The Story of Nadir
Nadir's side of things logically has the opposite tone in contrast to Zenith's. Instead of being a comedy that winds up more boring than anything today, Nadir instead tries to tell a grisly tale of survival, with some proto-horror game vibes for psyche's second path. I wasn't surprised that Zenith's path didn't take me. For an old game with old humor, I was more worried I'd have a number of content warnings to slap onto this article. With Nadir's path I still wasn't expecting much. This is a game made by a sixteen year old that now wants to be serious and tell a sordid story. Teenage writing in ZZT games often has its charms, but it's very rare to leave as passionate for the cast and plot as the authors of said games were. Fingers crossed, I rolled Nadir and dove on in, hoping for something more along the lines of Jami's Undercity rather than The Kane Project.
The Nadir path also opens with a bout of amnesia. The protagonist this time is a young woman who can only recall that her name is Mir. She awakens after suffering from a nasty fall into a dark and scary cavern where the first thing she comes across is a dead body with the spade and upside-down cross symbol carved into its chest.
The start is definitely more promising than Zenith's side.
The first thing players will on the Nadir path is just how wordy it is.
The entire game is loaded with paragraphs of text like this, carefully describing every minute action performed by Mir and every gory detail of the numerous corpses that show up all throughout the cavern. Generally speaking, it ain't bad. Nadir succeeds immediately at contrasting this with the goofy sensibilities seen in the Zenith path. The attention to detail seen throughout Mir's adventure certainly beats the brief text seen in most ZZT dungeon crawls where fitting as much as possible into a single flashing line of text frequently takes priority over making players stop to read. At the very least, I'm sure Nadir's English teacher would be proud.
Nadir's descriptions of dead bodies, demons, and life giving vials of a strange clear liquid certainly do a good job of laying out the scene for players more than just graphics in ZZT alone could. It's hard to make a corpse seem frightening when ZZT demands it to be smiling even in death, so the task falls to the writing department.
There's one major problem though. Very little actually happens in psyche's serious path. Even Nadir seems to realize this at a point, with Mir herself commenting on how desensitized she's getting to all this gore and the absurdity of reaching a point where her reaction to the dead is to get excited for what she might be able to pilfer from the deceased.
With Mir having no memories to speak of, and no explanation for the cavern's occupants, victims, or cult symbolism, there really isn't a story to be told. Mir simply wants out. A sensible goal that requires little thinking. The game feels more like a nightmare (in the literal sense). It's a bad situation with little rhyme or reason as to why any of it is happening, and once it's all over and done with it will cease to matter. Without an actual story arc to go through, Nadir is stuck creating a still-life of spelunky, focusing intently on specifics that have no bearing on anything.
The highlight of Mir's adventure stems from the one time Nadir is able to provide Mir the opportunity to get away from inner-monologue and actually talk to another human being.
Locked behind a defensive barrier, its caster Emma is grievously injured, nearly attacking Mir when she breaks through and finds the girl. Here Nadir gets to create an actual scenario to describe. Emma's story feels like it matters because Emma is bloodied, but alive. She was injured and set up the barrier to allow her to recover, but another demon was closer to her than she thought. Left in an awkward situation, she wasn't strong enough to kill the monster outright, and had to deal with a lengthy stalemate that kept her from ever getting the rest she desperately needed.
Mir is happy to help, both with taking out the demon as well as finding her a healing vial so that Emma can save herself. Nadir handles this side quest by creating a prompt on whether or not to drink any vials yourself or to save it for Emma.
These vials are in short supply, creating an interesting choice as players try to figure out when they can get away with skipping a potion themselves. It wouldn't be so bad were it not for the poisonous snakes that send Mir's health into a steady downward spiral when bit, effectively meaning injured players will have to put Mir's needs first.
At least, that's the much more interesting way for it to go. A body lying just by Emma's barrier has one of the vials so players distracted by the barrier and mechanism to dissipate it might be so lucky as to just immediately complete the quest mere seconds after they meet Emma.
