Hotel
The final "regular place" to explore is the hotel. I'll just get straight to the point. This board also doesn't matter, at least not for players. For the author, they got a chance to depict someone having sex and a naked lady in the bathroom! Neither of these guests thought to lock the door have a door, which in Kole's eyes means he's welcome to go where he pleases.
The casual homophobia feels like a total relic that today it elicits laughter more than anything else. Kole's creepiness towards women here remains firmly gross. What slang for breasts do you think Kole was going to end his sentence with? My money's on melons.
The couple on the bed depicts the old stereotype of men who want sex at all times and women who shoot them down. Neither of them react to Kole standing next to their bed.
Ignoring Kole sounds like a solid strategy, but he just won't read the room.
The Abandoned House
Actual gameplay??
The final building is abandoned, having been overtaken by a (gay) centipede and some other dangerous animals that probably escaped from the zoo.
It's a welcome sight to finally stumble onto a board with some action on it given the game's premise. While it's nice to finally get to do something other than read un-witty dialog, there still isn't all that much for players to do.
The limited torches found in Jaster's house subtly guide players to try and find either group of torches on the board. Entering with so few, there's a fear of running out almost immediately. Thankfully the layout is pretty simple, enough that actually ending up stuck in the dark would require some very slow exploration.
With the lights turned on to take in the whole board, the layout is revealed to be house-like, by ZZT standards at least, broken up into rooms built from rectangles.
The enemies are quite limited as well, with only a centipede ambush really threatening players health-wise.
The actual objective is a green key in the top right corner, which, true to form can be reached without even seeing an enemy should players happen to choose the rightmost path, making most of the board feel needless. It's still a step up from most though thanks to the included items to grab and enemies to shoot.
Plus it's actually got some story relevancy. A note can be found right by the entrance, introducing a new character, the mischievous trickster Loki, as the one who has the green key to Jaster's vault. According to Loki, Jaster has no idea what's inside his own vault, which is very funny to me since the vault actually features a very prominent window to the outside world.
See!
I didn't care to do the math, but taking the time to rob Jaster's red key, and then use it to gain access to the green key nets the player more than 100 health and closer to 250 ammo. Finally, Nimif has been fully explored, allowing a now well-stocked Kole to actually head into Madiwark territory for revenge.
All the same though, as the angry citizen at the shop said, you can find what you need in the woods. Players are very much allowed to play to Kole's hot-headed nature and leave town right away. At most, you'll run into two enemies before finding a cache of ammo. The supplies from the vault just put the game into easy mode, providing a nice cushion to health and ammo that allow even the most careless players to succeed.
Skip all of Nimif and you'll wind up with a better challenge, one that might actually get you killed at some point if you're not careful. Even if it takes another try or two, I don't think most players would struggle if they just set right out.
Welcome To The Jungle
After seeing a solid half of the game's playable boards, it's finally time to get this game going, heading north after the guards to claim your prize trophy before any of them do.
The worry about not killing Fury personally is quickly discarded as the next board features a small campground with a tent that can be entered. Inside are all the surviving guards licking their wounds from their Madiwark hunt which was ...a mixed success. Despite all the blood, everybody in bed is still alive, making this place safer than the zoo.
Captain Saturn of the Blue Guards explains the situation to Kole. The initial attack started off strong, until the Madiwarks ambushed the group. Things aren't looking so great for humanity here as the Madiwarks have won their second battle.
For Rithda the attack was unexpected, allowing Fury to use napalm to take out the town's guards before they could rally and fight. Here it sounds like they just got outsmarted and lost in direct combat. If I was rooting for the humans in this game, things would be looking pretty bleak right now.
Here, finally, on "Forest Path 3"[2] the game truly begins in earnest. It's dark, there are enemies, and unlike the ones in the abandoned house, the implication is that these are the wild creatures of this planet that are working together with the Madiwarks to get revenge on humanity.
For players this means traveling down dark paths keeping your trigger finger ready as the limited light of your torch lets enemies get close.
For as gung-ho as Kole has been, the action is very light even here. A lion, a tiger, and a ruffian (oh well) team up with a three-tile long centipede to launch their assault, which really doesn't amount to much of anything. Too few enemies is preferable to an insurmountable number of them, so I'll take what I can get in terms of game design.
The opposite extreme would be worse, but there's still plenty of opportunity to do something, anything, interesting here. Implications aside, I'd be fine with Kole bringing a reckoning to those that destroyed his town, using his hundreds of ammo to take on considerably larger groups of foes. Alternatively, since up to this point the Madiwarks have been winning, make them a genuine threat with Kole being unprepared for the task ahead, having to just barely make it through encounters alive. Instead, players merely get themselves a sample platter of ZZT's bestiary.
The ammo provided on this board alone is enough to deal with the rest of the jungle/forest environment, with more still on the way. Nature's Revenge is definitely going to give players little challenge, which is perfectly fine. I would just prefer if it gave me a lot of something that wasn't dead bodies and barely PG-13 levels of sexuality that don't mesh with the game world at all.
