♦ Livestream of 2 ZZT worlds. ♦
♦ Stream Contents ♦
• (1:37) "Brian's Life (v1.0)" by Firebug (1994) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/brian/]
• (37:38) "Brian's (Crappy) Life Two" by Firebug (1995) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/brian2/]
A pair of strange games about the life of young Brian. (...Probably the author)
Two nonsensical games with a focus on unexpected humor, surprise violence, and lots of wandering randomly. The first of which is definitely cruder. Brian needs to find his shoes to so he can finish getting dressed for the family reunion. And so he ends up going to his school, an alien ship, and the planet Aerosmith.
Along the way he bites countertops, smacks his sister with a baseball bat, shoots a few people, and tries to find some beer for the alien engineers.
It's not too bad, but a large number of passage errors make it rather difficult to navigate. This is compounded by some objects blending in too well with walls, making it really easy to get stuck and have to go way back to get a missing item.
The sequel improves things considerably! Here Brian arrives at Aunt Barb's for the reunion and begins searching for the last pie to have as a dessert. Soon the aliens return, this time to make him their king. But to begin his new reign from space, he must find the pie which doubles as a fuel source.
The humor lands a lot better here, making this a rare instance of a 90s ZZT comedy that holds up at all. The secret backrooms of Aunt Barb's house get excessively silly, and the cast matches. There is one awkward moment with a casual chat with an infamous 1940s dictator that got cut from the stream edit of the game. A trivia section later on asks players about one of the things said dictator had to say.
Also an incredibly bad riddle about a man jumping out of a window.
Together though, this was a really entertaining pair of games to feature despite the occasional issue.
♦ Play these worlds directly in your browser ♦
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/brian/
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/brian2/
♦ Originally streamed on June 2nd, 2024 ♦
