SaintZZT 7th Enhanced

Now, Ketchup however, is different.

Ketchup is the name of a foe that is fought with words, namely answering his trivia questions. It costs George five gems to participate, which means answering wrong adds to the cost. As always, it's easy to just use saves to ensure you get through, but the uniquely minor punishment might be enough to get players to not bother reloading if they answer a question incorrectly.

Not that you'll need to reload in the first place. These are some all-purpose trivia questions that only have three possible answers. The three questions consist of "Where is the EARTH?" (System Solar), "Where is U.S.A?" (Continent American), and then finally breaking away from geography with "What means WORM?" (Write Once Read Many). That last one might not be the most obvious without any possible choices, but the wrong answers are both a little bit too nonsensical to be a first guess.

Curiosity got to me, and I took a look at if the questions were the same in Spanish. They actually aren't! In Spanish the questions ask who the current US president is (wrong answers of Bill Gates and then-Nintendo president Howard Lincoln), who invented color TV, and what company produced SaintZZT.

Even though Ketchup is an obstacle, upon answering the questions, he asks George to save everyone from Myuu!

Myuu is yet again identical to every object-based enemy, and he too has nothing more to say than that he will kill George until George kills them. Then it's once again time to reveal another brother. This game is hooked on these brothers.

That's when the game reaches what I might consider to be its low point. Though how much of that was from my own actions, remains to be determined.

The next path that opens is north of Kiruko village. Here, a lone NPC tells George that in order to reach Kasuke's dungeon that he'll need to find the POW gloves. To acquire them, a spellbook needs to be taken from the library in the starting town of Nabudori.

That means going through two towns, a bit of overworld, and all the way through the first cave, all on boards that have no enemies left to fight. It would have been fairly miserable, except when I made it back to the cave exit, I realized there wasn't actually a passage back!

This got me looking at the file viewer to figure out that I had been able to get this book in the library from the very beginning had I touched it. It was starting to look like a tragic soft-lock situation. At least, until I turned back around and discovered the passage on the very same board as the person who mentions the book is in fact a portal directly to Nabudori town.

My attempt at retracing my steps was a waste of time, adding more padding to using the portal, which still comes off as a bit annoying as you do have to go through the initial cave again to return with the book. A little labeling would have gone a long way. A sign or person saying "You can go back to Nabudori town quickly through this portal!"

Even after taking the portal, players still need to remember the person in the ruined town that was asking for the book earlier. They tell George to read the book and the gloves magically appear in George's hands.

Now, all of this can be avoided as it is indeed possible to get the book on your first visit to the library. It's unlikely players will find it as the books are both massive and offer no description when touched, being nothing more than walls. Only a specific tile of the correct book can be interacted with, making it incredibly easy to miss.

Even if a player did explore that library so thoroughly, they still have the unlabeled one-way passage back to the starting town that now they have to arbitrarily decide to avoid. Hopefully they saved upon entering Kiruko.

All of this is to get past one more roadblock in the form of some large boulders blocking a trapdoor in an unassuming house. that leads to Kasuke cave.

This next dungeon is by far the most unique. A dark room has enemies that are invincible to bullets. Shooting one causes a star to be thrown in retaliation, quickly teaching players to find an alternate way to dispatch them. The enemies themselves move and shoot like everything else, turning previously helpful friendly-fire on its head, replacing one projectile with a far more dangerous one.

As if that wasn't enough, a few spinning guns are found on opposite sides of the room, also contributing bullets that can harm George and invoke star-throws equally well.

The cave features the strangest fight in the game, replacing ZZT's shooting with a basic shoot 'em up engine. It's your typical left/right/shoot controls as you try to line up a shot against a strafing target while not getting hit yourself. A few little enemy ships join the fray to make moving more necessary.

The whole engine feels a bit out of place here, with no explanation given as to what George is piloting or shooting at. On the bright side, it's some extra variety to the gameplay.

The engine isn't entirely bare bones. It does have one slightly unique feature. Once George is piloting the ship, pressing down can convert George's gems into one extra hit's worth of shields. While it's a nice idea to be able to restore health, it's a bit underwhelming as it can only ever restore a single point at a time. If you find yourself in a situation where enemy bullets are raining down on you, it's probably too late to use the functionality to turn things around.

As for Kasuke, there's really nothing left to say. He's the same as all previous bosses, save for not having anyone to carry out revenge on him once defeated.

With Kasuke gone, players can finally explore lava land, which sadly is merely one board longer than they were able to visit before. This final board consists of friendly NPCs that hint at things to come later on, including George going into outer space and giving George another book that will be required to gain a later item.

Unusually, this board uses text to communicate with the player, stressing the need to talk to everyone and to save here. The reasoning is simple enough, George will soon be cut off from backtracking, and without getting the book from Morro, the game will become unwinnable.