Should Emma be saved, she simply runs off ahead, with no discussion of collaboration between the two, or any insight into where they are and what they're going through. This is a missed opportunity for Nadir to be able to focus his writing on character interaction or unraveling the mysterious of this world with the help of Emma's understanding of things. Instead, the aid is purely transactional. Emma dumping a bunch of ammo into Mir's lap as a thank you and promptly takes her leave.
Don't worry, it's right type for her gun. Nadir frequently describes the collection of ammo in such a way that players know Mir has properly confirmed it will work with her gun. Beyond a certain point even Mir starts rolling her eyes at how convenient it is that everyone in the dungeon dead or alive seems to be working with the same caliber ammunition.
Only one other thing changes when players put in the work to save Emma. She can be found later on in corpse form. Joy.
It's clearly intended to be a sad scene, though even Nadir realizes how little is actually there between the two. The narration points out how the only thing Mir had to with her was the exchange of a vial for some ammo. Emma's nice and all, but her time in the game is so brief that there's not much of a chance for players to get attached to the character. She's just another bit of potential to do something with the story that goes nowhere. Her death doesn't hit all that hard when it's a reasonable assumption that she'd never show up again after running off. Her death merely confirms that she won't be playing a role in the rest of the game.
There is at least a moment of panicked introspection from Mir afterwards. Emma was a capable fighter. Mir reasons that if Emma couldn't make it out alive, her odds aren't looking too good either. This dread doesn't last, with Mir putting a stop to her doomerism quickly, returning the game back to the status quo. She pays her respects and snags the few gems Emma had on her still. All bodies exist to supply Mir.
While Mir does have to meet Emma in order to reach a lever to open a shut portcullis (a Nadir staple both in psyche and his other titles), she doesn't have to fulfill the deal. If Emma is left waiting indefinitely for a healing vial, the body here disappears when the board is first visited. If you want to give Emma a happy ending, you could leave her on the upper level, have the corpse object vanish, and then give her a vial to ensure that her fate is left ambiguous. Actually doing this is a bit of a reach, and definitely not something that feels like an intentional option for what to do about Emma.
Nadir does seem to be a bit more motivated with his corpse positioning after Emma. The next body discovered is covered in snake bites, using the cause of death as a warning for players that this floor has a nasty snake infestation. A unique nest can be found at the back of the level with a stealthily positioned duplicator creating infinite snakes until the nest is shot to pieces.
Following up the more notable bodies, shortly afterwards Mir finds a body that stands out not for being gruesome but rather for being peaceful. For a moment Mir believes her to be sleeping rather than dead. There is an explanation here. Various pentagrams surround the body, burning anything that enters their circle. Mir pieces together than the woman was a white witch, who was able to die on her own terms quietly through her protective magic instead of the usual tortured final moments.
For one final surprise before the game's climax, Mir can solve a boulder puzzle with the most common design in all of video games. The chest emits a green light and has a sigil engraved that make Mir a little suspicious of opening it, making it just as tempting to not open.
Sure enough, it's trapped! Opening the chest burns the sigil into Mir, doing a bit of damage in the process. The contents are unharmed at least, allowing her to claim the ammo and gems inside. Players are expected to perform the only other real option here, and shoot the chest rather than opening it directly. This still results in wood shrapnel being propelled in bullet form, and one single point of mandatory damage. The bullet can be dodged, barely, but the forced injury necessitates Nadir writing up some dialog with the label :poop for the splinter being the fatal blow. Better luck next time girl.
Enemies
The Enemies of "Billy Jones"
Playing the light-hearted path gives Nadir the opportunity to break away from the typical fantasy-inspired enemies seen in most dungeon crawlers for ZZT. Rather than fend off giant rats, appropriately-sized orcs, undead horrors, or cruel demons, Billy gets to fight anything can Nadir can imagine. This being ZZT, it doesn't take much to get very weird with it. Enemies are just going to be represented with abstract ASCII characters, and their behavior isn't going to vary that wildly. Simply taking suitable giant rat code and re-skinning it will work just fine, so the sky's the limit here.
