♦ Livestream of 5 ZZT worlds. ♦
♦ Stream Contents ♦
• (3:52) "Thoughts" by WiL (2025) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/thoughts/]
• (29:27) "El-Greco Games Visual/Audio Test (EGGVAT)" by WiL (1997) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/(eggvat)/]
• (33:37) "Spy Guy" by WiL (1997) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/spyguy/]
• (1:02:01) "HOTSHOT ZZT" by WiL (1998) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/hot/]
• (1:22:03) "Creation" by WiL (1998) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/creation/]
Going through the first of many worlds donated by WiL including the new release that provides a little bit of context on why they were uploaded now.
Which brings us to "Thoughts", a ZZT essay providing said context. We learn about a much earlier attempt to archive these games, and their arbitrary rejection because who cares!!!! There's a discussion on the merit of these worlds and how without those steps, WiL wouldn't have gotten to where he is now. There's a well written plea about the importance of accepting "cringe" creations from the past and why it's not a bad thing to keep them alive. Why they were canceled, and whether or not they could ever be completed.
"EGGVAT" shows us what we're in for. A blank audio board. Then a six frame animation experimenting with doing one frame per board and having players hold down right to quickly cycle between boards. It's quite a walk cycle, though a bit rough due to the constant flashes of purple as the board changes.
"Spy Guy" shows up with a real ambitious plot and gameplay with some comparisons to be made to Mission: Enigma. In the future everyone speaks Japanese (don't worry, it's translated for you and the author's benefit). You are a spy sent to assassinate someone, and have to do strange feats of stealth to not be caught. There are some puzzles with codes to dechiper in order to find out how to not be killed in certain areas that on the one hand certainly feel like interesting ideas, but rely on asking players to really know what WiL was thinking at the time.
"HOTSHOT ZZT" is a one board = one stage action game with a hook in that each board gives you a key to make your soul more powerful in a different attribute. Many boards have doors on them that use these keys to provide bonuses (and replacement keys) to make challenges easier if you have relevant skills. Again, this is a solid concept for a game that just never got off the ground, with only a scant few boards implemented.
It also was intended to be played while wearing ..."Noggle 3D" glasses, a Nickelodeon branded pair of cardboard chromadepth glasses. Alas, a pair acquired from some Kool Aid products (cereal boxes were also a popular source) now costs hundreds of dollars, so I could not play the game as intended.
Lastly in the obviously way too ambitious department, is "Creation", a game where you create a planet by fiddling with objects in different orders to produce different outcomes. Change the size, gravity, light, resources, water supply, and more if you can figure out how to get much of anything to function. Then you're taken to a massive nest of passages which lead to the dozens of possible outcomes, a ton of which are filled in and have comments about how successful they'll be at supporting life.
Make your planet good enough (good luck) and you can continue to a second file to play with more dials and knobs and get yet more passages! Though by this point the game isn't implemented enough to allow actually playing. Also you have to go with a white planet as that's the only one with a second file to continue into.
Lastly of note, if you've wondered where some of the songs in WiL's #play music world have come from, you'll hear some familiar tunes, which is always a treat.
It's a real strong first showing given how young WiL was at the time. These unfinished games all feel like they could have gone somewhere, and feel rather unique to play. Even now it's clear that these are excellent ideas for ZZT games if WiL had been able to finish them. But in those days, it's a new project every week, and the skill of finishing something is one hardly developed.
♦ Play these worlds directly in your browser ♦
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/thoughts/
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/(eggvat)/
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/spyguy/
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/hot/
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/creation/
♦ Originally streamed on January 5th, 2025 ♦
