Childhood nostalgia at its finest, War-Torn is a late 90s ZZT RPG that put Madguy's name on the map. I decided to revisit this one for a nice familiar way to end 2025. What I discovered was that sure, I know the events of this game like the back of my hand, but that it feels even more impressive today. Madguy sets a new standard for what ZZT RPGs can be with this snappy, well-crafted adventure of a young man who discovers that World War III was ignite by aliens planning to let the planet squabble amongst itself until they can come in and conquer. Through a number of crafty techniques ranging from establishing shot art boards, to using dream sequences to re-enforce important moments, Madguy's War-Torn is a highly streamlined experience with nary a dull moment.
The Figments Are Due On Maple Street
From its opening scene depicting a city skyline vanishing in a sudden flash of white, War-Torn maintains a breakneck speed where something is always happening and downtime is kept to the bare minimum. The introduction sets the scene for a mid-apocalypse world where life as we know it has radically changed. The world at war with itself unaware of the true architects of its destruction, an alien race manipulating things behind the scenes known as the Figments.
Five years ago, Earth's major cities were wiped out, and no nation claimed responsibility for the attacks. With no real target to strike, the nations of the world go to war with one another, each suspecting their enemies to be the one's responsible for the destruction. Meanwhile, the Figments are biding their time, studying Earth people while waiting to use Annihilators, robotic soldiers of their own creation, to mop up the last remnants of a fragile humanity so that the planet can be theirs for the taking.
For five years the Figments have waited for humanity's numbers to thin. Meanwhile, a young man named Kyle is now old enough for mandatory enlistment in the armed forces. He's one of many surviving humans now living in highly fortified settlements with no future beyond the one prescribed to him. Ever optimistic to make a name for himself, his conscription is delayed when upon reaching the stop for the bus of new recruits, he finds only flaming wreckage and no survivors. To make it personal, his good friend Jake who was to enlist with him is among the dead.
Kyle investigates the scene and discovers the culprit, a man in blue with a strange mask and glowing red eyes. Players get their first look at the game's RPG battle system here, fighting the bomber with Kyle's staff and gun. What is assumed to be an act of terror by an enemy operative is suddenly revealed to be something much more difficult to explain as the bomber, who speaks only in heavy breaths and whines, melts away into a puddle of blue slime! Kyle doesn't know it yet, but he's had his first encounter with the Figments. Kyle is well aware that something bizarre is going on, though he doesn't yet suspect aliens.
War-Torn starts with a bang. A quick farewell sequence filled with optimism that Kyle will become a fine soldier is immediately taken away and what little players know at this point is replaced with confusion. Kyle's new life in the military has to wait. The road ahead is dangerous. Enemy battalions may move in at any moment, and Kyle's only option is to begin to walk down a road that will change the course not only of his life, but of humanity.
Kyle's first instinct is to contact the authorities. He begins walking to the neighboring Fort Edgefield, a smaller community of friendly folks that still has some police presence. The officer at the desk is on board to hear about the attack on the bus, but quickly brushes Kyle aside upon the "man melting into slime" part, telling him to look at their archives to see if he can find anything similar there.
There Kyle does manage to find something, a newspaper article from several years earlier where a woman by the name of Anne Chase claims to have blacked out and awoken in a lab where she described similar creatures performing tests on her. Kyle, wanting to understand what happened decides to track her down, setting his sights on Fort Edgefield, one of the largest settlements around, and one now famous for being filled with crime and violence.
Getting there is no small task. Along the way, Kyle is once again accosted by Figments, this time a pair of them. Armed with a new magic spell, the two aren't all that tougher than the one, and this time, when the fight is over, one of the Figments is still alive. Kyle's many questions shouted at the creature go unanswered. The creature shambles- perhaps accidentally in trying to get away from Kyle, or perhaps deliberately to ensure that no evidence survives, off of a cliff. Additional gore follows when Kyle looks down to find the creature's fall caused it to be impaled by a dead tree.
Nasty stuff.
Madguy's ability to leave little breadcrumbs for the player do a lot to make his game more mysterious than the number of other ZZT RPGs of the era. Kyle mostly operates on hope. Hope the police will believe his story. Hope that this Anne woman can be found. Hope that he can figure out what's going on and put a stop to it before more of his countrymen are killed. Instead of being told to travel to the next town to speak with the person who you know will be there, the game embraces ambiguity. You can never be sure if Kyle is going to find what he's after, or hit a dead end and have to find some other way to get the information he's after. It makes War-Torn's story one players can't so readily predict.
