♦ Livestream Contents
“24 Hours of ZZT Autumn 1999 [Fantasy]” by Knightt, Various (1999) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/24hoz-aut1999/]
(2:55) “Elven Tales” by zzblue
(29:38) “Boom” by Robovine
(53:11) “dooooom! III Fantasy” by Zeux
(1:03:54) “Smiley Quest” by DoggyShop
(1:15:19) “Duels of the Spellcasters” by Joshua F.
(1:52:20) Personal Rankings
Starting off with "Elven Tales", in which zzblue decides to do a serious RPG game, but then decides that's boring. The opening seems dramatic enough, blood, bones, and a protagonist with amnesia unsure of where they've just woke up. Then you go outside into a much more chill fantasy world. It's rather difficult to navigate. Players need to touch sleeping NPCs a dozen times to wake them, and if they head too far without doing so, some code that doesn't actually loop prevents the game from progressing.
After cutting up a log in front of the sleeping lady's home, the two climb a dangerous mountain to deal with the sinister force at its peak. Just when the obligatory RPG battle is about to be sprung, zzblue decides not to bother, but if the game ranks highly enough in the competition, he promises to remake the game. Given the lack of content to begin with, the game did not rank highly enough. The artstyle is pretty decent at least.
Then it's off to "Boom" where a 29 year old ex-commando turned cop finds a magic lamp in the park one day. The genie promises a single wish, but only if you can do a few missions for him in a fantasy world.
The actual game isn't too shabby! There are infinitely respawning enemies that can be farmed if needed to buy health and better guns. The game uses a reload system to cap your max ammo, which while I'm not huge on, weapon upgrades just amount to holding more ammo before needing to reload so it becomes less tedious as the game goes on. You get to visit a few different nearby places, a castle, an ogre war camp, a town square as its beseiged by raiders, all while defeating enemies to appease the djinn.
It features a number of unexpected animations that keep the boards from being dead still and is well balanced. Could do with some more story, but I had fun.
Zeux's ongoing dooooom! series shows up again. Over in the IRC channel #darkdigital, Zeux defeats Chuck at Starcraft and then proceeds to beat him to a pulp. Then you go to a Nirvana concernt where stoned mutant bunnies have killed all the fans. There's a closeup of one holding a severed human head (they look more like a mouse), and then we jump to Tseng's The Hoodians award ceremony where Skullie struggles to present an award for the "Least Poor ZZTer". And... roll credits.
"Smiley Quest" by Doggyshop quickly grabs everyone's attention with its bizarre story of orcs stealing a smiley egg to prevent the smiley-folk from fighting back. You set out to get some firewood only to hear a scream back at your home. Orcs have attacked, killed your family, taken their egg, and will now kill as many smiley faces as they desire. The perils of living next to Orc Valley, I suppose.
Despite being played up as incredibly strong warriors, our protagonist effortlessly takes down a dozen of them before falling into a pitfall trap and being taken prisoner. He's then marched to a cliff and made to jump. The end! No moral!
Quite a dark game despite the bright outdoor scenery.
Lastly, "Duels of the Spellcasters" by Joshua F. This one jumps right in with the player waking up in a red linewall constructed fire dungeon. After defeating the guard (by popping his pimple and causing him to explode) you get to explore a few screens of unusual puzzles. As you progress you remember your brother telling you about the evil wizard Kracknod.
As well as some water magic for the game's second dungeon! Using it lets you erase certain regions of water and while it's never more complex than "if you see water cast the spell" it feels satisfying to do so? I don't know, I was kind of getting into it, and the strange designs made it stick. One puzzles where you guide bullets, but the objects redirect towards the player, so you have to reposition yourself to get them to go where they need to was pretty creative! Another where you shoot a bullet on one board so it "travels" onto an adjacent board that blocks shooting was also pretty unique, though I feel like I was quite lucky I stumbled into that solution.
By the end, you learn Kracknod _is_ your brother and save the world from his evil magic.
And then we rank em! Good stuff this week!
♦ Play these worlds in your browser
https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/24hoz-aut1999/
♦ Streamed Apr 26th, 2026
