♦ Livestream of the ZZT world "Nexus: Future's Past SE" by Commodore, My Liver Hurtz (2002) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/nexusse/] ♦
♦ Stream Contents ♦
• (2:20) "Nexus: Future's Past SE" by Commodore, My Liver Hurtz (2002) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/nexusse/]
Venturing into a sci-fi trilogy revolving around a war with aliens fought across time!
Conceptually. Pretty cool. You are a time traveler who in peaceful times studies history, using the power of the Nexus to effortlessly cross space and time. But when aliens suddenly attack, you are a given a new role to discover when they are coming from and how to stop them.
The aliens have constructed bases across time and have been manipulating history for an unknown goal, and your job is to locate these bases and destroy them before they can infiltrate all of human society. However, the trip to a base which has been discovered goes wrong, and you find yourself millions of years in the past and without any energy crystals to power a return trip.
Players then get to explore an ancient jungle and cave system in a game that means well but misses the mark. Action is the main form of gameplay with a lot of shooting both ZZT creatures (cranked up to cycle 1, making them quite deadly!) and later aliens with laser guns. Exploration is a big part of the game as many locations are locked up, turning the game into a key hunt as well as a gem hunt if you're going to be able to ever return to the time you were intended to visit.
The game looks nice thanks to Commodore's graphical overhaul to create a Special Edition, but progress is hard to come by and it's easy to miss one-time opportunities necessary to complete the game. You'll wind up having to make sure you use keys on the right door lest you go out of order and get stuck, and have to find some annoyingly hidden passages which slow down the pace of an otherwise decent action game.
Eventually you make it to the disguised base in a medieval castle and the game slows down significantly with bland rooms, aliens that mostly shoot each other, and obstacles that aren't very engaging. (Save perhaps the mines that show up when you get close, demanding you react swiftly to prevent them from exploding).
In the end, you return home and confront the scientist who "accidentally" sent you to the wrong time, only for them to reveal their true identity, getting you caught up in a war to save the future and ending on a cliffhanger to be resolved in the next game.
It's the author's first release and later entries received community awards, so I'm interested in seeing where the trilogy goes in a few weeks time!
♦ Play this world directly in your browser ♦
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/nexusse/
♦ Originally streamed on February 14th, 2025 ♦
