♦ Livestream of the ZZT world “Shining Force: Shining the Great Labyrinth” by TymeUltima (1997) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/shiningl/] ♦
♦ Stream Contents ♦
• (1:50) “Shining Force: Shining the Great Labyrinth” by TymeUltima (1997) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/shiningl/]
The first of two Shining Force inspired ZZT games which unfortunately has now served as my introduction to the series and forever added a stink to it. For all my complaining in this one, know that the sequel is less enjoyable.
In this first game, you are seeking the orbs of power which are hidden within a great underground labyrinth in order to break the curse on your land. You begin in a fortress with a chapel for leveling up via score (which does nothing, but max level is required to gain certain items), a shop for buying ammo and torches necessary to survive down there, and an item storage room to address ZZT's flag limitations.
The storage system stands out. Throughout the game you collect golden weapons, orbs, and a handful of other items like a pickaxe. Because of ZZT's 10-item or less flag limit, the storage room allows you to register an item as collected, and afterwards should the game run out of flags and overwrite something important, you can pull out infinite copies of the item as needed. It's a unique way to avoid a soft-lock, but there are still plenty of ways to do so as your pickaxe does break at one point and if you haven't stored it, you're unable to get another for later in the game. It's really strange.
The labyrinth is broken up into five paths consisting of four trials for the orbs and one final confrontation with DarkSol, the bad guy. These can in theory be played in any order, but a severe lack of supplies means you're more likely to get partway through one and have to retreat when you're out of ammo, moving to another section in hopes of getting a surplus.
TymeUltima loves him some mazes and fake walls, so gameplay is very slow, methodical, and tedious. Secret passages have no hints to their location, and are mandatory to make progress so if you aren't looking up their location outside of the game, you can expect to bump into hundreds of walls.
When you're fighting, it's not so bad. The usual smorgasboard of lions, tigers, and ruffians await, keeping you a bit more engaged between hunting hidden walls. One segment makes use of the old "Marsh Down" object from the ZOP toolkit, creating a navigational puzzle with buttons that flip floor and wall to alter valid paths. Finding keys is also quite a pain, as you'll often run into doors without the slightest idea of where to go to open them. This eventually leads to some cheating as there seems to be no way to make progress. Whether that's the game's fault or mine is a mystery.
The game looks nice at least! Each path leads to a different biome: lava, forest, cave, different cave. (okay well, mostly different biomes.) Visually, it's varied. And that second cave is a multi-board maze with quite a number of corners that makes it much more elaborate (and annoying) than the usual blank room with four exits.
In the end, DarkSol is confronted, and there's a fairly elaborate boss battle filled with ricochets, blink walls, spinning guns, and duplicating centipedes to try and keep players moving. He's fairly easy to lock down, but after the horrible maze of the Truth trial, a real welcome change.
Overall, this one feels like it had some genuine potential. It's a neatly structured non-linear action title that makes it easy to return to home base and prepare for the next section. It's just so slow paced that are the fun parts are overshadowed by turning walls into solids in the editor to reveal where the fakes are. "Genuine potential" meant being prepared for some improvements in the sequel and hopefully a more sound game but oh boy....
♦ Play this world directly in your browser ♦
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/shiningl/
♦ Originally streamed on September 28th, 2025 ♦
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