Crunchy (v1.4)

The interior is a nice drop-ship design. The line walls come off as seating for the infantry, and the blocked off cockpit is a good touch.

Less successful is the effect to imply the ship taking off and moving. This is where you'd see a starfield animation of objects moving across the screen. Instead clysm just has objects shoot quite a bit, which looks too busy to my eyes for the effect to work. It also makes things a little awkward with fighting off the enemies here as the stat limit is routinely being hit and easing off as the bullets constantly spawn in and out.

Also the confusion of "castaway" and and "stowaway", but whatever.

Players get to confront the king in the back of the ship, where the king wonders if he'd have been better off just having ignored you and hoping your memory would never return.

The showdown between the king and the player isn't particularly different from any other action screen in the game. You fight off a bunch of ruffians, while some sentries fire bullets into the mix. A three-layered barrier protects the king and some of his soldiers, but is broken through with just a single shot.

The ones behind the barrier won't move or fight back at all once exposed. They all unceremoniously let out a yell when shot before dying. You can't even tell which one is supposed to be the king among them.

The scene further struggles due to the inclusion of a passage off to the side. Players are intended to go there first before finishing the battle, but given the ruffians running around, it's hard to ignore everything to make an unlabeled detour for no discernible reason.

It's going to be much more natural to start taking out the enemies for some breathing room, and at that point, why not just finish the fight? The passages can be explored once this board is cleared.

The wing isn't all bad though. My last bullet was used on the king, so the supplies here can be life-saving. You'll also find none other than your old partner, seen earlier in the throne room... I think? By Turmoil, clysm realized just how confusing it can be to make pretty much every character in the game identical in appearance.

Again, this is your partner. This is not the Green Marauder. It's just another green guy that's on your side. Though here he's only green as he's supposed to be in disguise.

Regardless of the protagonist's lack of memories, this guy is still invested in completing the mission, and happy to have you back with him. Again, the king is already dead at this point. The ship really should been structured in a way that would force players to first explore the wing, and only afterwards fight the king and his last soldiers.

One of those doors clysm loves so much would have worked great for the purpose.

Your partner tells you to kill the king while he gathers "evidence". He then hands you a parachute and says to meet up on the ground in the nearest civilized area after landing. Talking to him a second time gets the player some food for an extra one hundred health, which is nice. By this point, I imagine even when presented with text in a window players are going to try talking to any object they can multiple times. There's almost no danger left at this point though. If you were able to defeat the ruffians and soldiers, you're already in the clear.

Still, it's nice to have the help there, though even with all the reinforcement, I would rather the player get that health automatically rather than run the risk of it being missed.

The parachuting consists of simply entering a passage and arriving safely on the ground, no excitement there. Continuing onward, players have to find a path to another town which is done with a short multi-board maze. Any wrong exits return the player to the starting board. It's more filler than fun, especially this late into the game. Yet I can't knock clysm for wanting something a little less convenient than parachuting directly to a town, or a sign directing the player to one. This was a blind jump after all.

There's some kindness shown to players with the use of forest everywhere. It's helpful when you inevitably guess incorrectly on where to go next to be able to reference your tracks when you have to retrace them.

At the same time, it does do the incredibly annoying trick of requiring players to advance to one screen, and then immediately turn back to advance again. Not wanting to risk having to start from scratch, double-backing is almost certainly the last option anyone will think to take dragging out an already dull part of the experience.

The town that is found is entirely empty. Mostly just to hurry things along as at this point the game is over save for the celebration of a successful mission. I suspect this is where the fatigue began setting in. Luckily clysm has the good graces to hurry escorting players to the end sequence.

There's one building players can enter, which is a dark room with some bears and gems? One last chance to bolster your score I suppose. It's entirely optional, so players like me with no ammo left can leave as soon as necessary. I wonder if clysm planned to have more here and then opted to just let the player and partner meet up again with an escape vehicle right away. If so: smart decision.

The conveniently located shuttle is commandeered, with your partner flying the two of you directly back to base on your own planet.

Players are taken straight to the award ceremony's conclusion. It's a lovely little ending. Each single NPC here has their own unique congratulatory phrase, with the emperor eagerly awaiting the celebratory feast.

