♦ Livestream of 2 ZZT worlds. ♦
♦ Stream Contents ♦
• (4:05) "Elite ZZT" by J. J. Foote [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/elitejj/]
• (1:25:33) "What do you Want?" by Matt Perrotti [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/watyawan/]
ZZT Worlds with strong opinions!
Starting with "Elite ZZT", an odd adventure that tasks players with collecting some Breeze Bass dolls (as in fish) in order to gain access to the Omega Palace to receive fabulous wealth from King JJ (Foote, I assume). Sounds like a Town-like, but the game is fully linear, broken up into a series of levels which can contain just about anything. Sometimes you explore a town and volcano, sometimes you explore a town and a puzzle.
It's pretty average for the most part, or at least would be, were it not for a number of moments where you'll get stuck if you don't read the author's mind. You'll need to touch solid walls to reveal they're secretly bombs, shoot sliders that are secretly objects, and find invisible passages. These moments slow things down and make for an annoying game.
The real highlight though are the author's rantings and general anger spread throughout the game. Scrolls that spend paragraph after paragraph elaborating on how specifically stupid you are if you can't solve a puzzle (the puzzle in question being to grab a freely-accessible key and open a door that's right next to it). At first it comes off as a joke that isn't landing, but it goes on for so long that you begin to worry about this kid.
Other scrolls (and editor exclusive boards) talk about a rival ZZTer and his terrible game of inconsistent name (S ZZT? IMAG ZZT?) With no greater context to suggest kayfabe, players are left thinking this guy has a real vendetta!
The second game that was planned, "An Ilford Conspiracy", wound up not being played, due to time constraints. It was instead replaced with "What do you Want?" at the last minute instead. Ilford was expected to be the highlight and will be the starting game next Sunday instead.
"What do you Want?" ends up feeling like a more positive version of the now infamous "Campaign Against SZZT". The author having played ZZT and MegaZeux, is interested in creating their own game creation system, and is soliciting people's opinions on what features such a program should have. There's a lot of enthusiasm and plenty of examples given. Some are specific and reasonable for a ZZT clone in (presumably) the mid-90s: 256 color support, an extended character set, WAV/MOD music. Others critical components are left to the reader. What kind of OOP commands? What enemies? What terrains?
Water however, is well defined. The author has strong opinions on ZZT's water and misses it in MegaZeux.
It's all very fun and optimistic, yet I couldn't help but notice the author mentions nothing about how he'll create such a program. No mention of what language it would be coded in, if it would be for DOS or Windows, or anything to suggest that this plea for ideas is any more than daydreaming of how cool it would be if you could do X.
♦ Play these worlds directly in your browser ♦
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/elitejj/
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/watyawan/
♦ Originally streamed on August 25th, 2024 ♦
