Space Case

That red key allows Go to get past that initial gate, only to discover that more keys are required. The last of which is visible on the board. Having the keys from the southern branch is enough to get the "strongest" weapon of all, the Jfx-7230, which I suppose is running off of BFG 9000 naming conventions.

Having this show up as a pop-up is great way to add extra emphasis. (Of course, there are no flags being used for guns, so it's no different than what Go had before.)

And it does give so many bullets that it would overflow the counter. We're so fortunate that ZZT checks for this and won't let ammo roll into the negatives this way.

Re-entering the board from a lower point reveals the white bits on the bottom to just be some odd obstruction that disappears when touched. They also activate "Tomato Head" who I genuinely didn't clock as an enemy.

Tomato Head maintains consistency, shooting and starring from their toma-tip. As an actual boss that Go must shoot multiple times, Parker has the foresight to slow down the speed of their assault, allowing players a chance to defeat them without losing most of their health in the process.

After a few hits, Tomato Head calls to "OPEN THE SHOOT PANELS", which is where the block of bullets in the screenshot come from. These panels will get players to take refuge beneath Tomato Head where they can shelter from the storm and return to only dealing with TH's own attacks.

Upon being defeated, TH stops with no effect to indicate his defeat. No X-ing of the eyes, exploding, or vanishing entirely here. The only changes are the barrier that was blocking the last key lowering, and the shooters getting transformed into gems.

The gems mean Go can get to the other side of a locked door, but it doesn't open from either side. And while for a moment I was wondering if you could skip a all those keys and exit from this lower section, only the single tile gap behind all the regular locked doors actually connects to the next board, the rest all get blocked by its walls.

The level ends with a giant boss that immediately hits you with some broken code. The little object blocking the entrance seems to list two different labels to jump to, the first of which isn't defined. The object is intended to say "WATER! WATER!" and then act as if touched, which works out as you can just touch it and continue as normal. It'll then cycle through a number of accented letters which all fire in the same cycle, preventing it from playing properly. It then moves right a bit and repeats.

I have no idea what it's meant to be or why it's supposed to be here.

I can't see the boss as anything other than sad or dead. I wouldn't even think they were a robot were it not explicitly revealed. They look more like a clown to me.

The praise about these big enemies being a neat thing to include when they're on the same level as lions and tigers no longer gets to apply here. This guy is no different than the big fellas earlier, only with several points to shoot bullets from. As expected, Go needs only to duck in a gap in the bullets and then shoot each spot once.

The code paths simply have obstructions to the next board disappear when a target is destroyed. This means no farewell speech from the robot, or opportunity to learn a little more about Go's personality with some victory quips. You just quietly and abruptly proceed to the next level.

Mario does not say this.

The second level isn't all that different, yet something about it feels less inspired than the first. Perhaps it's the lack of those oversized enemies, or maybe it's because the level is now entirely linear rather than revolving around collecting keys. Perhaps the trouble is that it's a bit more bland looking, using some paint-by-numbers shading to fade to nothing. The space ship tried to look like it was moving, but now the carbon monoxide planet's surface is just a rigid red.

Your adversaries here are some tigers, a step up in difficulty from the ruffians as they get to shoot back. It's still nothing too exciting, and easily a board that wouldn't be out of place in a significant number of games.

The only bit of personality here is the lock and key being a big rock and a smaller rock. It's something I suppose.

The next screen fares a little better. The enemies here are just erratically moving enemies that bite when touched and die when shot, making them a lion replacement, though a tad weaker as they can't attack the player if the player doesn't walk into them on their own.

Here it's preferable to lions simply because the enemies use a number of different characters. It makes the group seem a lot more varied. Tweak may look like it has a rich bio-diversity, until you see that all the objects are named Snake and use characters one might use for snakes!

Okay. Level is already over. Here's our boss, the biggest snake slug of them all.

The hair pulling comment is great. The weakness being revealed again, I'm less fond of. With no danger outside of being aligned with a few specific spots, it's obvious enough where you need to be shooting, but I think these fights could be easily improved if there were some smaller snakes running around, or even being duplicated in to keep players from just getting into position and shooting until they win.

Although big bosses are flawed, they don't have to be entirely uninteresting.

They also don't have to die in one hit either!! The tail does add stars into the mix, not that it will ever have the chance.

The style goes all over the place for the third level, having players come in from the top only to I think be intended as being a view from the side with a volcano rising into the night sky?

The scroll explains the barrier on the right to be an entrance to the Tweak underground, which is protected by a giant laser beam surrounding it. In order to disrupt the laser, Go needs to use the volcano machine to trigger an eruption.

The eruption is easily the best looking event in the game. The slime makes for a nice lava spew with an object cycling the breakables it produces between various elements. This doesn't actually cause the laser to dissipate, just allows its red solids to be included in the same animation used by the lava. Once the button's been hit, Go can run to the now flickering laser and slowly move through it when it becomes fake, or try digging a tunnel by shooting it when it's in breakable form.

Once past the lasers, Go finds himself on a very unusual looking board. This is Parker's big finale that he calls "The GemBounce Puzzle"

It sounds complicated and is also poorly explained. You get a big list of things on the board and a hint about "setting up programs", but no idea what it is you actually need to do to get the key. You've got pushers moving around, bombs being duplicated, and circles are throwing stars and shooting bullets.

