♦ Livestream of 2 ZZT worlds. ♦
♦ Stream Contents ♦
• (2:34) "Escape!" by Mark McIntyre (1994) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/escapemm/]
• (59:59) "Test Game" by Mark McIntyre (1995) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/testgame/]
More of the many worlds by Mark M! What looked to be a one parter expanded into two as both these first games that were scheduled ended up being an hour each.
Escape! is your classic ZZT prison escape action game. A prisoner mid-escape takes the time to open your cell (which has some lovely line wall designs) only to be killed by the guards immediately afterwards. You must succeed where they failed.
The prison is a sprawling complex with branching paths behind locked doors that keep players on a linear path where they'll do a lot of shooting at guards, grabbing supplies, and pilfering the keys needed to progress. It's pure action, with no mention of who you are, why you've been imprisoned, or what you plan to do once you escape.
The enemies are spread out enough that while they do still shoot each other, it's better to participate in fights yourself. Ammo can be a bit tight early on, though eventually you'll be well stocked, which is good as later guards have some particularly defensive movement that makes it very difficult to actually land a hit on them, with several shots being required to actually bring one down. It's genuinely impressive for a late 1994 release, though it could do with the boards being shrunk down a little bit as it's just as easy for players to dodge and avoid enemies.
Some guards carrying keys means this isn't the best approach, and a few obvious boss battles also make sure that players are shooting rather than sneaking.
As the game goes on, Mark introduces some other obstacles, spinning guns are an obvious choice, but there are also less expected threats like crushing walls to outrun and a passage maze (yawn). The game ends with a gauntlets of crushers to escape, making players run tightly timed ping-pong-paths before the crusher that can go through walls catches up to the players. It's tense, and maybe goes on a little too long, but the core idea is solid.
The final boss is a nightmare thanks to stars where success unfortunately hinges on landing 28 shots against a hard to hit enemy that will likely exhaust your ammo and health if you aren't saving before every shot. And of course there's a line wall maze where poor Mark managed to not actually provide a way to exit, requiring cheats to complete the game no matter what you do.
Then we move on to "Test Game", which I assumed would just be some random implementations of ideas that might be good for other games. Instead, it's a test of player skill, challenging them to get through as many boards as they can without dying once with a list of rankings on the title screen. It went very embarrassingly poorly for me.
It starts with some rudimentary obstacle courses. Grab keys, dodge spinning guns, shoot creatures in tight spaces. Then it gets a little more fiendish with extra keys that you can't be sure if you should grab for later or avoid lest a future key turn into an impassable wall. (It's the latter.) Transporter mazes with game-stopping dead ends, shooting through breakable wall filled rooms with limited ammo and having to route pickups into your movement, and even a clever maze of landmines made of energizers where becoming invincible means being blown up.
The game also veers unexpectedly into Super ZZT's Lost Forest territory with its own version of the Zap Factory puzzle of pushing arrows that redirect bullets to destroy walls, a giant octopus and other creatures that need to be blown up with missiles, and a banana tree to harvest in order to get past some hungry dragons.
Getting through it in one attempt would indeed be quite the challenge, and even with multiple attempts I suspect it would be a real accomplishment to complete.
The final boss is a big green slime creature that might take things a bit too far, but looks pretty cool at least.
Both games are ones that offer a lot of challenges and demonstrate old-school ZZT action at its finest. We'll be looking forward to the remaining games next Sunday!
♦ Play these worlds directly in your browser ♦
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/escapemm/
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/testgame/
♦ Originally streamed on October 20th, 2024 ♦