Tamagotchi - Described as being "sperm-like", these are the very first enemy players encounter and just so happen to be the worst enemy to deal with in either half of psyche. They move incredibly erratically at the maximum speed of cycle one, only backing off after a successful bite or being attacked themselves.
Fleas - Tiny and equally as fast as the tamagotchi. The fleas are much easier to deal with since they die in a single hit, and their bites only deal a single point of damage. They're a them a nuisance in groups, but if you can find any choke point to lure them into they won't accomplish much.
Bacteria-ridden Sponges - Yes, they also bite. The sponges show up a few floors down where they attempt to overtake the tamagotchi's title for most annoying enemy. The sponges hit harder, while behaving pretty similarly to the tamagotchi. When struck they stagger for longer and their movement while still fairly random, does involve aiming for the player more often which makes them easier to deal with overall. They provide an amusing "You wring out the sponge!" message when killed.
Incontinence Man - This enemy is just a walking toilet joke, so it almost pains me to admit that incontinence man is actually an excellently designed foe. As he moves around the board he uh, leaks. Yellow water is placed on bordering empty tiles every so often as he moves around, cutting off escape routes when flanking or just shoving Billy away before he can land an attack of his own.
There's more to incontinence man than a casual trickle though. Actually managing to strike him is done via a kick to the bladder, which causes a yellow slime to be placed in the player's direction that then gets changed into water after a few cycles. Defeating him results in yellow fakes instead of red surrounding the body. His attack is... throwing lava lamps at you.
I have no idea if there's some meaning there that I'm not seeing, or if it's just some nonsense Nadir came up with to surprise players. Frankly, my money's on the latter.
What makes him such a good enemy is how he manages to make players have to navigate the space around them differently as the fight goes on. This is enhanced by an object in the corner of every that handles erasing the urine on a set timer. Since players can't tell how long the urine is going to stick around, they're forced to improvise around it disappearing almost immediately after spreading or it lingering around for a bit.
Seeing as all the previous enemies amounted to just moving randomly/towards the player in an endless loop, the extra complexity makes this guy stand out far more than the others.
Incontinence man is also the only enemy that gets a chance to be more than just an enemy, actually playing a role in one of the only instances of humor that got me. Hidden away in a corner one of the incontinence men has a secret hideout. A nearby underground spring lets players drink to restore some health, though Billy will comment on the slightly unusual taste of the water. I am not proud that this is what got me to laugh, but it would be unfair to pretend I didn't when the vast majority of the game's humor elicited no response from me.
Face-eating Harlequins - Nadir's ability to create more unique enemies is no one-time fluke. The harlequins are introduced as the final new enemy, appearing only in the later floors. They too are a new kind of threat with little to compare them to from other dungeon crawlers. They retain the same bland mix of movement seen everywhere else, but offer a unique mechanic for their attack.
The face-eating harlequin will try to eat Billy's face. This is done with a three-strike rule. The first two times any individual harlequin is in contact with the player to take a chomp, a message will pop up about how they missed by millimeters before they back off and restart their main combat loop. Let one land a third hit, and it actually will connect, with Billy's face being consumed and the game instantly ending!
Unlike the other enemies they move very slowly which makes them easy to ignore. Don't get too cocky though as you never know when another enemy may strike, and in the darkness it's easy to lose track of a harlequin that's made an attempt on the player's life. Getting "hit" once is all it takes to make you worry that the next one that gets you is actually the same one as before, creating a pretty tense opponent!
The Enemies of Mir
If it's a luxury to be able to just make up whatever comes to your mind and call it an enemy in the Zenith path, then the Nadir path gets the luxury of having countless games to reference when it comes to making more "standard" enemies. Her foes are significantly less interesting, but have the benefit of being a lot more easy to deal with. Carrying a gun comes in handy sometimes.
Demon - Wow, who'd have guessed? The basic enemy of Mir's cavern escape are these little demons with sharp claws. It won't surprise you to learn that they too move at cycle one, with a mix of moving randomly and towards the player. They can be a problem if they manage to get up close. Luckily, each hit staggers them without locking them, so a steady stream of bullets can deal with them before they manage to get in Mir's face.
