♦ Livestream of the ZZT world "The House of Amadus" by John Hoelle (1992) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/amadus/] ♦
♦ Stream Contents ♦
• (3:51) "The House of Amadus" by John Hoelle (1992) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/amadus/]
Staying indoors, at least for a few minutes as we are summoned to the house of Amadus to do a little idol-thievery.
The master of the Viennan home has hired famed American explorer Malcolm B. Hayes to recover a lost family artifact that once brought his ancestors great power and knowledge. The idol, a golden eagle, was discovered in the Red Sea, found its way to the Amadus lineage, but was lost when those pesky servants found out about the idol and took it for themselves. Reports now indicate that such an object can be found in Africa.
You set sail and explore the Congo in search of the idol to reclaim it for Amadus and collect a hefty 20 million dollar reward.
What you get is a vintage ZZT adventure that likely was submitted to the original ZZT world making contest which led to Best of ZZT and ZZT's Revenge. The game is mostly well put together, barring a few typos, with some boards littered with bits of decorative objects and furniture that look rather nice for early 1992.
The jungle is mostly empty, a winding maze with a handful of key locations to discover, as well as a shop on the outskirts where you can purchase items both helpful and pointless, provided you don't let the proprietor know that you're working for Amadus.
Eventually a temple is reached with a few mean-spirited soft-locks for greedy adventurers that want gems. At the end lies the idol, and in true Raiders of the Lost Ark fashion Malcolm must swap the idol with a bag of sand. Hopefully you bought the bag and filled it with the right quantity of sand!
When you arrive back home, Amadus betrays you, leading to a shootout finale for the game and the player taking all of his millions as his own.
It's not bad! A coding oversight ironically makes it possible to just rob Amadus at the start of the game and win immediately, which led to a little "speedrun" of the game at the end of the stream. The writing is very detailed for an early world, though it's subject matter doesn't play so well today. (Not a big fan of going to Africa, and stealing something valuable.) The author seems to understand the characters are selfish and think little of anyone other than themselves though, which helps to emphasize that your actions may not be all that justified.
The game is definitely old-fashioned, expecting players to try and try again until they find the correct actions necessary to succeed. Today nobody would consider having a list of 9 options for how much sand should go in a bag where 8 of them make the game impossible to win, but it fits the early 90s adventure game spirit nicely.
I suspect a mix of coding issues and the admittedly heavier tone of the game compared to things like "Smiley Guy" and "Darbytown" reduced its chances of being an official world as well, though that's just speculation based on his name appearing under "honorable mentions" listed in the Spring 1992 Epic Mega Games newsletter discussing the contest.
♦ Play this world directly in your browser ♦
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/amadus/
♦ Originally streamed on December 6th, 2024 ♦