It's a very open ended ending, not just in the sense of what happens next, but in the way that players can explore the palace a tiny bit as well. It looks bigger than it actually is, as the boards are connected in such a way that things loop. Until you run into a duplicate board from the other side, it's easy to think you've only seen half of what's here.

Which really just boils down to the kitchen with a few confused chefs wondering why you're there. The other halls lead to a winding corridor of guest rooms with the player's room saved for last.

But in terms of aesthetics, clysm nails it on the closing board. Nicely framed text, and a pleasant-looking landscape give the player one last thing to look at before lying down in bed and sleeping to conclude the adventure.

That Man Ate A Bag of Keys And You're Laughing

Crunchy doesn't take things too seriously. Yes, you lost your memory. Sure, you've been thrown into prison for seemingly no reason. It's true that mind control is a major plot point, but as Sweeney said in the ZZT editor's documentation "The ZZT Editor is a tool for creating silly ZZT worlds". At its heart, Crunchy wants only for you to be entertained, and then includes a number of small gags to reward players for spending time examining the world closely.

I mentioned previously that a significant number of characters players meet in this game are green. Yet the first friendly character is red ...because he's sunburned.

He's... kind of hurting all over. Dude has seen better days honestly.

Later on, players meet up with the same character again, now imprisoned for not accepting the snake king as his own. This time he's purple, so players won't be able to recognize him. It's okay though, his sunburn is just getting better.

Some darker humor comes from a staple of early ZZTer creations. Crunchy is no stranger to giant snakes that seemingly every new author just has to include. It's just something you've got to get out of your system. The snake castle has a few caged up here and there, with some guards talking about who will be the volunteer for today for feeding time. Not long after, upon reach the castle prison players get to meet a panicked prisoner that suspects they're about to be dinner.

Clysm encourages players to speak with everyone they meet multiple times, which is a golden opportunity to slip in a few jokes like these when you least expect it. Dialog is deliberately kept to single line text messages for anything that isn't a big exposition. It's nice for these bits of incidental dialog to not need to move your hand from the arrow keys to the enter key repeatedly.

A mere forty-two characters per line is a tight squeeze, but clysm makes it work. It gives the text a slower pace to let each line sink in before checking for the next.

One of the stranger aspects of the game is how clysm works the use of keys into it. There a massive number of locked doors throughout the game which can hold anything from supplies to prisoners. Rarely though do those rooms contain more keys inside, and yet there aren't really enough keys to go around.

Clysm seems to have taken the unusual approach of forcing players to decide what intrigues them the most and run the risk of being unable to open up anything else on screen. This makes every door unlocked feel like a bit of a gamble, as sometimes when there are people inside they will provide more keys.

The design is sound enough that I don't think it's possible to miss anything actually important to the story. Nor does clysm use the same colored locks for moving forward as he does these side areas. This could potentially be a way to encourage an extra playthrough of the game. Each trip means opening doors that were kept shut before, but at the same time this is ZZT and it's absolutely trivial to save your game before opening one and reloading if you aren't sold on its outcome.

This is another opportunity for humor as any door opened needs to feel like the player is getting something out of it, but you can only give ammo and gems so often before players no longer feel a need for more. The little gags meanwhile get to be fresh every time.

The snake castle's prison demonstrates clysm's approach to this rather effectively. Players are given just two keys to open three cells. One prisoner looks different enough that they would be presumed to be the important one, and sure enough they are. That's the Green Marauder in there.

But if players don't opt to open his cell first, rather than miss out on the big reveal of who the player is and why they were imprisoned at the start of the game, clysm simply has one of the less important prisoners thank the player for freeing them by providing a yellow key of their own.

Players are guaranteed to be able to reach the Marauder. They aren't guaranteed to open all three cells, leaving something to continue to entice (or just load the dang save).

While it all works out in the end, there are a few cases where being unable to open every door is much more of a hindrance to the current playthrough than something to look forward to for next time.

Right from the start, the game's second board has eleven yellow doors and only one key up for grabs, with another visible behind two yellow locks. This early into the adventure, I had no idea if I should be prioritizing getting the ammo or trying to break into the yellow cages, and wound up doing neither as I took a look around before deciding to commit.

