♦ Livestream of the following 3 ZZT worlds ♦
• (0:00) "Maze" by Unknown (1996) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/pntlmaze/]
• (17:00) "Lord of the Rings Battle Ground (v1.0)" by Nixon (2003) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/lotrv1/]
• (33:42) "The Adventures of Batman & Robin" by Unknown (1997) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/batman/]
(Originally streamed October 9th, 2022)
Two previously unpreserved Super ZZT worlds and one bonus game because the first two were way too short for a stream.
"Maze" is... do I even have to say anything? In this case, yes. After an unending gauntlet of ZZT maze games, this one is slightly different thanks to the Super ZZT format. The initial board is still a maze in the sense that you wander it hoping to reach the end, collecting various keys to open the exit along the way. The board consists of several islands surrounded by Super ZZT's water current tiles with both a single object that can change the flow of the water as well as a terrifying smiley face that seems to just endless loop over the board placing more water just to make things more difficult.
The second board has some more traditional maze gameplay and is nothing a-maze-ing.
"Lord of the Rings Battle Ground" sounded like it could be interesting, arriving long after Super ZZT interest had waned in terms of creating new worlds. Nixon also has a few other ZZT worlds out there so I expected some level of quality from this. Instead, you get an incomplete semi-arena shooter that promises more to come in the future. Choose from multiple characters from The Lord of the Rings series and fight through two different battlegrounds against orcish armies. This suffers from a single repeated enemy time that's highly aggressive making Legolas who specializes in ranged attacks your best bet to surviving the onslaught. This is even more true in the Balin's Tomb stage where the enemies pour in via duplicator and you simply fight until you run out of ammo or die.
On the bright side, unused boards seen only via the editor do show a glimpse at the original plans for the game which seem to be more interesting, with the player being one of the orcs and being able to do some shopping for equipment. What's here is even less fulfilling than the main game and so there's not much to this one other than some okay bits of art crammed into the limited Super ZZT viewport.
Thanks to the first two games taking up so little time, a last minute third game was added to the stream, "The Adventures of Batman & Robin", in which the two heroes have to defeat the usual assortment of villains that have broken out of Arkham and are vibing in abandoned warehouses and abandoned carnivals. The writing is fun at least!
(Thanks to The Green Herring for the 100 bits.)
♦ Join us for future livestreams at https://twitch.tv/worldsofzzt ♦