The tree on he right looks kind of like the Quake logo at least.
Farther down the road, WolfBrother does a nice job with a slow reveal of a body, a few specks of blood visible in blood that lead players to this unfortunate member of the Blue Guard.
Some of the creatures are still roaming around, though it's once again such a limited number of creatures that there's nothing to worry about.
The path also splits at the body, which makes it useless to hint at players which of the ways leads to danger. This ends up not really mattering as the northern path leads to still another path with another dead guard that has a locked door at the end. This board at least has a reasonable numbers of enemies with several tigers that ambush the player as soon as they enter and more hanging out in the rear to show up once players feel safe.
It's a level of enemies more fitting for an action title, at least the beginning of one. By the time the game finally provides some opposition its arrival is a bit too late.
Whether through a lucky guess, or by reaching the locked door, players heading east will get a nice change of pace in the form of a board that's well lit. A lone hut looms menacingly thanks to the multiple dead guards found just outside.
And so, with minutes of game remaining, Kole finally encounters a Madiwark.
More fantastic lines follow as Jitagas and Kole swap insults.
Learning that the Madiwarks can speak really puts things into perspective here. I don't know how much either species wants to listen to the other, but all the portrayals of Madiwarks as being extremely dangerous wild animals start looking really sus at this point. Why is anybody surprised that the Madiwarks started fighting back when their homes and forests are being destroyed?
This hut is even a Madiwark dwelling! They built this!
If there's any hope of mending relations, Kole is nobody's first choice for ambassador to humanity. The two begin their fight, with the walls of the hut gently cycling color to provide a little oomph to the otherwise dull environment.
Despite their successes with the guards, the Madiwarks end up being more bark than bite for players. Jitagas demonstrates how ZZT's action can be easily overthought. Their code has a lengthy loop of all kinds of elaborate movements like ?ccw rndne, ?cw seek, the kind of modifiers you rarely see, not because they're hard to use effectively, but because it's nearly impossible to notice them. You can tell when something is exclusively moving randomly, or relative to the player's position, but doing a mix of these commands does little more than make the code look fancier.
It is at least a sign of the effort that went into creating the game, even if these commands were placed without a thought as to how it would effect the flow of battle, it's still an acknowledgment that these fights should strive to be more complex than that of the lions and tigers roaming outside.
Four shots is all it takes before Jitagas drops a red slime and dies a bloody death. Each shot landed generates a pop-up window (unfortunately) to let Jitagas react to the damage. While the writing has been the most interesting aspect of the game, the lines here are merely generic phrases like "Lucky shot" and "Hmph" that would fit into most games.
Until the final blow is struck. Then Kole calls Jitagas a "punk bitch" and the game returns to form with unexpected laughs from its particular brand of early-2000s macho-ism.
The door opens allowing players to leave, with the white key to the gate being picked up as well. A flag is set to indicate the boss has been beaten, though nothing in the game actually uses the flag, with the key doing all the work of dividing the game into before and after Jitagas.
One final jungle road remains beyond the white door, with a four-way intersection. Torches again entice players to head towards the supplies where a significant reserve is revealed with a matching number of ammo items to collect nearby.
On the opposite side, Kole finally gets to meet with none other than Loki, who I wasn't expecting to actually be a character here.
Loki continues the trend of not exactly having much to say. "The Madiwarks are mad you killed a Madiwark!" For once I find myself relating to Kole with his understanding of cause and effect.
With that, Loki teleports(?) away. Players aren't required to talk with him, so once again interacting with things isn't necessary.
Lastly there's the path north which has another split to the side to give players a set of gems to go with their ammo and torches. Technically this is the only healing available after leaving Nimif, not that it matters much if you've raided the vault.
The lights turn back on, which tends to mean that WolfBrother has something he'd like to show off. This time, it's a very basic cut-scene. The player isn't actually prevented from moving around. They are helpless to do anything though, forced to look on emotionlessly as Fury reveals himself, grabs a still living Blue Guard and takes their life.
While I'm not surprised Kole doesn't attempt to help in any way, I'm more amazed that he doesn't say anything. This guy's ran his mouth every chance he could and only now does he clam up. He must be coming up with a real zinger for when they fight.
No, just "ass hole".
Again, elaborate movement patterns are used in the code. Again, nobody can tell.
The fight certainly isn't identical to Jitagas. Fury shoots way more often, and also throws stars at a dangerously rapid rate. The arena gives you some opportunity to hide from them, but new ones replace the old too quickly for defensive play to work. Both Madiwarks are very easy to stun-lock, allowing either fight to be completely trivialized by holding down the fire button. With Jitagas, the fight is manageable enough that it's easy to engage with the fight as intended. For Fury, I don't think there's much choice here due to the stars.
It takes nine shots to defeat him, each of which is once more accompanied by some dialog. It's even less compelling text than before, with almost all of them being a single word or utterance of something like "Grr".
The victory is just as before, with Fury pouring slime-blood all over the arena and the door out opening. No flag needs to be set or key given here. This is the end of the story.