When Kyle finally arrives at Fort Edgefield that night, his search for Anne is no problem at all. She's one of the first people he meets there.
...I did say it's a fast paced game after all.
Serendipity aside, when Kyle brings up the creatures, Anne is stunned and agrees to speak with him in private to discuss what she remembers of that night. Kyle listens as she recounts how she was knocked out and woke up on an operating table with those blue creatures staring over her. He in turn shares his own story, with Anne being eager to see the slime and dead body from Kyle's previous encounter. They agree to travel together in the morning, but Kyle finds himself attracted to Anne and decides to check in on her at her apartment before getting a room at the local hotel. It's a forced romance to be sure, but Madguy's efforts at matchmaking have some believability to them. Kyle is barely an adult and simply falling for the first pretty girl he's met that he hasn't grown up with.
Anne is surprised by Kyle's visit, and rightfully confused as to why he went to her home. She's kind to the one person who believes her encounter, but it's going to take more than that for her to reciprocate the feeling.
But as unsettling as tracking down her apartment is, it ends up being a good thing he did, as Anne is soon accosted by Curt. Curt is a man she wants nothing to do with. At first, it seems like a bitter ex made extra upset at seeing her with Kyle, but when he reminds Anne that she "works for him", it becomes clear that this isn't a spat of former lovers. There's another fight, and somehow it's the wildest one yet as Curt has been working on building a gigantic robotic arm which the duo has to bring down before they can get at Curt.
It's easy for players to consider this fight just another RPG battle, it's the third one so far, and easy to be distracted by their new ability to control two characters in combat, but the thing about Curt that separates him from the Figments is that he is a human, and he was just killed by Anne and Kyle. There's a scene of realization that Curt is in fact dead, and that they're certain to be thrown in prison for his killing. But Kyle is clever, finding an empty bottle of booze to plant on Curt's body along with forging a note to make Curt's death look like a suicide. To be fair to them, it was in self-defense, but there's no chance of checking out the alien bodies if they get caught up in explaining the human one.
The next morning Kyle and Anne walk and talk as they head back to where Kyle had his earlier fight, finding they have a lot in common and making for a better foundation for a romantic relationship. It still feels like something hastily included, as what things they have in common go unstated. They both saw the end of civilization as they knew it when they were kids I suppose. It's at least an effort, and something that gives us reason for Anne to like Kyle, even if that something is just the author telling us so.
The bonding gets put on hold when the two pass a group of children that are freaking out as they too have found a dead body. An unnamed human's corpse is shown quietly drifting down the river. Anne immediately believes it to be the work of those "things" whose names they still do not know. Kyle tries to suggest that he may have just been killed in battle. Players sticking to doing as their told won't run into roadblocks that prevent them from moving ahead early, but if you do get curious about what happens if you try to skip something, you'll be stopped by soldiers that refuse to let anyone pass as a battle is happening nearby. Kyle's theory is more than being realistic about it.
His theory is quickly shot when just a ways upstream a mess of blood on the ground makes it clear that whatever happened to the man was far more gruesome than being shot by the Russians.
That's not even the weird part. That's all typical War-Torn stuff. The weird part is that Kyle abruptly suggests the two hide (from whom?) in a cave just off the path (an ideal place for the actual killer to be). When they enter, they are immediately caught, but not by enemy forces or Figments. The underground world they discover is even worse than that. It's full of magic-wielding libertarians that engage in cannibalism. Obviously.
Okay, I may be editorializing a little bit. Madguy spends a chapter of the game setting up this underground society that sees itself as being free from a tyrannical government's rule up above. In order to protect themselves, Anne and Kyle aren't allowed to leave, and instead must join their cult. Kyle, being a man, must take a rite of initiation to be accepted in their incredible society. He of course has no interest in this, but is willing to go along with it when it's revealed that initiates are free to leave whenever they choose. They just never choose to because things are going great down here. Anne being a girl doesn't have to participate. Kyle, should he be initiated, is free to take any women with him if he wants. Just a real normal society down here.
Just a great underground empire, yes sir.
Just a chill place that doesn't have war, but it does have a room filled with mutilated bodies.
The test then is for Kyle to fight their wizard who will fall quickly to Kyle's own magical prowess or his bullets. True to their word, Kyle and Anne are permitted to leave afterwards. Almost as soon as they're outside, Kyle recognizes a compulsion to turn back. The wizard he fought must have brainwashed him somehow, and now he only wants the two to return underground where it's safe. Anne employs some quick thinking and successfully breaks the spell with a kiss. Kyle, interprets this as a sign that Anne has feelings for him too. She should have tried hitting him on the head first IMO.