It gets even more awkward due to the breakable wall situation. Technically, players can get all that ammo by shooting six walls. With so little to go on, I couldn't come to a conclusion on whether the breakable shooting was meant to be exploited or an oversight.

Ultimately, I think it's permitted as when players meet the Green Marauder for the first time, some of his men are protecting a room full of gems. This time, shooting breakable walls is the only way in, and it can't be an oversight as there's a fake wall in that room that leads to the secret Nowhere board for more items to collect. Clysm is clearly aware players can shoot these walls to access other areas, going so far as to design secrets around doing so.

In my time with the game, I never did open up those cages, and the reality is that you can open all the doors here, even without shooting the walls. At least, as long as you spend two keys to get into them in the first place.

The person found in the cage can provide infinite yellow keys. This isn't a debug object accidentally left in, nor is it a coding error where an object is missing a #zap touch command. It's just a great gag.

Every time you speak they cough up a yellow key, and the narrative transforms from this poor man accidentally swallowing a key to to a confession that he loves eating the things and does so willingly. The last message repeats, allowing infinite yellow keys to be generated, which is great for this board. It technically means you can open whatever you want throughout the game as well, though the one key of each color limitation makes it very impractical to do so.

The gag alone was by far my biggest laugh. I really wish I had opened that door early on rather than having to discover it while doing post-game cleanup to see what I missed.

The ending ceremony tries to elicit a few chuckles too! For as celebratory as everyone is that the snake king has been defeated, the emperor is a lot more concerned with dinner.

Yet, you can't fault him when the player themselves is also rather concerned with the food. Most of the interactions in the kitchen are just speaking to chefs and getting descriptions of kitchen appliances. Save for one repeatable action...

At the very last second, clysm adds a tremendous amount of personality to someone who doesn't remember who they are. I just love this. What an adorable little game.

Final Thoughts

You know what? Great little game.

If this didn't have clysm's name attached to it, and was just some one-off by somebody who never made anything else with ZZT, I'd still have been quite happy with the game. Given the high bar reached with his other games, yeah, this is definitely the weakest of the three by a considerable margin, but there's not really anything to complain about here.

The little forest maze could do with not being there I suppose. A few forks in the road make it possible to end up not seeing a path at all if you end up moving too far ahead to want to turn back. That can be a bit annoying and could be allieviated with some better communication about which exits keep you within the current location versus moving you forward to the next.

The keys mean you'll almost certainly miss a few things if you aren't constantly reloading saves, but I feel like clysm was experimenting with giving players a reason to return to the game again in the future. Now, as to whether or not that design is a good idea is debatable, yet even if you take it as a failed experiment, it's not something that obviously wouldn't be ideal.

The only real complaint here is that too many characters are green! It's difficult to know who is who, and with a story that was made up as clysm went along, it can be hard to follow. Using something other than a smiley face for the snake people would have helped quite a bit in communicating that they were non-human as well.

But Crunchy is fun. The action is fairly light prior to the final ship, and the mixture of silly writing and mystery keep players motivated to continue onward reasonably enough. This isn't the game I would tell people to check out first from clysm, and it's probably the one you can get away with skipping as well. It's just a case of his later work really surpassing what's here, which is a solid first release that avoids common issues with too many enemies or confusion with how players need to progress.

There is potentially one last issue in the way that some important dialog like the Green Marauder's explanation of your past can technically be skipped by just not opening up any prison cell. It's also possible to choose the exit passage first in the snake king's ship. jumping out of the before talking to your partner (and technically without a parachute). Both would make an already confusing game even harder to follow. For the cell, I can give clysm a pass as players want to explore boards. They're going to open up some cells and clysm designed it so that players can always open the Marauder's. The shuttle though, comes down to a coin flip of which passage players will enter first, with a bit of bias given to the correct passage as the exit comes off as a "go forward" passage to me given it starts off inaccessible.

Those flaws can cause trouble perhaps, but it's really more like mischief. Not talking to the Marauder is a stretch and if you accidentally fall out of a plane, the reload key is right there.

If you like the unpredictability of younger authors' work, Crunchy will certainly deliver, and do so without stumbling into any of the problems such games usually have with difficulty, coding errors, or anything of that sort. Overall, Crunchy is a ZZTer's initial release that shows a lot of promise. Play clysm's other games, and you'll even get to see that promise fulfilled.