The passage leads to a glamour shot of Kole delivering the killing blow.
I'm kind of mixed on it. Fury has gotten very scrungly (as the kids say these days). Kole though, looks solid both in form as well as some great color choices. STK never looked so bright. The art boards are really something else in this game. I would have loved to see more of them. The writing is great specifically because it's really not good. The visual element is legit impressive to me.
The Chris Jong comparison made way back with the opening art board applies even more here, though I don't think Jong ever depicted violence to this degree. The jungle-explorer sort of outfit is fitting for a game about going out into nature and dominating it. Good choices all around.
...well, except for Kole's new fashion of wearing his belt backwards so the buckle is visible from his back. Maybe it'll become a trend.
If you were expecting any closure to the story, think again. Once Kole says it ends, it really does end. The ending art and credits give no insight on what comes next. Do the Madiwarks back off? Is Kole satisfied? Will there ever be peace? (Probably not anytime soon.)
It ends like an old kung fu movie, the villain is killed, roll credits immediately. We don't need to dwell on what Kole returns to, a town that isn't his own and everyone he knows being dead. This is supposed to be a happy ending where vengeance has been achieved. Now that Fury is gone, we can all just assume that nothing bad will ever happen to humanity on this planet again.
The credits make it clear this was a solo job, with poor WolfBrother not even having anyone to thank other than his dog Rex. The one thing of interest is crediting Zzt Tutorial with programming. This is a help world I haven't seen before, and taking a glance the very first thing it teaches you is how to make walls flash, which did become a staple of this game's boss fights. It seems to focus more on interesting visual effects, such as the teleport effect used when Loki leaves before the final fight. It's nice to be able to pick out where something came from for a change.
Final Thoughts
And that's all there is to Nature's Revenge.
It's for sure a weird game, owing to its unlikable characters and writing you'd expect from a high school student trying to be tough, but the strangest thing about it is how unfocused it actually is. This is an action game where the vast majority of the game is spent exploring a town and gaining nothing from doing so. Every building Kole enters that doesn't have items to collect is effectively a waste of time, with WolfBrother creating distraction after distraction to slow Kole down. It can be a lot of fun to just explore towns in ZZT, take a look at The Sword of Destiny or Sivion for good examples. These towns are enjoyable to explore because there's so much to take in, and so many colorful characters to talk to. Here in Nimif, every location is pretty much identical to the others, with every conversation opening with somebody being hostile towards the other person.
The story also isn't great. It provides a sensible setup for a game, taking revenge on those who attacked you, but the framing goes unexamined making it hard to get on board with what it asks of players the moment you step back and think about what this setup actually means. Playing as the villain can be a lot of fun, Bloodlines puts players in control of a vampire, letting players drink the blood of innocent villagers they come across. Nature's Revenge isn't upfront about humanity being the villain of the story, trying to convince players they're the good guys solely because they're the humans, which leads to the entire plot feeling really awkward.
These issues could easily have been overlooked in the name of gameplay, yet even that is hard to find. The lead-up in Nimif takes so long that it dominates the game. What should be the core experience, going out into the jungle/forest to fight off the monsters that destroyed your town and get revenge on Fury in particular, comes off as a last minute addition to the game. The action is far too dry to be appealing. Too few enemies in too same-y environments result in a game whose primary action sequence is more comparable to a road traveled to get from Point A to Point B in something with more depth. Picture the walk from your hometown in Deceiving Guidance to the cave that leads to the Underdark where the bulk of the adventure is spent.
Nature's Revenge says it's a game about hunting down those who hurt you, and then relegates that to a few dark screens and two reasonable boss battles. The Madiwark fights are fine, but hardly the showstopper they need to be to make up for the lack of action everywhere else. In practice, the game is more of a fuck around and find out game, yet this too doesn't have enough depth to be interesting. Even if the insults can be funny at time, most interactions provide nothing interesting. When the most memorable part of your action game is a kid calling centipedes gay, there's a problem.
Really the one thing the game genuinely has going for it is the artwork. The close up of a Madiwark's face and the depiction of Kole's victory over Fury both make the game seem far more interesting than it plays. Finding a way to work in more of these scenes would probably have done the game well. Let me see Jaster's lawnmower exploding. Show me a caged Madiwark furiously clawing at the bars in the lab. Give me a good shot of Fury killing that one random guard. I believe WolfBrother could pull off these sort of scenes, and they'd help the game out quite a bit rather than only utilizing his biggest talent at the very start and very end of the game.
Overall, Nature's Revenge is a short game with not a whole lot to do. All the pieces are there to make something enjoyable, but it never comes together right. Everything drags on, the action is too light, and the story is too uncaring. It all feels very flat, doing things ZZT games often do, without much in the way of a creative spark to make it stand out. For all its flaws, there isn't anything really wrong with it. You can certainly play through it problem-free. It just can't find its footing, constantly leading players on that something interesting or cool will happen, never delivering.
- [2] Listen, sometimes the game says jungle. Sometimes the game says forest. Don't be an ass hole.
