♦ Livestream of the ZZT world “Warlord's Temple” by Matt Williams (1996) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/wtemplefinal/] ♦
♦ Stream Contents ♦
• (2:22) “Warlord's Temple” by Matt Williams (1996) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/wtemplefinal/]
Playing an old classic from the good people of Software Visions!
Warlord's Temple sees you playing as Marcus, a young wanderer with a mysterious tattoo on his chest that finds himself in a seemingly empty kingdom under a permanently red sky. Eventually finding the kingdom's lone occupant, he learns what happened here. A draconic demon by the name Dreadfire has been attempting to breach into this world, and has placed a curse upon the land to get everyone to leave. The king is gone, and the rest of the citizens have long since left. Marcus decides to try and stop the demon, finding his way into vine-covered temple, fighting to become stronger until he can take on Dreadfire in combat.
It's a neat little game that has a number of interesting ideas to set it apart from your more run of the mill fantasy adventures. Players can reach the final boss pretty early into the game, though they'll certainly be too weak to handle the fight. Instead, your task is to clear out the Temple, finding items, spells, and growing stronger as you fight. Ammo is tight, and early on a hard maximum of six arrows is all you get until you find yourself a quiver to remove the limit. This makes even a handful of a lions into dangerous adversaries as every shot counts. The limited resources and slim-pickings for health recovery make for a highly focused game about carefully planning your attacks and being mindful to not come to too much harm as you battle living statues, lesser demons, giant centipedes (of course), and piles of classic ZZT baddies.
In addition, all the points you receive from these enemies counts towards your experience. Eventually discovering the king's wizard who is doomed to forever hold Dreadfire back, you can then use your exp to learn various magic spells usable in the final RPG battle. The score requirements are tough, and the worse your roster of magic is the more RNG-heavy the final fight will be making for a tense battle that forces you to decide whether to tough it out again and again or if you're better off restarting the entire game as it's not actually all that long when you know where you're going and what you need to succeed.
Combine with some beautiful landscapes in the backgrounds and some excellent #play compositions by various ZZTers (including Janson herself!) and you get a very challenging adventure that feels quite satisfying to complete.
♦ Play this world directly in your browser ♦
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/wtemplefinal/
♦ Originally streamed on August 17th, 2025 ♦
