Fallout by eRN56
eRN56 didn't have much of a ZZT catalog either. This is the only solo content they produced, (with a special edition of it later). The mushroom cloud animation is pretty solid, but I feel like an opportunity was missed by not having the city itself show any damage.
The characters are pretty insufferable (they never _do_ anything), and the bomb shelter they're holed up in feels like a Vault-Tec social experiment more than a proper shelter with how little actually works properly. I did get a laugh at the tainted water but perfectly fine soft drinks.
There's a fight with a mutant and it drags on way too long. Both attacks have the same chance of hitting and deal the same amount of damage making it completely pointless.
(There's a Special Edition version of this game that cleans up the graphics a bit, but appears to be essentially the exact same game. It at least reduces the mutant's hitpoints a little though.)
Still, it is playable from start to end, has no bugs, and fits with the theme. This is enough to make it stand out among most of these entries.
7.0/10.0
RT-55J:Really, about as good as I could expect from a compo like this. Very well put together imho.
7.5/10.0
Ravenworks:- solid execution
- totally random combat engine is completely pointless and also takes way too long to finish
- I really didn't need the visual of stabbing someone in the ribs with a screwdriver over and over, thanks
- competent but forgettable, 6/10.0
6.0/10.0
DavidN:I was genuinely impressed by the colour-cycling of the nuclear explosion, and of the atmosphere of the bomb shelter as you begin the game. The transition to an alternative board as you turn on the power was nice, but the puzzles were a bit simple, consisting of just bumping into absolutely everything that was obviously an object and picking it up. The invisomaze was a bit wank, and I say that as someone who used to use the bastards with distressing regularity. Unfortunately you can tell the exact moment the author lost interest in the atmosphere he'd built up, but the ending sequence returned to being nicely done.
8.0/10.0
David M.:The ZZT Capitol City has been nuked! You play as Kevin Bosman, a survivor stuck in a bomb shelter. You’ve got to turn on the power, gather food, and beat a mutant intruder to death before the military come and rescue you in their helicopter. I really enjoyed this little whimsical adventure, despite the infuriating backtrack through an invisible maze.
9.0/10.0
FALLOUT is better than the competition almost across the board but is still in need of refinement. The intro animation was a standout though.
3.0/10.0
Celine Kalante:A very nice short adventure game with an... inconsistent mood, with serious death, horror, and desperate survival in a fallout shelter giving way to fourth-wall "Hey, it's a ZZT game, what can you expect?" gags, then back to serious and depressing again. The final battle is pure RNG and drags on a bit too long. Beautiful graphics, though.
3.0/10.0
Mike W.:Good graphics. Simple gameplay--picking up items to use in obvious places, and a fight where choices don't really seem to matter. There was a bug(?) where upon picking up food, movement becomes very slow while on that screen. I restarted a few times to try to determine whether this was an emulator issue.
7.0/10.0
XyzzySquirrel:Well crap, this is ACTUALLY A REAL GAME. Like, a good one. Short, silly, but it's within the project scope and offers some puzzles, isn't gratuitously cruel, has a fun little randomized combat system in there, and manages to wrap up without going "uhhhh I ran out of time." Trapped-in-a-bunker stories are bread and butter for adventure game writers, huge sections of the "plot" went nowhere and did nothing, but I don't care. 8/10 for actually being a fun thing I'm glad I played today.
8.0/10.0
Geight:eRN56 As you might expect from the name, this runs with the 'Nuclear apocalypse' sort of disaster, with the dastardly 'enemy' capitol dropping a well-animated nuke onto the capitol city of ZZT. I liked that the combat encounter lets you know how close you are to victory with the gem counter, and I like that the maze glows when you bump into walls, because it's helpful and sort of thematic. But I got a tremendous amount of lag in the room after the maze, my game slowed down so much that I spent more time there than anywhere else.
7.0/10.0
The Krushing Disaster Elite Edition by Nukem
Nukem has zero other titles released, and if I recall correctly was a local friend of Clecky's. He submitted a joke entry as well, and in 2003 I'm confident this would've just been disqualified, but we're all a bit desperate for entries here, so we'll let it slide.
The art is kind of fun.
2.5./10.0
RT-55J:This is pretty good, actually. The stupid-humor here is my kind of stupid, and the board with actual gameplay is fairly novel and fun (I would have gotten rid of most of the ammo, but that's it).
7.5/10.0
Ravenworks:- i'll admit, the whole "lol kewlz" aesthetic makes me weirdly nostalgic and I like it for that. kind of weird to rate it for that when I probably wouldn't have felt that way if I were actually judging the contest when it was new though?
- the bears and walls make for an interesting puzzle, although the layout makes me feel like it might not have been intentional? I enjoyed figuring out how to lead them into walls, but with that much ammo laid out (in a shape that only makes sense with respect to walls that are instantly destroyed) I get the feeling that I was just supposed to be plowing through them, so again, I'm not sure if I can give it points for that?
- I literally don't understand whether I won? (I tried zapping through the cutscene wall, in case "zap" was a hint to do that, but nothing happened...)
- 3/10.0 for charm I guess
3.0/10.0
DavidN:ZZT was an unrivalled breeding ground for a form of artistic talent all of its own, with some creations reaching into the realms of surrealist post-modern expressionism and transcending the intentions of ZZT, making these odd experiences uniquely worth preserving for generations of game authors to come. Not really, it's a yellow-bordered little cinema that someone threw together because they thought it was funny.
0.0/10.0
David M.:A mess of early 2000s cheezburger memespeak, a quest to pick up four kittens from a cluster of default bear enemies, and a flashing, multicoloured background to finish. Yeah nah not for me.
1.0/10.0
KRUSHING: Sadly, this one is ugly, annoying, and abrasive. At best, it’s disposable. It’s only technically a game, but totally worthless regardless.
0.5/10.0
Celine Kalante:is this Arfenhouse
The monster is cute, though.
3.0/10.0
Mike W.:The only interactivity is fighting built-in bears. There's a good drawing of a monster, but it's otherwise pretty slapdash. Full of the all-caps silly text that was popular at the time, as well as in-jokes that are incomprehensible fifteen years after.
1.0/10.0
XyzzySquirrel:Oh sweet jesus this was a wave of lolmeme humor. You know, lotzzzz of zzzs!!! and exclamation markz!!! and lolrandumz and thx kby. Also, KITTIEZ! YAY KITTIZESZ! 4/10 but only because I loved this kind of thing in 2003 and I'm giving you nostalgia points. You're on thin ice here in 2018, mister.
4.0/10.0
Geight:This is the kind of stuff that is hilarious when you're a kid/young teen in the early aughts, but the only enjoyment I got out of it was that the combat board is almost entirely breakable walls, so you can get outside and run around in the void and make all the enemies bump into each other following you. Also, it makes it so only one cat is strictly necessary to save - Speedrun strats!
4.0/10.0
