted with. If there's a connection, it's not stated, but if Nu and life after death are somehow related then there may be a more favorable reading here of somebody actually grieving.

While Native's Island took the approach of making the player go through its village before exploring its "dungeon", Smuggler's Shanty seems to let the player have their choice of where to explore. Checking out Amatena is the more likely decision, but it ultimately turns out to be moot as this key is required to clear even the first board of the dungeon.

I still don't get the "Igor" thing.

The admittedly huge casket is erased leaving a marking on the ground as each component turns into a non-STK fake wall. It's a limitation of ZZT in action, but I like the marks it leaves on the ground serving as a natural memorial to what was once here.

The priest runs over to the grave and Nick is buried.