What follows is also unusual. Beyond the passage lies neither town nor dungeon, but a tower home to an old man appropriately referred to as Ol'Man.

The old man has heard that George wants to go into space. It's probably worth noting that prior to these two NPCs telling George that he's going to leave the Earth, there's been no mention of space. I have no idea why George is going there.

To learn how to get there, George makes use of Ol'Man's computer, navigating to zzthelp dot com. Here players can read actual information on not just this game, but Saint ZZT 5th as well.

It's kind of weird reading a walkthrough in game for events that have yet to happen. By the end of it, the player will know how to get into space, how to acquire golden gloves, and how to acquire the titan gloves.

Getting into space involves getting a pass and going to the spaceport. This game is a tad predictable by now.

Exiting the tower locks George out, and brings him to what was my favorite part of the game, an extended overworld sequence where RinGames was clearly having a lot of fun with the board designs. They look and play unlike what's been seen before, feeling more like a dungeon has been moved outside.

This region has a touch of decorative elements one would associate with Japan. You'll find trees with purple foliage suggesting cherry blossoms as well as a number of torii gates, something I don't think I've ever seen depicted in ZZT until relatively recently.

Let's be real, Saint ZZT 7th looks reasonable, but it doesn't look spectacular. I wouldn't have thought you could really differentiate between two different grasslands so easily, but RinGames has done it, really diversifying this section of overworld from what's come before.

The area includes a considerable number of water features as well. Small lakes, and more man-made ponds made to look like smiling faces contrast well with what's been seen pre-lava land.

It's also significantly more open than anything seen previously. There have been crossroads before, all of which offered the illusion of choice more than any meaningful decisions on where to go next. Out here, players suddenly have access to six boards, with only one of them being cut off by a roadblock. It lends itself so much more favorably to exploration, to the point where I really wish the entire game had this structure.

The goal here is to acquire the golden gloves in order to lift a heavier obstruction. The gloves are quickly found, trapped on a small island where a person offers to help George get them, in exchange for a dumpling. So that's the real goal here. I'll take anything at this point that isn't just a "pass".

It's not much of a search. A hidden wall is telegraphed via some arrows on the board where a dumpling is just lying there. A second secret in the region that also uses the arrows leads to a bonus room that rewards players with a massive 10,000 point bonus as well as 1,000 health, ammo, and gems.

The gloves let players reach a ring shop, a cute way of selling health and ammo through the use of a single purchase. It's here that the Titan ring can be acquired by trading the Ikio book from earlier. I really like the way this board manages be simultaneously important for the game to proceed while still functioning as a typical store, albeit one with some less typical items for sale.

The gloves also allow George access to the game's final town, passing under (well, over since it's fake walls) a torii to reach Hu-Ha-Ty town.

The town is pretty loaded with places to go and people to talk to. It's rather odd for a ZZT game to end more densely than it begins. Generally the farther you go, the more the author's focus shifts to just getting something complete. Here though, George can now visit a cafe for health restoring drinks, get the spaceport pass from a supporter, train in a gym (by fighting a robot of course), have his fortune told, and buy some trinkets that provide one-time health and ammo bonuses.

It's quite a busy place! The amount of things to do feel much more like you'd expect from a first town, trying to impress players with a good initial impression.

The trade quest that began with picking up a book in lava land finally draws to a close as the ring is traded off to get the Titan gloves. It can be difficult to realize this has even happened since the person only requests the ring if players don't have it. Talking to him with the ring has him give the gloves immediately, with no mention as to what he gave George.

Also a usable and flushable toilet. RinGames knows what makes a ZZT game a ZZT game.

Finally, with the pass and the gloves George is ready to leave this world for reasons that I still don't understand.

It's a beautiful rocket though, and the twinkling stars in the night sky make a nice place to say farewell to the Earth. From here, it's off to the planet Chouriu for the game's final dungeon.

And the moment George arrives, the game immediately goes into dungeon mode. The final level is all that is seen of the planet, referred to internally as Takeda castle.

While I enjoyed the sudden expansion of the overworld leading up to this voyage to another world, transforming it into a dungeon is pretty hardcore. There is no refuge here. All that remains is for George to fight until he is victorious or defeated.

The dungeon itself also acts more like overworld than previously. It's the only time in a dungeon where players ever have more than one exit on any given board. Even if that other exit is locked until the first path is taken, and then the rest of the castle is explored in a linear fashion.

The last dungeon features killer bees, a mini-boss with no dialog named Sink, and the return of puzzles to solve. The enemy opposition feels cranked up as well. I really get the sense that RinGames wanted this to truly be the game's ultimate challenge.

He is not very successful in this endeavor. Yes, there are more foes to fight and plenty of spinning guns, and the bees finally give players an enemy to fight that doesn't just move and shoot. All of this could make for a good challenge compared to the relative ease of the rest of the game.