Snake - First off, excellent use of the character. For all the snakes you'll see in ZZT games, I don't think I've ever seen somebody depict them as slithering upright like this. They are another pretty formulaic enemy, slithering around randomly until they catch a glimpse of the player, causing them to charge straight at them. One shot is enough to deal with them, and thanks to their charge-based movement, landing a shot is a test of reflexes rather than aim, which helps make them a lot more tolerable than they would have been otherwise.
Snakes bite if they reach Mir, dealing a modest three damage. The real problem is that they inflict a poison status on Mir which ticks her health down by one every seven cycles. The effect doesn't go away until Mir finds a healing vial on one of the corpses lying around. While there are a lot of corpses, there really aren't that many healing vials, and it's impossible to tell if any body will provide one until its actually reached, so getting poisoned mostly means running around to the next body or two, cursing your luck at only finding gems and ammo, and then succumbing to the poison.
In the late game, there even comes a point where there aren't any more potions to find, but there sure are plenty of snakes! If you get bit, you're better off just reloading your save on the spot if you don't have an un-examined corpse already within your torch's light. They're the tamagotchis of the Nadir path, saved from the title of worst enemy only because they're so polite about being an easy target once they start to rush Mir. Getting bit feels like it's your own fault, which can't be said of the tamagotchi.
Large Demon - Identical to the fun-sized demons, except they take five hit to kill rather than three, and deal ten damage with their claws rather than five. Oddly when killed they take a single ammo away from the player. I genuinely didn't notice this during gameplay, and have no idea what purpose its meant to serve, whether for gameplay or story purposes.
Each enemy has a little bit of flavor with custom messages displayed when they attack, when they're harmed, when they're offed, and a unique message for each monster that manages to kill the player. On the Zenith path, Nadir gets to have some fun with this and inject a little bit of humor that makes the more comedic theme shine through even when death is involved. For a modern audience, that humor is clearly there, though it very rarely lands. Despite this, there's only so much you can do with enemies in ZZT, so the text is a good way to make the enemies feel more distinct rather than being no different than a gremlin in a BlueMagus game.
Meanwhile on the Nadir path, everything feels extremely generic. Claws scratch, fangs bite, and that's really about it. The more serious tone the Nadir side goes for strips the enemies of personality entirely, leaving combat feeling forgettable instead. The poison mechanic is the only visible effort towards creating interesting enemy designs, and even that is being generous.
The Nadir path does have one tremendous advantage though. The erratic enemy patterns on the Zenith path do not work well with the exclusively melee combat. I struggled significantly with the tamagotchi-laden early floors and lack of health refills, eventually giving up and starting over with the world edited to set the players health to absurd levels. While it did get better as the tamagotchis gave way for incontinence man and the face-eating harlequins, the Zenith path is significantly more frustrating than the Nadir.
Having a ranged weapon lowers the stakes significantly, a bit ironic given Mir's much scarier journey than Billy. Players can stun-lock the demons and quick-draw the snakes well enough that even if the enemies are RPG 101 designs they're still fun to fight. Then again, the snakes' poison meant I was reloading probably just as much as I would have if I didn't crank my health up so high for the tamagotchis. At least with the snakes, I was reloading pro-actively, and perhaps could have survived to find an antidote if I was willing to bother.
((Cognito-)Hazardous) Environments
The player on either path has more to worry about hurting them then the enemies themselves. One place where credit is definitely due is in Nadir's usage of environmental traps scattered throughout his dungeons. These show up quite rarely in other dungeon crawlers. Deep December has a single spinning blade I guess? Everything else I can think to look at seems to offer nothing of the sort.
The silly half of psyche with its sponges and bed-wetting jokes has more grisly ways for unsuspecting players to be killed than basically any other ZZT dungeon crawl. Seemingly solid walls may actually contain spikes that extend outward at the most inopportune times. Getting caught by a spike is the main concern of course. However, the design also means blocking off routes for a short moment, which can help players escape enemies that are chasing them down, or just as likely hinder the player's own escape when they find themselves now suddenly pressed against a wall. They're a simple addition to the game that make its environment much more fluid. Players can't feel safe until they've had time to wait for a trap to spring, and rarely want to actually stand still in a dungeon teeming with monsters.
