♦ Livestream of the ZZT world "An Ilford Conspiracy" by Toby Norfolk-Thompson (2001) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/ilford/] ♦
(2:12) Play begins.
Oh wow. Okay. This one was put on the backburner for so long due to its unusual attributes. It's one of those games that stars the author and their friends, but while those games tend to be associated with middle/early high schoolers, this one features actual university students from across the pond. Some worries of how personal it might get and one weird "hey I hope this never actually happened" moment and it appeared to something that might not be a great fit for a stream.
I'm glad I looked through it a little more closely before deciding whether to write it off or play because this one is definitely one of my favorite finds of an older title since the Museum began.
An Ilford Conspiracy sees you as Omar. The game leans a bit into the fantastical, thanks to it being a video game. A friend named Danielle has been kidnapped and your job is to find and rescue her. A plot that's more to get the ball rolling, giving players a reason to wander the streets and underground exploring a weirdly minimalist city unlike any other I've seen in ZZT.
You venture to kebab shops, clubs, and local parties your more upper-class friends host. Your social circle has their own problems as well which Omar slowly chips away at, advancing events in the game and acquiring rewards that will be needed for other characters. Some are surprisingly mundane: PlayStation games, albums, a camera, a bottle of vodka. Others are more unexpected: The recipe for the best chili sauce in town, a laser that allows you to hear people through glass, TNT.
Players are pretty much set loose with few restrictions, making figuring out who needs what, where they are, and how to get there the bulk of gameplay. It works pretty well. The game is rich with dialog and narration that do more for setting than scene than the simple walls and sometimes outright vacant rooms in homes and shops. It gives the game a very different feel to pretty much anything I've seen before. An open-ended adventure that will have you committing arson, brushing away drug dealers, and finding the confidence to get a date for the big event of the evening.
The only real downsides are that it can be very difficult to navigate. The game is clearly made for the local friend group who is well aware of how to get to Oddbin's if you're currently at Clayhall. Plus passage colors not matching can place players in the middle of boards making it difficult to remember which station they arrived from.
At times advancing the game can also be difficult. A few of the obstacles are very arbitrary, requiring Omar to have something in his inventory and then talk to a person to unlock a unique dialog option when otherwise they'd simply say "Hey Omar. Enjoying the party?". The last third or so of the game had a lot of looking up where flags were being set or checked for in the file viewer. There's also extremely rare instances of shooting tigers that ends up feeling very out of place.
Difficulties aside though, this really was a really compelling game that plays so unlike what I've come to expect, especially from wildcard streams that it was a treat to play.
♦ Play this world directly in your browser ♦
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/ilford/
♦ Originally streamed on September 1st, 2024 ♦
