♦ Livestream of 6 ZZT worlds submitted to the Spring 1999 24 Hours of ZZT contest. Topic is FEAR. [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/24hoz-spr1999/] ♦
♦ Stream Contents ♦
• (2:08) “Pit of Darkness” by JM
• (28:50) “Night Terror” by Zenith Nadir
• (43:19) “Attack of the ZZOwl” by zzblue
• (1:05:56) “Panophobe: Unbridled Fear” by X
• (1:15:43) “Z-T: Part 2” by vampy
• (1:54:04) Personal Rankings
More from ye olde contest. Again, some solid entries!
"Pit of Darkness" though... is a well... hmmm. Content Warning for a fictional suicide. Let's start with that.
You're a psychologist living on the moon. An old friend named Karma who you haven't seen in years shows up unannounced begging for help. She takes you on a spaceship for some therapy and we discover that she has discovered the secret to immortaltiy and perhaps godhood itself. She has created a universe and filled it with people, and they have taken over her body and mind while also being very depressed about life.
It's weird, almost entirely reading text with no real interactions to be had. In the end, your character gets way too attached to this lady and falls in love and it's honestly very off-putting. These two should be kept far apart, and absolutely not share a tiny spaceship. The author was definitely swinging for the fences with their story though, but uh. Foul ball?
"Night Terror" is a simple wake up in a mansion with a machine gun, shoot the zombies and get out game. Very much following a template of coding a single zombie enemy and just filling boards with them to give players something to do. This one probably landed better thanks to following up a game with no interactivity. You get to rummage through dressers and things for more ammo and health while exploring four paths with 5 keys to be found to unlock the door out. The zombies take just enough hits to feel threatening given your ammo count without making the game all that challenging to get through (save for the graveyard maybe). I don't know about top three, but it played well.
"Attack of the ZZOwl" starts with an IRC rampage spurned by zzblue being tired of being called an owl. You play as "Player" and have to save the world from him. You'll shoot some generic enemies as well as Hanson because it's 1999. Push a few boulders in the sorriest excuse for a Sokoban level I've ever seen, and answer trivia questions about Old Navy commercials and Monty Python films. Then a few battles with oversized bosses that are quickly defeated. Good variety, and some fun art.
"Panophobe" is about being afraid of everything, and what life is like for such a person. The game is very incomplete, consisting of a half-furnished house where the only thing you can really do is argue with your sibling. The color choices are nice though, aside from the purposely left intact yellow border...
"Z-2: Part 2" ends up being the star of the competition so far. It's a sequel to an unreleased game (which sometime after this contest got released as "ZT"). Even jumping into the middle, it's easy enough to follow. A group of evil people try to destroy ZZT, but are bound to always be foiled by the player, unable to make decisions that would actually stop him. This time they plan to release a biological weapon if not stopped, and so... you stop them.
The game begins with some puzzles around your home involving finding batteries, scissors, water, and other such things. There's a scary art board where a giant ZZT player character has arms coming out of their face for driving purposes. A car chase engine that thankfully isn't actually 6 minutes long. Some cute visual touches (the skidmarks from your car at the end of the chase). A number of still-odd puzzles of finding items around a small town, a fight with a giant octopus, a star wars convention, and a final engine of shooting down a bomber from some ground based artillery that asks you to land far too many shots on a far too erratic target.
But of all the games thusfar, this one is the most packed, taking players in unexpected directions, and just generally being a fun world to roam around in. I'm realizing now that it's a bit like the OG 24HoZZT contest's 2nd place winner "City of the Stupid: Road Trip" and that's very much a good thing.
Not a single RPG battle in any of these games though! What gives?
♦ Play these worlds directly in your browser ♦
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/24hoz-spr1999/
♦ Originally streamed on October 17th, 2025 ♦
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