It's just a case of too little too late. By the time players arrive on Chouriu, health and ammo will be too high for anything to put an appreciable dent in George's reserves...

...Unless you stand in front of a blinkwall and are killed instantly because it considers fake walls to be occupied for the purpose of repositioning the player.

For the finale, George has to face off against Takeda in three different forms. The first of this takes an unusual approach of using indirect attacks that players can't dodge.

Takeda wobbles around performing a "magic dance", which once complete drains fifty health from George. After the dance completes, he makes himself somewhat vulnerable, changing a normal wall into a fake so that bullets can reach him. A second object seems like it should function as a shield, except it always moves out of the way when the fake wall is made and moves back into position when the window to hit Takeda ends.

I found myself doing the obvious thing and just running up to the wall and crossing to the other side so I wouldn't have to wait for the dance and take any more damage. I'm unsure if the tactic was considered by RinGames as it makes it effortless to just shoot the boss and never get danced on.

Without the technique, George will have to lose a significant amount of health, probably making the secret bonus mandatory. Neither of these outcomes are particularly desirable. The fight is certainly different, but it's another question of whether or not it's actually good.

The second fight takes place on this gorgeous looking board and is bit more traditional for a finale. I love how much is crammed into the background here, and how that effort is extended into the tiled floor of the castle tower. It's a clear winner for the best looking scene in the game.

As for the fight, Takeda is now immobile, with a yellow disc handling his offense and doubling as his weak point. The disc is also stationary, running a short loop of firing a few easily dodgeable shots before throwing a star at the player.

This leads to a repeat of the previous board. Get in close, blast until victorious. To do otherwise is to get overwhelmed and die for it.

I had hoped that perhaps here the bombs would be involved. They've been around in surprising number over the course of the game, functioning as an alternate attack method, but never being mandatory. This remains the case up to the very end. Here they can be a distraction, interpreting the bombs as being meant to attack Takeda through his shield, and seemingly working, as any explosion that strikes Takeda is also hitting the disc.

Once the mark on the health meter is reached, the doors to the supply rooms open, and the supplies are transformed into more enemies. This ends up making the fight more interesting, as the flow of creatures is too much to ignore, which means giving the disc time to throw stars without interruption. It creates a test of dexterity where players need to whittle down the lions and tigers while running laps around any stars.

One last form remains, which continues to provide compelling dialog pre-fight. You kind of get used to it. Still, I wish the final boss had a little more. I'm not even sure who this is.

And it's no different than before. Takeda dances while barriers block. In this hyper dance form, the dance damage is a massive 100, which will definitely get George moving. Worse yet, there's now a row of water blocking the main wall, preventing George from just rushing in and spamming bullets.

This fight does give players 500 health, which makes it safe to just spam bullets over the water, the new technique to actually survive the fight. If your timing is good, a bullet will be on top of the fake wall whenever Takeda tries to change it back to a normal. You can then shoot until victorious. Otherwise, it's a slow fight where your success of failure hinges entirely on how much health you had going on.

The finale is no different either. Takeda dies. George moves forward- almost.

Two final enemies begin moving once Takeda is destroyed. They only attack in melee, and even then only if actually touched, so they're pretty harmless. A single shot takes each one down, clearing yet more disappearing walls from the board and allowing George to actually exit.

When all is said and done, George quietly returns to Earth and gets a chance to rest. There's a really prolonged ending sequence here, like a dragged out version of what's seen in Super ZZT's Monster Zoo. George gets to go through several boards boosting his score with gems, having his ammo converted to points, munching on snacks, and listening to some tunes before calling it a day.

There's a reason I went with comparing it to Super ZZT here. This is one jacuzzi short of an Alan Pilgrim game. Looking at some of the other games in the series, this kind of ending hardly exclusive to this game.

I was pretty tired of the adventure here. It had been fun, but it was clearly over. The dragging out of all this so I could get screenshots and see everything there was to see is really not worth the time it takes. Although I do kind of like there being something for the player to enjoy in the music room. This consists of not one but two boards loaded with objects like these that play the various sound effects and musical stings used throughout the adventure and some of the other games in the series as well.

The music for this game isn't anything to spectacular. It sounds more developed than random key mashing or the ever-popular English words as #play data technique, but it's not a soundtrack you'll be in a hurry to return to. Putting it somewhere the player can access it though is a big improvement over most ZZT worlds where these kind of boards are primarily for the author's benefit. It can be such a pain to find a tune you happen to like, especially if the music is kept in a hidden object somewhere.

This game is dated at the dawn of external editors, so being able to show hidden objects on a board wasn't yet a given. Just putting the sound test board on the main menu might be preferable, but RinGames is at least considering that others may want to listen to their favorite track again.

Then with one final health to score conversion, and some excellent "thanks" in the credits, the game comes to an end.