♦ Livestream of 5 ZZT worlds. ♦
♦ Stream Contents ♦
• (2:09) "Link's Heritage (Demo)" by WiL (2004) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/lh-demo/]
• (36:25) "YAS: Yet Another Sokuban" by WiL (2004) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/yas/]
• (45:35) "The Dot" by WiL (2007) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/the_dot/]
• (54:09) "The Search For Nine: 4 IV Kingdoms" by Anonymous, Lynx, WiL (2002) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/search_for_nine/]
• (1:24:55) "Metal Gear Solid ZZT (Incomplete)" by q2k2k (2010) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/mgsvrm_szt/]
More WiL and an unexpected Super ZZT stealth game!
This batch has some of the most impressive incomplete worlds seen yet. Link's Heritage is a board memory hitting Legend of Zelda engine with some creative workarounds for ZZT. You've got hearts for health of course, as well as a Pegasus boots system that detects when you've been holding down a direction for dash attacks and bumping trees. Defeating enemies gives you torches, which are a resource you can "convert" to cause monsters to drop specific items when defeated, making sure you always can get bombs, keys, health, or defense upgrades. Heck, it even has the annoying beep at low health which justifies itself as none of the in-board UI elements are visible in dark caves.
A number of Zelda enemies are recreated, with a simple interior and a few boards of forest to explore. Some really fancy stuff that was likely doomed to be too much for ZZT's memory to handle. Not to mention a very good rendition of the iconic theme playing on the title screen.
"YAS: Yet Another Sokuban" is well, yet another Sokoban engine in ZZT. There's a little more to it than that though. You've got your usual boulders to shove around, but also unique boxes with different properties, such as being pulled rather than pushed, having ice physics, or being unable to push more than one at a time. The few levels here show the pieces off, as well as including best step counts to try for. Meet them, and in some cases you can gain access to bonus levels as well.
"The Dot" was inspired by a Japanese flash game of unknown name that as far as we know has been lost to time. A clever little action puzzler. Grab all the gems of a color to erase sliders of matching color. Find a safe route through each level, avoiding spikes (sharks) and racing a timer. Quick and easy to play, this one seems like you could make some fiendish levels for it. This version also includes the first board of an adventure mode, suggesting some continuity and story, and an endless mode that uses slimes to randomly generate levels (cool idea, not as interesting to play).
"The Search For Nine" is one of the more substantial of these projects, as the world was built before populating it. This means you get to explore 40-something boards of a fantasy world filled with towns, festivals, swamps, undersea kingdoms, cloud castles, winding rivers, and tree-top hideaways. With almost no objects to interact with, you can't really do much of anything other than take in the scenery, but it's very lovingly detailed, and left me pining for what adventures could have been planned.
It also uses a custom charset which has been lost to time, so some of the objects are a bit funny looking.
Lastly, a Super ZZT game inspired by Metal Gear Solid. In these VR missions you get to navigate a number of menus for training in stealth and weapon use, with a few levels available to practice getting through unseen. It's certainly got a look to it, and the scrolling Super ZZT boards let players be caught off guard when something unexpected enters your view. Alas, the game runs into Super ZZT's reduced limits compared to ZZT, and the project was shifted to vanilla ZZT instead (where it has a full release). The stealth is what you'd expect of a ZZT game, objects checking if you get too close, and otherwise being pretty oblivious, but that's genome soldiers for ya.
A real nice batch of games this week! YAS and The Dot are both engines that leave you wanting more levels. Link's Heritage is a real tech showcase for the era, and Search For Nine will leave you longing for adventure!
♦ Play these worlds directly in your browser ♦
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/lh-demo/
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/yas/
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/the_dot/
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/search_for_nine/
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/mgsvrm_szt/
♦ Originally streamed on February 9th, 2025 ♦
