♦ Livestream of the ZZT world "Svynar's 2nd Quest" by Lincoln Sayger, Tony Sayger (1999) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/tmcq2v10/]. ♦
The much awaited sequel to last week's stream of Svynar's Quest. I had some high hopes for the sequel as the first game was pretty solid, leaving me to expect the game's few issues to be resolved in the sequel making it something great.
Sadly, not quite. There are some definite improvements. The game looks really nice, even better than the last, with even it's action boards that you wouldn't expect to get extra love in the detailing often still being great to look at. The issue of so much combat being effortlessly avoidable is much less of a concern (though there are still a few encounters you can ignore). The sequel still gives players a ton of ammo, but this time health isn't completely free unless you return to a few specific points. It makes the action feel much more meaningful as you can run into danger of dying this time.
The downsides however come from an insistence of having boards that end with the player needing to slowly carry over several same-colored keys to a series of doors at the end, which would be way too tedious on screens that have long been pacified of creatures. This game's transporter maze board is about as rocky as the first, going on for too long, and being one of the aforementioned key-fetching boards. The real trouble though is that like the first game, players need to find all the digits of a password to access a certain area, which in this instance means finding some well hidden secrets that basically ask players to touch every single wall on a board to find hidden exits. The authors are at least nice enough to draw an "S" on the boards with these secrets (that looks almost like the world famous cool S), but it's a slow process even with SolidHUD pointing me towards the exits.
By the end of this first part, Svynar has explored much of the southern kingdom on a new quest to rescue a different princess in peril. We end outside the villain Chronus Fibbian's hideout only to discover that the combination lock code is busted and players are forced to ZAP their way in regardless. Whoops.
Next week, the hopefully thrilling conclusion.
♦ Stream Contents ♦
• (1:15:55) End of Ad Break 1
♦ Play this world directly in your browser ♦
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/tmcq2v10/
♦ Originally streamed on July 30th, 2023 ♦
