Matt is obliged to keep his mouth shut about the details from earlier and sit himself down.

There's a new goal now of learning some jokes before the dinner scene can conclude.

Talking to the guy with the Cow-Tipping for Dummies book lets you distract him momentarily and snag the book while he's not looking. You have to be really quick about it.

Which lets Matt complete the trade for a book of toilet humor. Now he can learn some great jokes no doubt.

To MadGuy's credit, I'm confident that what you're supposed to laugh at here is Matt telling some very bad jokes.

All the diners excluding Nose flee from Matt's awful gross out humor.

And with his latest gross story, Nose also runs out of the room in disgust.

I'm curious about the name "TuCube". It seems like an oddly specific detail to drop, but if it's a reference it's not one I'm familiar with.

It's time to go comfort Nose in her room. The game is nice enough to tell you as soon as you enter the board which room is hers so there's no going door to door necessary.

The blush the appears is a cute effect.

After dinner's been ruined, Matt gets the urge to try and draw Nose in the nude despite not having any drawing experience! Nose refuses and demands to put on more layers instead.

And a rendition of "Why Do Birds Suddenly Appear" plays during the scene.

Alright. I admit it. I laughed. Matt's drawing is funny.

Oh boy Matt's gonna get a kiss.

The two head back to the ship's bow, and Matt gets a little uncomfortable with the two guys in the lookout tower being there.

This is probably the most romantic love scene in ZZT we've seen yet. I've reached the point where I'm relieved just by the fact that it's consensual.

The Dietanic strikes a sentient iceberg and begins to sink! Disaster!

With the ship beginning to sink and Nose's family dead, the only thing left to do is swim for it.

For those of you keeping track at home, here are Nose's stats.

The iceberg is pretty cocky about all this. It even has a cute little face if you look closely.

The iceberg actually has a lot to say even though you'll only be on this board for a few seconds.

On the back of the ship the gate's been opened and people are jumping for it.

The lion is sleeping through the whole thing.

KER. SPLOOSH.

Matt shoves the sailor into the water and jumps in with Nose soon after.

He's also really horny in the latter part of this scenario.

The ship is animated sinking, and the iceberg gets a boost in self-confidence from the whole ordeal. The iceberg then vows they won't be truly happy until all the survivors are dead, and that they could use a blanket because it's very cold outside tonight.

The Titanic parody is over, but the scenario keeps going. Now it's time for the desert island sequence.

So it turns out the ham/life jacket trade actually mattered! I was worried there'd be an instant death boards after it was too late to get the life jackets, but the only change is losing some health.

One of the objects littering the beach is a walnut which can be eaten for ten health.

Jack managed to survive the iceberg's attack and still wants to go on with the marriage to Nose! Fortunately he's nice enough to offer a contest of a short race where the winner can claim Nose as his prize. Nose doesn't get a say in any of this.

The race uses an engine where a series of four arrows surrounding the player are used to pick a direction for Matt to run in. Both Matt and Jock run at the exact same speed so the only way to win is to take corners earlier. It's pretty tough since if Jock passes you, there's not really any time to regain lost ground.

It's pretty tough!

But at least after a few tries I was able to get through it.

So now Nose and Matt can be wed. But, as the narrator explains, we're still somehow not done.

The sky quickly changes to black and the wedding is interrupted.

The iceberg that swore to kill all the survivors is making good on their promise. The final challenge of the scenario is to find a way to defeat it.

The battle consists of simply running around the island and across the ocean while dodging bullets coming up from the bottom of the board. Finally there's a reason for the player's health to matter!

Upon reaching the floating wreckage in the distance the player is treated to a final cutscene.

The iceberg is quickly vaporized by coming in contact with the Dietanic's lava supply, and the threat is over.

The scenario draws to a close with a wall of text.

It's a very weird ending, but it's a happy one. Especially compared to the "MadGuy's Reign Of Terror" scenario.

The full credits are identical to the previous scenario's though on a board with purple text instead of green.

And that's the rest of NextGame 33. It's uh, as mediocre as the first half really.

Final Thoughts

Poor MadGuy found himself in a rough spot. When you release something as well-received as Burger Joint, the bar gets set so high that you're almost destined to not meet it again the next time. If your last game was great, your next game (get it) has simply got to be even bigger and even better which is no small task!

And he went for it. Instead of making one game with one story, he'd make one game with six. This game would be massive at full size, likely coming in at close to 200 boards given the 30+ board length of each finished scenario. It was probably not a smart idea. I suspect that after a certain point MadGuy had this same realization and just slapped on the 33 and called it a day.

The second scenario here is at least a little more coherent as far as Matt's motivation compared to the random locations he travels to in the first scenario until it's almost over. SOS Please feels a bit more grounded in that regard since it functions as a parody and hits a few of Titanic's plot beats as needed.

Still, it just doesn't feel fun to play, and the art is more lacking in this one. MadGuy's art style doesn't lend itself well to regular looking people compared to the bizarre and deformed designs in the first scenario. Nose doesn't even have a big nose! Or a small one to make a joke on the unexpected!

It does have the cool building explosion though.

Ultimately though, if you don't have fun with whatever scenario you play first, you're almost certain to not have fun with the other. Most likely, you're not going to have fun with either. They just feel so flat and lifeless and it really makes this game come off as MadGuy taking whatever comes to his mind and implementing it to meet the requirement of six stories.

I tried looking around various ZZT magazine worlds to try and get a better idea of the game's reception, but nobody seems to have reviewed it (at least in a timely manner). The game itself has two reviews from z2, a perfect 5.0 by an anonymous user who found it hilarious and loved the puzzles, and a scathing 1.0 review from Funk which while harsh, sums up the issues quite nicely. He mentions that it coasted on the inertia from Burger Joint and had a lot of people claiming it to be one of the best ZZT games around which I honestly can't even imagine.

If this game didn't have MadGuy's name attached, it would just be completely forgotten, but with that name it's sure to have been a game that a lot of people did play, and I suspect with a lot of disappointment.

The good news though, is that while this was MadGuy's final ZZT release, he did continue making games over the years. If you want to see where a youth spent making ZZT games could take somebody, take a look at his "rpg roguelike action stealth shooter brawler", Streets of Rogue. At the very least he didn't let any adolescent speedbumps ruin his fun.

In the end, NextGame 33 is just one more on the pile of comedic ZZT adventures that were never that comedic to begin with.