♦ Livestream of ZZT worlds created for the “24 Hours of ZZT Summer 2000 [Metamorphosis]” [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/24hoz-sum2000/] ♦
5 more games from this mostly-lost 24 Hours of ZZT!
♦ Stream Contents ♦
• (2:20) "Cabin in the Woods" by Lemmer
• (9:34) "butterfly" by mole
• (26:54) "Animal Shock" by Parasite/dark_visions/DeathFox
• (51:28) "Man Evolution" by SPAZM0016
• (1:13:06) Hopping into KevEdit for previous games
• (1:15:14) "Metamorphine" by Anthony Testa
Starting with Lemmer's "Cabin in the Woods". Your car crashes as a giagantic insect flies into the windshield. You flee to the cabin you were already driving towards, wind up in a trippy looking "impossible maze" that immediately ends and brings you to the end of the game.
It feels like the timer got the best of Lemmer here, as there's really not a lot to it.
"Butterfly" has the player enter the Temple of Chaos in the clouds and destroy all the stages of the life of a butterfly because they've causes too many tsnunamis by flapping their wings! You get a board about breaking eggs on a giant leaf by... answering trivia about chaos theory. A shooting gallery of caterpillars (objects, not centipedes surprisingly) with an extra mechanic of trying not to let some of them reach the side of the screen. There's a literal Monty Hall problem which is actually a neat piece of code, with players selecting a cocoon and Monty revealing the contents of two of the other choices. (I didn't switch. I won. Take that.) Lastly a simple RPG fight with a big butterfly for the finale.
Pretty decent for the time restraints, definitely weird. Also has an infatuation with tAlKiNg LiKe ThIs specifically as a reference to the way chaos beings in the roguelike ADOM speak.
"Animal Shock" is next, bringing us into space. After faffing around getting the crew together for a launch, you are put into cryosleep only to awaken mid-flight due to an attack by aliens. These aliens are using the crew as test subjects, injecting them with a DNA mutating virus that transforms people into animals. This is a very proto-furry world and the source of the title quote for this video.
It's mostly just some shooting and real simple lock and key puzzle solving, with the player having to deal with their infection and limited time left as a human. Some of that time is spent talking to your friend who confesses that sometimes he wants to be an animal. Authors of this game, please share your fursonas with us, I bet they're cool.
Unused boards show a nice list of planned features and ideas for the game, most of which aren't implemented, which is a shame because it sounds like there were much grander ideas than a basic sci-fi shooter. Also features a fatal error at the end of the game!
"Man Evolution" is next, and it's a game I made as a child and have no memory of making. And for good reason! It's a series of poorly built engines as you go from being a single cell to a cave man to a regular dude. Stay alive for an impossible amount of time in the cell phase. (Some levels are bugged and 100% unbeatable). Defy gravity in the platforming chapter. Have levels designed as if you were still in a platformer even when you're not for the regular dude chapter. Fight an salesman to the death! This is what I imagined life was like for adults I guess. On the bright side, I think I can sue Will Wright for ripping off my game to make Spore?
(We then jump into KevEdit for a few minutes to check some things with the earlier games I meant to check)
Lastly, "Metamorphine", which I've been looking forward to as it's the contest's winner. A street artist runs into a strange man offering magic beans. Taking him up on the offer, he winds up in a trippy fantasy world where everyone has a peculiar structure to their dialog. It definitely makes an impression, although there's very little to actually do. Even so, the artwork featured throughout is really nice, so it's no surprise folks were impressed by it. The weird trippy mystery was popular, and this delivers on it in a bite-size game.
♦ Play this world directly in your browser ♦
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/24hoz-sum2000/
♦ Originally streamed on June 15th, 2025 ♦
