♦ Livestream of 2 ZZT worlds. ♦
♦ Stream Contents ♦
• (1:00) "The Punctuation People" by Newt (1998) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/punctu-p/]
• (2:00) "Prisoner" by Question Mark Team (2001) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/prisoner/]
Two games that could hardly be any more different from one another. Other than one is about punctuation and the other was made by some Question Marks.
The Punctuation People is a chill early ZZT platformer starring Peter Paragraph versus the evil Copy Editor that has kidnapped his punctuation friends. It's a very simple engine with levels designed around the limitations of ZZT platforming physics which makes for a reasonable challenge that can get a bit repeititve. Making things interesting though are Newt's expressive animations, from squashing the game's Goomba equivalents to hitting a block and a heart pop out to chase after. It was a game I recall playing a number of times as a child, and with the simplicity of its levels, it's easy to see why, offering a platformer experience that should be conquerable by just about anyone.
Though later platformers have been faster paced (Daedalus's Obelisk), more cleverly designed (Sid's Disaster), or just presented better (Freak Da Cat 2), this one has that ZZT charm to it with its goofy premise and complete faith in its engine to provide an experience the author compares to Mario.
Then we check out something rather unusual. Prisoner is a surreal horror game that's almost entirely story driven. When a man wishes to speak with you at the police station in private, claiming to be chased by unknown assailants before melting into a green slime, your job is to figure out what the heck is going on. Easier said than done as a number of strange things are happening, with most of your coworkers denying the incident (and similar ones) ever occurred.
Following some sparse leads brings the character to parks, theaters, and a mysterious underground tunnel, all showing traces of the slime as well as a number of corpses. Including your own!
The mystery is the real hook here, with lots of grisly descriptions of gorey deaths and the questionable sanity of the protagonist as you try to put the pieces together.
In some ways, the game does an excellent job pulling you in to see where the story is going to go, but a number of bugs and some unintuitive solutions to making progress really slow things down about halfway through. Eventually there are time loops, and comas, and waking up in different realities, and angels, and... well all sorts of things to leave you wondering where the game is going.
Alas its ending offers little insight, which combined with the bugs make an overall frustrating experience that had a very promising start. Despite the issues though, Prisoner is an early example of ZZT horror and correctly uses its text to set an unsettling mood that makes it hard to call a total flop.
♦ Play these worlds directly in your browser ♦
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/punctu-p/
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/prisoner/
♦ Originally streamed on August 9th, 2024 ♦