Nadir has used this exact effect before, getting good mileage out of the portcullis from Fantasy World Dizzy ZZT. Having a little trick like this up his sleeve is how you can tell you're playing a genuine Nadir game.
Rather than spikes, Mir gets to deal with the classic spinning blades instead. Unlike Deep December where the blade hurts quite a bit, in Nadir's world you don't get over a sawblade to the waist. Players foolish enough to get in their way instead receive a gruesome description of Mir's painful demise, with her legs severed, leaving her unable to move and waiting for death from blood loss. Dodging the blades is simple enough, so Nadir makes sure to include a few corpses that weren't up to par, giving Mir the opportunity to comment on the distance between torso and severed legs. It's one instance where the writing in psyche is rather effective at making its point, or edge as the case may be.
Not everything about the environments in psyche are out to kill players. Sometimes, the dungeon master is content to simply slow them down with force-fields tied to switches or some more puzzling devices that need to be figured out on the fly. The puzzle aspect of the game is light enough that it's easy to overlook, especially as none of the more complicated puzzles are actually required to get through the game on the Zenith side where they mostly show up. Instead they offer up little rewards that make things easier for players, and given the health issues on the Zenith path, it's probably worth taking the time to figure them out for the increase in survivability alone.
There's nothing too wild here. There's a "Lights Out" puzzle with some pegs to push down, a series of objects with meaningless characters that start flashing when you press them in the right order, and an audio puzzle where a short series of musical notes needs to be repeated in the correct order. They add some needed variety to the gameplay at least. The music puzzle was my favorite not for gameplay reasons, but just because the solution is "ABBA CD", unintentionally making the Nadir path probably just as funny as Zenith's.
When not trying to challenge players, the dungeon design itself in psyche mostly falls flat. Both paths suffer from "caves are gray" syndrome, and so every environment looks the same. On the Zenith path things fade from light gray to dark, and for Nadir from dark gray to black. On the Nadir side it's a bit more forgivable, but for Zenith it's a let down to start the game with such vibrant visuals and to interact with all these strange characters only for every level to be nothing more than some jagged tunnels carved out of stone.
There are some instances of decoration here and there. One floor has an elaborate transporter that uses the player-clone technique to yank the player from one portion of the board to another. Coming across one in the darkness without any explanation seems exciting until you realize that there's nothing else to it beyond transportation. It does at least let Nadir surprise players better, as the dark boards that make up the game mean yanking the player to somewhere completely unknown, with no telling how many enemies might instantly start swarming upon the player's arrival.
There's the occasional water-feature, usually portrayed as a natural spring which may or may not be something players can drink from to restore some health. An actual fountain shows up in the Nadir path as well, complete with the expected fading animation. Maybe it's just me, but while the animation is fine, it looks less fountain and more fire hose to me with the size of the giant water spout shooting upwards from it.
For other resources, players will have to scour the dungeon floors in search of loot. Both halves of the game take the classic approach of having torches placed on the walls to collect. This has gameplay implications as unlike the objects used here, actual torches do show up on dark boards at all times. Each side does a good job providing enough torches to players, and the lack of anything too maze-like means that you can get through the game with what's provided.
The Zenith path has a shop that can only be accessed by solving one of the game's puzzles to obtain a credit card to unlock the door. For payment, gems are the currency of choice, with no cards accepted. The shop allows players to buy health and torches at sensible prices for a change, and even lets players exchange their score for more gems. It's always a welcome sight to see a ZZT shop that players can actually make good use of. While the shop itself is a worthy addition to the game, there are still some aspects to it that don't sit right with me.
Firstly, there's the issue of the shop's location. It's found on the very top level of the dungeon. I can see players being willing to head back up a floor to try the credit card and being rewarded with something to use their gems on. I can't see somebody six floors deep walking all the way back to the start of the game to buy some more health. Adding a second shop close to the halfway point would do wonders to getting players to actually spend those gems. Even a little shortcut between the top floor and a later level that can't be opened until the lower portion of the dungeons is reached would do in a pinch.
