♦ Livestream Contents
(2:11) “Dungeons of ZZT” by Tim Sweeney (1991) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/zzt/]
The third stream of our 35th anniversary celebration!
Dungeons, a perennial favorite, really plays around with breaking up boards into compartmentalized sections which can only be reached from certain entrances. This leads to a number of uniquely-shaped boards that constantly hint at what's to come, or what will be a reward, keeping players motivated to keep on fighting as they hunt for the purple keys needed to open the gates and escape the dungeons.
The boards feel very sketchy, as if Tim was drawing sharp angles and softer curves first, and filling them in with enemies later. There's a lot of unusual components that make this one up, and far fewer named challenge screens (like Town's "Three Lakes" or Caves's "River Styx"). The ones that do show up are pretty solid though! The Whirlpool is a highly-stylized race of laps around a swirl of water while enemies duplicate in from the sides. The Zapper wound up being a highly memorable experience this year when a centipede was fully committed to attacking, leading to a desperate chase on a board with no shooting permitted and the energizers depleted.
Dungeons is also of course famous for having what's often cited as the worst board in the original saga, the "Hit The Target" board. A shooting gallery that is an impressive piece of early ZZT programming, but brutal to play as you must hit a moving target from a significant distance with missed shots punishing you by throwing a number of stars (though designed so you can only be hit by one) and blocking off that spot as a point where the target can be struck. It was incredibly dicey this year (I should have had a 2nd coffee).
The run, despite some sleepiness, goes well enough in the end. Dungeons isn't as stingy about health as the other games, with hundreds of gems scattered around the game, and provides excessive amounts of ammo to deal with its many creatures. With its extra generosity, Dungeons makes for a high mark of the original series to me, demonstrating how effective built-in creatures can be, and how aesthetically pleasing an abstract 7-color ZZT world can look.
It's even got a dragon at the end.
♦ Play this world in your browser
https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/zzt/
♦ Streamed Jan 18th, 2026
