I went through the effort today of bolting on more stuff to the file viewer (which has been slowly undergoing a rewrite to not be so... 8+ year old JavaScript by somebody who barely knows JavaScript, adding support for .CHR files so I could get some proper screenshots of the big release in this pack which uses a custom font. Then I realized this happens all the time with Weave games and that as usual, I could just grab some author-selected screenshots from the game's Itch page.
Which is perfect, because I am eagerly awaiting April's Montha-Zeux to be over so I can play it, as all my streams are booked this month.
But I can't say that extra functionality is wasted. Plus those character sets are now supported with the Zeta player as well, which is nicer than having to ask authors to include both the modern format and the old Font Mania format that was the de facto standard way of setting up fonts for ZZT for its first ~25 years.
The worst part though is that it took almost no time at all to do, and I should have done it the first time a game was uploaded with a .CHR file, bolted or otherwise.
Anyway, this article is about newly published games! We've got one long awaited 3.2 title by authorblues, another fresh PogeSoft art collection, and a remastering of a game that still feels new (thanks to it not being a decade old) that takes advantage of the in-between limits offered by ClassicZoo that sits between vanilla ZZT and Weave.
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“Zuzatan: The Forgotten City” by authorblues (2024)
After considerable hype, authorblues has finally finished his first ZZT world! Some time ago he started doing some streams of ZZT, and caught on to its appeal, playing original worlds and a number of third-party releases. Even going so far as to attempt to play all of Nadir's games chronologically. Rarely does one play so much ZZT without getting the urge to create something for themselves, and Zuzatan is exactly that.
An ancient alien city appears beneath the ruins of Tazumal. When a colleague goes missing, will you have what it takes to solve the mystery and rescue him? With nothing but your pistol and your trusty 286 laptop, explore the ruins of the city of Zuzatan, discover a people split into factions, and prevent catastrophe, all while navigating the quagmire of academia. Publish or perish has never been more literal.
This is one of those games I can't let myself poke around at in advance lest I spoil it for myself, but I also don't want to leave it sitting unpublished for another month. I suspect it's more elaborate than a "my first ZZT adventure". The Itch screens (a few of which are replicated here) make this look like it's going to be a treat to play, with much love put into the design and backgrounds. Plus it's clearly got some sort of fishing game. This one has been in the making for some time, with the occasional hints of what might be expected from auth's screenshots and ZZT-OOP questions on the Discord.
I'm stuck waiting until May to play. The rest of you have no reason not to jump on this one.
“Bit Punk NEO Monster Art Compilation” by PogeSoft (2024)
A collection of NPC character art commissioned for verasev's Bitpunk NEO RPG. Includes a number of drafts of designs with a blend of bio-horror and cyberpunk designs. Sometimes, both at once!
Best perused through the editor! There's no organization with which to play and navigate the file.
“Cyber Purge v2” by The Green Herring (2024)
Program Description
The ClassicZoo upgrade of the original Cyber Purge, now with redrawn artwork, an expanded story, and more!
And the final new release is The Green Herring's 2.0 update of Cyber Purge. Taking advantage of ClassicZoo (bundled in the download) this update has completely redone artwork, portraits for characters, more animation, extended dialog... It's a pretty big overhaul.
When a deadly virus causes users of the VR world Paradise to receive fatal electrical shocks upon disconnecting, hacker Takami Bluesky is the only hope to infiltrate the system, free those kept hostage in the program, and put a stop to the perpetrator of the crime.
If you've yet to try this one out still, ain't no time like the present with this newest and biggest release of the game yet!
(There's also a final cleanup of the 1.X release which replaces its previous version.)
“Trivia (Ancient Rome)” by Jacques Bouchard
And now the enthusiasm begins to waver just a smidge.
A simple trivia game about ancient Rome with quite a large number of questions, divided up by how many points are earned for correct answers. Do you know more about ancient Rome that the game's author? Only one way to find out!
Despite the basic premise, this one was a blast on stream as a few of the questions went in directions that really had us wondering where this material was sourced. You'd expect this to be a student in middle or maybe high school studying ancient Rome. What's a "republic"? What happened in the "forum"? Why was Caesar killed? That sort of thing. Eventually though, the questions get considerably more in-depth than what you'd expect to learn in a week or two of public education.
And then they start comparing the decline of the Roman empire to the decline of America, which doesn't seem like something that would come up in a game like this, but here we are.
“Death Squad” by Justin Raynard (1995)
Don't worry, this isn't one of those _bad_ death squads. This is the Barney killing death squad!
Actually wait, the opening scroll says your group "kills for fun and hates Barney" so they probably aren't the nicest of guys.