Secondly, the shop shouldn't even be locked up to begin with! Players won't know the shop even exists if they don't find the credit card on the next floor, and then think to turn back and try it on the door. The old credit card to unlock a door trick is a pretty established trick (or at least was for those that grew up watching Dexter's Laboratory), so I don't fault the puzzle itself. What I dislike about it is how it forces players to turn around in a dungeon crawler, something that's rarely done save for desperate moments hoping to spot a missed chest somewhere.
Speaking of chests, those are the main source of items for the Zenith path. They'll contain first aid kits, torches, gems, and sometimes bonus points for stopping to open them.
They also contain:
- The f-slur in their "do not open the chest" option.
- A "leet like Jeff K" reference in their "do not open the chest" option.
Gaming in the year 2000 everybody!
Equilibrium
Both games end in a very similar manner with each half's protagonist entering a room only to find a person bathed in green light that steps forward to explain everything.
On Zenith's path, the wizard appears once more, finally revealing his true form! He's secretly been none other than the game's author, Zenith, this whole time. Billy is quick to accept this reality, proclaiming Zenith to be his new god and quickly asking for the meaning of life, before clarifying that he really just means what the point of this game was.
Zenith reveals his mission statement. It's all to amuse some of his friends. A perfectly good reason to make a ZZT game, and one that should make it no surprise that it didn't resonate with somebody in their mid-30s playing it more than twenty years after the fact. The philosophy continues with Billy wondering if Zenith succeeded, as if he didn't then Billy's own existence was for nothing. Zenith can't know until the game is released, leaving it up to fate.
The only loose end is the whole green light thing that formed the motivation for Billy's dive into the dungeon. Zenith kind of shrugs it off, explaining that green is evil (as was his catchphrase at the time) and offering to send Billy back home. Billy is warped off somewhere and gets a happy ending for his troubles.
For Nadir's path, Mir has it a bit rougher for she is a non-believer. Nadir addresses her by name, commenting on her cough and injuries, which only gets Mir upset that this stranger seems to know who she is. Nadir again reveals himself to be the creator of this game and everything in it. Mir rejects this. Everything she went through was just some kid's "paranoid fantasy" as she describes it, or I guess as Nadir sees fit to have her describe it.
Free-will or not, Nadir is ultimately able to exert control of Mir. Her refusal to accept the fact that she's just a character in a game, and that her suffering was all because Nadir wanted it that way for the sake of the game is met with punishment. Nadir proves his abilities by swinging her around the room a bit, smacking her into the walls a few times. A convincing argument no doubt.
Nadir counters her scowls with the alternative. He could have never made the game and then she wouldn't have existed at all.
But Mir recognizes that her life actually sucked pretty bad. Billy's adventure was pretty brutal too, but far more abstract. It's easier to deal with vicious guys with bladder problems than literal demons. Mir gets to deal with Nadir willing Emma into existence and refusing to allow her to be saved. Mir has a lot to be mad about!
Alas, she can't (or perhaps Nadir won't let her) stay upset for long, admitting to herself that existing is pretty nice. Instead, she just makes a simple request, the same request Billy made: to go home. With Zenith, this results in a happy ending. Nadir, is a bit less kind, opting to instead erase Mir from existence before admitting that her complaints were legit, and that she would have achieved the same result by just lying down and dying in the dungeons. It sucks!
Neither ending is particularly satisfying to reach. The author making an appearance in their own ZZT worlds is such an old idea that you can find it on the ye old z2-era ZZT Clichés article. Both sides exist as exercises in boredom above all else, seemingly working against the idea that any meaning can be found within. It didn't matter. You played the game for nothing. No go do something else.
