♦ Livestream of the ZZT world "Rescue" by awebs (2002) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/curescue2/] ♦
♦ Stream Contents ♦
• (1:11) "Rescue" by awebs (2002) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/curescue2/]
A very ambitious action title that captures the author's experience of learning ZZT.
Rescue is one of those games where each board is its own challenge, with whatever arrangement of creatures, spinning guns, blinking walls, and any other obstacle awebs could come up with plopped down in a room that then dares players to see if they can survive. It makes a pretty good first impression, with the player receiving pleas for help to rescue captive humans held by killer robots. It's far from a pretty game, but the challenges are engaging enough that it doesn't matter.
The game is broken up into levels consisting of a number of boards with some vague theme to them that rarely comes through except when explicitly stated. You get factories, caves and spaceships to attempt to add some variety. As the levels progress, awebs gets more ambitious, incorporating engines and effects demonstrated in the ZZT Encyclopedia to enhance the game with scrolling stars and player clone-powered warps to other rooms.
Eventually though, it seems to falter. Players find themselves hitting dead ends until they acquire items from other locations requiring a number of identical trips through boards as you try to find what you need to make progress. This starts adding up with damage taken and supplies run low. Due to flag issues an entire level is discarded (despite using #clear to free up room for more flags earlier), with an apology and skip to the next level included instead. (Though we did cheat and check it out as it's still in the game).
It's also quite long! One of a handful of games to run into ZZT's 101 board limit. We only manage to get about halfway through in this stream, with hopes that the back half can get things under control once more. Right now, it's a fun, but flawed game that left me curious how it will all shake out in the end.
♦ Play this world directly in your browser ♦
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/curescue2/
♦ Originally streamed on September 20th, 2024 ♦