Drop down into Barney Land to hunt down that accursed purple dinosaur once and for all. Watch out for his fans, his band, and giant brain.
“Contra SS” by Igl00 (1995)
Wow, a ZZT Contra game!
This one does its best to capture both the side-scrolling and base-infiltration sequences of the original NES game. So expect a lot of shooting. There are some fun alien designs in the base, and if you cheat past the end of the shareware nag, you can play a volcano level as well.
This game is considerably easier than Contra, save for being somewhat confusing to navigate the base sequence.
“Gambit (No. 1 of 3)” by MDBowers, SMokey666
The number of X-Men ZZT games has skyrocketed in the past year. Most of them, aren't all that exciting today, and this one is no exception.
Play as Gambit. Professor X has been kidnapped. Shoot some lions. Hop in the Blackbird. Enter Sabretooth's castle and rescue the professor.
Part 1, with no idea if the planned sequels suggested by its name were ever created/released.
“X - Demo Version” by Joker9025
A game that demands you make use of your imagination to fill its empty halls and spaceships with with detailed scenery.
You were hired by a group of rebels known as Quake to fight against the government. Your motivation is entirely financial at first, but there's some real attempts by this author to get a romance going between the protagonist and the player's choice of female suitors. I found myself comparing this to clysm's classic Turmoil, with less charm. Things are just vague and empty enough that I am kind of curious where the game was going had a full version ever been finished.
“Yoshi Adventure 1: The Search for Soshi” (1997)
It may not be fair to the X-Men, but when a new Yoshi game shows up, I'm immediately way more invested.
This follows the mold established by Chris Kohler, Al Riccitelli, and tucan. A yoshi village to explore with color-coded homes corresponding to other yoshis and mushroom kingdom staple characters. Plenty of toilet humor. Yoshi himself speaking with his Super Mario World cartoon accent...
This one gives Yoshi a wife named Soshi and a child Yoshi Jr. When Soshi doesn't return from ...a trip to the mall, Yoshi sets out to find her. He gets more than he bargained for though, as the cameos go beyond Mario, featuring a team-up with Kirby as well as multiple fights against Star Wolf and his crew as they spit out all the quotes that all children who played Star Fox 64 have permanently etched into their brains.
“Spam Man vs. The Dino Bros” by GrandSpam (1997)
Yoshi isn't the only dinosaur ZZTers were obsessed with though. More Barney games are also turning up all the time. This time Spam Man has to fight Barney who was broken out of prison by his brother whose name I can't be bothered to look up again. It's not in the Barney canon. Don't worry about it.
You get an action game with more time spent shooting kids that are fans of Barney than taking down the big guy himself. At the end, the author clarifies that any suspicious similarities between Spam Man and The Tick are purely coincidental. At no point during the game did I find myself thinking this game was in any way related to The Tick.
“Barney” by Cooshman
The title screen on this one is *chef's kiss*.
It's yet another Barney killer that begins this time with the player (Elvis) being admitted to a mental asylum and quickly breaking out so they can travel to PBS (after buying a gun from Wal-Mart of course). Not that the gun works, as a bomb has to be used instead to get through the layers of foam.
The author then invites you to join their AOL Barney hate group. It's a period piece.
“Yoshi in Eggs” (1997)
The naming of this one is *chef's kiss*.
Same old same old Yoshi for the most part. Eggs were stolen this time with Yoshi being the one to find them.
This one is kind of a mixed bag. It differentiates itself from the many other Yoshi ZZT worlds by designing levels after those found in the ZZT classic Link's Adventure. There are some fun mechanics here in the level design that make exploring the stages a lot of fun including boards the wrap on themselves and statues with levers to remove them to open new paths. That would normally make it one of the better Yoshi games to play, rather than just admiring the set pieces and bizarre character interactions.
Unfortunately, the inspiration is a bit too literal for the first level, which consists entirely of boards lifted straight from the first level in Link's Adventure, just recolored to be brown rather than blue. The author is upfront about it, but that just means that as you go through that first level, you're going to be retreading the same ground, even without getting into the issue that crediting the original author doesn't make this kind of board-lifting an acceptable thing. It's really a shame too, as afterwards when the author starts making original levels, I think they do a pretty solid job of it. It feels like Link's Adventure in all the best ways.
It also is plagued with some poorly connected passages and board exits that render even the original levels a pain to get through. This could have been a bit of a hidden gem, combining two great tastes, if not for these issues. I'm not saying it would be a masterpiece or anything, but it would be one of those games that stands above a number of unpreserved worlds uploaded over the past year or two. So it goes.
