♦ Livestream of 2 ZZT worlds. ♦
♦ Stream Contents ♦
• (1:38) "Adventure: The Lost Gems" by Snika (2002) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/snikagems/]
• (59:35) "Soccer" by Snika (2002) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/soccergamesnika/]
The not so thrilling conclusion to The Lost Gems! The game started as an ambitious first adventure whose author wasn't afraid to try new ideas even if they weren't yet able to perfect them. The last third of the game with its 100 boards quickly runs into fatigue issues. The final portions are almost entirely dungeons, removing the exploration aspects of the world that gave it chances to introduce new characters to reveal as friend or foe and serve as a break from the typical lion-shooting action. On its own that wouldn't be too bad, but the dungeons themselves fall prey to repetition. The underwater cavern repeats the same room design a few times over with branches added/removed for exits, and the next level is even worse with identical rooms arranged in a maze where wrong exits take players back to the start, a punishment only to your time.
The game does fix its ammo issues at least, which is good because the last few bosses take an absurd amount of shots (like, triple digits), but the honeymoon is over, with the game being a victim of its size.
This culminates with a boss rush where every boss in the game is placed in a horizontal line on a single board, with every one of them repeating their earlier dialog all at once, making for a real sad sight of what was previously a really enjoyable game.
There's still some fun bits of comedy, and it's not a total wash overall, just the kind of game where it would have been better to power through the entire thing in one go rather than saving all the worst parts for a separate stream. Still, first time game with a lot of appeal even if its unable to stick the landing.
As it ended up being over fairly quickly thanks to not actually commiting to shooting anybody 100 times, we opted to take a look at "Soccer", Snika's only other release, dated shortly after "The Lost Gems".
This too is a very ambitious attempt at finding a way to make ZZT do something it really doesn't want to do. Snika is unable to succeed here with all the reasons you might think a ZZT soccer game being unenjoyable coming to fruition. You've got a ball that moves in only four directions. The game has you use the cheat prompt to kick the ball for a goal rather than dribbling it down the field. Your teammates move randomly and are useless other than the goalie who paces between the two spots the ball can possible go in. The opposing team has far more players in order to give them a chance at blindly wandering in the way of the ball...
There's a reason why the sports genre is pretty empty, and this games shows us why.
That being said, Snika still tried their best and attempted to make the game more than a simple engine. There's a little story about signing up for a tournament, and each team has their own extremely silly names (the first match is the White Guys versus the Bloodshedders). Some information in the game demonstrates a real effort was made, bringing up getting help from WiL and the file containing a number of revisions to the ball to try and get a good feel to the game.
Actually playing it, you kind of just have to hope the opponents stay clear and with luck you can get the ball stuck in the goal making my first game one of those 200+ goal games you hear so much about.
We also get very distracted by a single board RPG game that just goes unused and has nothing to do with the Soccer game? That was arguably more interesting, especially with the goofy ZZTer cameos.
♦ Play these worlds directly in your browser ♦
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/snikagems/
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/soccergamesnika/
♦ Originally streamed on April 18th, 2025 ♦