This non-sequitur of gameplay is War-Torn at its weirdest. The one thing it has going for it is presenting players with the idea that not everyone has adapted to the new order of life in forts and endless war. It just gets presented in the craziest possible manner, making it uninteresting to explore. The entire section could arguably be removed from the game with no real consequence, as it's not like Kyle wouldn't find something else to latch onto to insist Anne has feelings for him.
But all the same, it has some small implications later in the game when there's a very unexpected call back to this section. It also provides a foothold for the game's unfinished sequel, whose new set of characters lives in a less horrible underground society, and wants to see the surface. I suppose it just wouldn't be War-Torn without Kyle fighting a wizard.
"Well, that just happened" moment aside, when the two finally make it back where Kyle last encountered the Figments, there's no trace of either body to be found. Anne tries to cheer Kyle up, reiterating that she believes everything he's said, but Kyle is done with these melting terrorists. He's 19 years old, and all he wanted to do was enlist as originally planned. He gives up on ever getting an explanation for all this, and decides to enlist as he should have in the first place.
Anne, realizing Edgefield offers no future for her, decides to enlist as well. Kyle lightly protests, but can't argue with her that Edgefield is no more dangerous than any battlefield the two may find themselves on.
Madguy breaks from his own tradition of the game being about Kyle's travels, and instead warps players directly to the military outpost Kyle was intended to have been bussed to. He checks in quickly, having been expected, while Anne gets form after form to fill out. This splits the party, giving players a chance to explore a few boards without her. After getting his bearings as well as a much needed nap, the two meet up in the cafeteria, only for alarms to go off. The base is under attack!
The Russians it ain't.
The sudden first contact is not going super well for humanity. Taking advantage of the humans not expecting to be attacked, the Figments pretty much immediately overrun the base, forcing everyone to flee or perish. Kyle and Anne are able to make it to the surface, but a number of Figments set their sights on them, leading to a brief chase sequence where getting grabbed by a Figment is an immediate game over. Initially, it seems like a very demanding escape. Once you realize that you can go beneath a chunk of the fort's wall it's much easier. It's easy to miss at first as there's a line of dialog flashing across the route that obscures the fact that it's actually clear.
Kyle escapes his pursuer, but has to keep running after Anne as she's still being chased. Once they're separated from the others enough for it to just be the three of them the running stops and the two team up for another battle. Their opponent this time makes use of bladed arm as its form of attack.
It is not enough to deal with Kyle and Anne who make short work of the creature.
After the getaway, the two emerge from the woods only to run into another threat!
The Russians it is!
Coincidentally, they too had their eyes set on the outpost. Kyle and Anne do their best to dissuade them from following through on the attack, telling them they'll all be killed by "things". It was a tough sell for the police officer, but try convincing an enemy army to turn around and not attack your base.
Kyle, for blabbing a bit too much is rewarded with a blow to the neck rendering him unconscious and the scene fading to black.
The Russians arriving at just this time is a bit of a lucky coincidence for the sake of the story, but I quite like that the ongoing war between nations gets to be the focus for a little bit here. The war of War-Torn never really happens on screen until this moment, but it's just as big a part of Kyle's adventure as the alien invasion is.
Kyle awakens in the cell of a secret Russian prison. Anne shares the cell adjacent to him. They have no idea where they are or how far they've been taken. It's not story important, but I can't help but be curious. The Russians identify their captives as Americans, so either they've been shipped all the way back to Russia or America's days are numbered as Russians have established such a presence that they're able to build underground prison bunkers without interference.
In true ZZT fashion, players get to explore every inch of the cell, but Madguy breaks from tradition a bit. Though players get to pry loose bars, check under pillows, and smash up weak sections of wall, the reward is not escape but a stowed away handgun with no ammunition.
Exiting the cell is a matter of waiting to be summoned for interrogation. As with Curt's "suicide", there's no fail state here. The warden won't escort Kyle until players have what they'll need for later.
I use "escort" loosely. Kyle is free to ditch his captor and head into a nearby office instead. A note from the general demands Kyle and Anne be made to talk immediately. Turns out the platoon they sent to attack the outpost didn't return. Kyle and Anne's warnings are now a subject of interest.
It's good information for players to receive, but it feels very silly roaming around a prison, and probably could have been better delivered from the warden during the interrogation instead. In its current form, not only does it undercut the seriousness of being a POW, but it also means players can easily miss the detail if they assume that as prisoners, they aren't allowed in the warden's office.
