A mix of old and new today. We've got games from Pennsylvania to Italy here.
“August 2021 Weekend of ZZT [Memories/Regrets]” by asie, PogeSoft, WiL (2021)
An offhanded remark turned into a short Weekend of ZZT contest. Two people answered the half-hearted call.
“Pennsylvania News” by Dr. Dos (2021)
Meanwhile I was recently in Pennsylvania to visit my family for the first time in years and introduce them to my boyfriend. I always try to do something ZZT on the plane back because it's difficult to not be introspective after such a trip. Inspired by the travelogue in "When There Is No More Snow" I made a ZZT magazine about the trip covering the food, games, and what's changed since my last trip there.
“aetsch: collected art 1998-2002” by Aetsch (2021)
A pleasant surprise in an art compilation from oldtime ZZTer aetsch. The board titles tell the story and we're glad to have this contribution. Also it's rightly tagged as an Interactive Fantasies release, the first since 2009!
“SolidHUD v5” by Dr. Dos (2021)
Program Description
A drop in replacement for ZZT v3.2 with an alternative HUD displaying information on things like board exits, stat counts, and more. SolidHUD also makes some gameplay changes to alleviate minor frustrations with ZZT since as quieting down bullet spam, new cheats, and preventing message windows from being closed by shooting.
Hey, it's SolidHUD! The thing I keep using for my ZZT streams but finally distributed in some form. It's got its share of jank, but I genuinely find the features like ?NOCLIP, ?SPEED and putting the latest save at the top of the list quite a bit. At some point I would like to merge these changes into a fork built off of asie's ClassicZoo for the best of both worlds.
“Fortress of ZZT (FORTRESS.ZZT) [it]” by Al "Chefredd", G. Men (1994)
Hey paisanos! It's a ZZT game written in Italian! Neat! But even more wild is that there's an unofficial Italian translation of the help documents for ZZT v2.0 as well as a barely started Italian translation of Town of ZZT! Good stuff.
“The Gem Thieves” by Jerry Ellis (1997)
Prepare to steal some gems! What seems to be an unassuming heist turns out to be another game by Jerry Ellis, author of the recently streamed "Baloo Episode 1, The Thunder Road" so I'm interested.
“ZZTSA” by RT-55J (2021)
A surreal story about making your way through an airport and not missing your flight.
“FireFox Skates” by Ryan Ferneau (2004)
Okay so this one is about web browsers from the mid 2000s that compete in an ice skating competition. Obviously. You play as Firefox. Can you defeat Opera, Internet Explorer, and Navigator?