♦ Livestream of "Forest of Ruin" and "Catacombs of Zeux" by Alexis Janson (1995). ♦
(1:30) Forest of Ruin
(22:35) Catacombs
The little bit of Forest of Ruin that wasn't finished last time due to time, and then, the entirety of the final game in the Zeux series: Catacombs.
Forest's remaining bits weren't the most exciting, just tying up loose ends of using the orbs one more time to get something to deal with a random boss. The ending finally gives us some forest, I suppose. Though the game seems to have a mixed reputation, I enjoyed it more than Chronos Stasis at least. FoR felt like the game was trying to come up with interesting things for the player to do and not just repeat the same robot enemy straight out of a low quality ZZT world. It could go with some polishing, the backtracking is pretty absurd and undoubtedly the reason why I had to split the game across two streams, but Janson's heart is in it.
Now as for Catacombs...
This one I didn't care for very much. It's an incredibly rushed game filled with the same walls everywhere you go, only ever changing color. It feels like a game designed to a formula, like a ZZT game that decides that rooms will have a border of normals on the top and left side to suggest a 3D space, and then only ever making rooms to that specification.
On the bright side, the layout is quicker to traverse, with a single location compared to the constant back and forth of Forest of Ruin and spread across color coded floors that make it easier to remember what is where compared to Chronos Stasis. The game itself though is hallways filled with built-ins and then boss after boss of Fire Guy and Evil Dude and other very bland characters in a game whose first (second) game was trying to go for fantasy adventure. It feels very generic. What few puzzles there are are pretty good at least. While I played it, I couldn't wait for it to be over, but afterwards I could appreciate it a bit more, similar to Chronos Statis. This is the last game that a young developer suddenly found themselves obligated to create as people were paying money to register this series. With no other option than to deliver, corners got cut and Catacombs gets left underdeveloped and lacking due to time constraints more than any of its ideas being flawed.
I got a kick out of the return of Tony, and played up his appearance as the most exciting thing ever, so it was a real treat to realize that he does have a major part in the game's ending. An ending that finally tries to explain everything, doing as good a job as the material will allow at least.
The whole series was fun to play, and certainly no worse than any number of random ZZT worlds I've played. The constantly changing format of the games and lengthy list of spells and magical artifacts makes it no surprise to me that the series resonated with a younger audience. Zeux aims to show that you can do whatever you like compared to ZZT, an important selling point for the engine if it was going to see any success. There's a reason so many people latched on to these games and this program, and while today it feels more like ZZT than any modern MZX game, there's no doubt that all of this was the coolest thing ever to the kids whose RPG engines had to use torches as a spare counter and breakable walls to implement health bars. Zeux shows off a lot of possibilities, and like the original ZZT worlds, doesn't begin to scratch the surface of what its users would go on to accomplish with the program.
♦ Play these worlds ♦
• https://www.digitalmzx.com/show.php?id=1004
• https://www.digitalmzx.com/show.php?id=1005
♦ Originally streamed on February 12th, 2025 ♦