If there's actually a puzzle here, I'm not seeing it. The circles just spit out green keys seemingly at random. It's apparently when they're blocked from walking, which with all the bullets and stars flying around just kind of happens. I have no idea how you're supposed to engineer a victory, and just lucked into some keys spawning in my playthrough.

Apparently touching the lowest of the red circles makes the yellow door looking object up top move to a corner and spawn endless amounts of keys while also erasing most of the contents of the board. It's not so much a puzzle as it is wandering into a solution. The code suggests it's possible to get the circles themselves to make keys if they're blocked while trying to move, but I can't get this to happen consistently, probably due to the constant interruptions of being shot.

It's not at all a good puzzle. Victory happens on a whim, or through the lowest effort of player engagement. Knowing the solution, there's still no "solving" going on. It's just a bunch of things happening all at once with the intent of confusing the player into getting themselves killed.

It's not even all that different from what's come before. The board is definitely striking, and the setup explaining that it's a puzzle would be something new compared to the gameplay of shooting and dodging and nothing else. It sounds appealing, and then it ends up being another board of dodging and shooting. Just with one tile to specifically touch.

The third boss follows immediately, making for a very brisk final level. The evil king of Tweek being nothing more than a large pair of eyes in darkness is a fun way to keep his appearance mysterious while still being able to do a big boss battle.

For some positives, the blue asterisks add some suppressive fire, a much needed effort to keep Go in some actual danger while he approaches his target. Parker also doesn't reveal the boss's weak point immediately, meaning players have to actually notice the half-block tiles in the eyes among everything else and make the call to go for them rather than being led directly to them. I know this is an incredibly low bar, but at least it gets cleared.

Despite the attempt at making the fight more engaging than previous bosses, the king is still a trivial battle that does most of the work for the player. The two weak points still only take one shot to destroy, and when removed they take out their side of the screen's asterisks, reducing the threat significantly.

The dark gray asterisks are actual ricochets with the potential to allow the blue ones' bullets to cover more ground. These were unfortunately placed with little regard as to their effect, with most of them never being used, and those that are only causing bullets to turn around.

One ricochet by the right eye stands out as it's placed directly in line with the eye object so as soon as the fight begins, there's a good chance the right eye will immediately take itself out.

And again, there's no post-fight text. Go just grabs the keys and heads to the exit, having no comments on his fight or adventure to share.

There is an ending at least. Still don't have any real idea what that gem was all about other than an excuse to go on a very quick outer space adventure.

It also raises a question about why the sequel for MegaZeux is numbered as the third game.

It ends with a list of credits, all of whom are Parker save for a number of testers that use real names suggesting to me that these were local friends. The thanks lists Sweeney and Janson as 95% of ZZT games do, as well as Hydra78 of Interactive Fantasies and Xabbott who ran zzt.org at the time.

And to go out with a bang, despite not activating the #endgame command yet, it does the "game gets impatient with the player" routine, which is usually more associated with title screens. The game is actually over here, and I'd have been happy to press escape to end it, but the game didn't end yet! Don't yell at me for not quitting out of the game before it's finished...

Final Thoughts

Even though Space Case is hardly a brilliant game, I still kind of liked it. With so many of these author's first games, I describe them as "messy", "scribbly", or "doodles", something that suggests the author doesn't really know what they're doing, creating as they go. Space Case is still a mess in its own way, but it has some ambition that's there if you look for it. Space Case has a solid introduction sequence whose troubles amount to its author not being much of an artist, along with a reluctance to take itself particularly seriously. Both are issues best resolved with practice.

A little more time and a little more confidence and Go's adventures could be a welcome addition to anyone's ZZT library. Of course, the reputation of Skeptisoft falling off a cliff soon after its first release meant that Parker didn't stick around long enough to get that opportunity.

For a first game, there's a few more complex ideas of what can be done within ZZT than your prototypical newbie game. There's more substance here than say, Commodore's parody work KNIGHST OF MARS, or for something more authentic, T-800's Alien Extinction. You won't find rooms flood filled with ruffians. You'll get smaller sensible fights, with some surprises with those big enemies, especially when they move their gun to point to a new position. There's a great volcanic eruption, and attention to detail with the simulated spaceship movement via spinning guns to suggest zooming past stars. The viewscreen combines an art board with gameplay in a way I hadn't seen before. Parker has no shortage of ways to make his game stand out. He's just stuck with an Achilles heel of his visuals not keeping pace with his plans.

And yeah, there are legit problems. 32,767 ammo ought to be enough for everyone after all, yet the game still manages to give you more than that. The bosses struggle with the usual oversize enemy problems, which far more experienced authors have struggled with finding solutions. Parker's decision to make some of them just regular enemies is a smart way of sidestepping the issue. The real trouble though is that most of the bosses only take a single shot to defeat, which is absolutely trivial when the target can't move and the game tells you where the target is at the start of most fights.

As somebody who's played so many people's first releases, I think Space Case has more potential than it lets on. Tell someone about the more novel ideas it has without them seeing the actual game, and they're going to imagine something exciting, which is more than can be said of the usual yellow-bordered battle the aliens game. It's no surprise Parker didn't stick around give the mutual hostility between the ZZT community and himself, so one can only wonder how things might have gone had his ZZTing journey continued.