♦ Livestream of "Caverns of Zeux" by Alexis Janson (1994). ♦
Back in 1994, ZZT just wasn't cutting it for some folks, and so Alexis Janson created her own ZZT clone, MegaZeux.
MegaZeux offered far more capabilities than ZZT while being easy enough for anyone familiar with its inspiration to begin making more advanced games after a bit of practice with MZX's own scripting language, Robotic.
To celebrate 30 years of MegaZeux, I'm spending this month streaming notable MegaZeux titles, starting of course, with Caverns of Zeux, the first MZX game.
Having found the silver staff in Labyrinth of Zeux (a standalone game), Vince finds himself not just trapped in the caverns after an earthquake, but transformed into a dwarf as well! In order to escape, he'll need to master spells; collect magical gemstones and amulets; brave caverns of ice, lava, and water; and change form into creatures big and small.
Being an early MZX game, this one feels a lot like an enhanced ZZT title. The engine offers a number of comparable built-in enemies to ZZT while showing off its new customizable character set and fancy effects effects with fiery explosions and screen-shaking potions. It holds up quite nicely, and set a great starting point for those that decided to make the leap from ZZT to MZX in hopes of making more complex games with custom counters, arithmetic, MOD support, and other capabilities that ZZT could never match.
There's a reason of all the ZZT clones that were created, this was the only one to find any success (well, prior to WiL's Weave at least). Expect to see a vast increase in capabilities and removal of restrictions as we celebrate this Montha-Zeux, and be sure to visit https://digitalmzx.com, the definitive MegaZeux archive where just like the Museum you'll find yourself able to play games in the browser, or download MegaZeux to play on a wide variety of devices!
♦ Play this world ♦
• https://www.digitalmzx.com/show.php?id=182
♦ Originally streamed on April 5th, 2024 ♦