I suppose Zenith is nice because he's Zenith while Nadir is more of a jerk because he's Nadir. Mir's unfortunate ending is the most compelling bit of story in her side of psyche, which to me suggests a failure on Nadir's attempt to tell a serious narrative. The only thing that really sticks afterwards is how bad Mir suffers while Nadir plays with his toys, getting rid of them the moment they stop being amusing. Ending the game on Nadir's path is just a bummer. Why even bother?
Final Thoughts
*throws arms in the air*
I don't know!
psyche is very much a product of its time, and that time has long since passed. It's easy to be hard on it now for not holding up, but all the same it's hard to really find anything that's a deal breaker with it. I've played more entertaining dungeon crawlers than the two included in psyche, but it's not unplayably bad or anything. Zenith's path is a little too mean with its tamagotchis, but eventually health becomes less of a concern as the enemy demographics change. Nadir's path is very much a by the book excursion through demon-infested caverns. Neither is particularly exciting, and neither's gameplay even at their best really stands out all that much.
Some of the more original designs seen with the harlequins three-strike system and incontinence man's zoning capabilities definitely have potential. They hint at a more complex dungeon crawler than the one Nadir drops players into. Even these enemies don't add all that much to the game, infrequently appearing with other enemies to make their tricks more effective.
The story lines on both paths don't offer up much either. Zenith's might have been more amusing back in the day, and I can't fault Nadir for not anticipating the need to stay relevant decades later. The ending even admits as such that this is a game meant for a specifically named audience to enjoy above all else, so what right do I have to complain that I am not that audience? Even though the absurdist humor might not fare so well today, I also can't help but feel like the adventure doesn't lean into it enough. Nothing connects the game together other than passages, with all the game's NPCs just being there to give players something to interact with. The dungeons are still your generic gray cave when there's plenty of justification to really get weird with it. To be willing to create enemies far removed from the usual fantasy themes seen in these like sentient sponges, but to then fight them in nondescript caves prevents the world from feeling all that cohesive. It's a dungeon crawl template crossed with Mad Libs. The designs that come from filling it out are wacky, but don't feel like there was any thought into how they might relate to one another.
And Nadir's path suffers even more. There is no story to be told here, only dead bodies to describe. They can tell a story, of a battle with demons that was lost and the extreme consequences of losing the fight, but that's irrelevant for Mir. The only times information gleaned from a corpse comes up is with the spinning blade traps which will have already been seen before finding a victim to one, and the one person that was bit by a bunch of snakes seen before a nest shows up. Mir's story lacks any events that aren't the consequences of the player's combat prowess. Emma should serve as a stepping off point towards learning more about the caves and the mysterious spade symbol. Instead she's just there to trade and then die later. Players and Mir alike will both tire of pages of text just to get to the all important "In his bag you find 10 ammo, a healing vial, and 3 shimmering gems". It's like reading a recipe online and having to slog through paragraphs of text that has nothing to do with the directions you're after. Except instead of tales of vacationing in Greece it's severed limbs and upside-down crosses.
The combat might be simple, but to its credit, it is fun. The potential for something better than "meh" is definitely here in both paths. It's all just potential. For those Nadir die-hards back in the day leaving high praise, I don't feel like they're presenting the game all that accurately. There's a lot of excitement for the mysterious Mir and the dark atmosphere that's about on par with a skeleton in Fallout found sitting on a toilet. The combat in Zenith's side drags the game down by just generally being unpleasant to participate in. Swap the gameplay and keep the tone, and I think a mix of Zenith's humor (attempts) and more balanced action could have made for something that if not great, would at least be a safe recommendation for those that love a good romp through one of the many dungeons of ZZT. With each side suffering from some quickly noticed issues it's hard to find much praise for psyche so far from its initial release to a younger audience with fewer options for dungeon crawls available.
It doesn't do anything too atrocious (though it certainly dates itself with the language and jeffk jokes), and there's still fun to be had with it. It's just really difficult for the many little things to not bring down what is at best, a decently playable dungeon crawl. Nadir would get it together a bit more with the Frost series where melee combat was another staple that served to keep players invested in a game whose attempts to hook players into the world was focused around the text and cut-scenes. Here the balance is out of whack, leading to a mediocre experience that leaves a bit to be desired.
