PPDV

This one's been sitting on the polls for a while now. Today's game is PPDV by Viovis. This is the first time a Viovis release is actually making an appearance in a Closer Look, though Viovis himself has been featured before when ZZTV 3 was covered which included his channel #TUS. That entry happened to include a preview for this game's sequel, where an incredibly long cinema sequence played out, that mostly left me waiting for it to end and not eager to see what PPDV 2 was all about.

But the harsh reaction is mine and mine alone. Folks were excited for the sequel, with the series being considered a somewhat notable release, laying the groundwork for creating experimental art with ZZT. When the second game was snubbed its one shot at a Game of the Month award over Los Refritos 9, its predecessor got the honor of taking home a Classic Game of the Month award instead.

The first question here, is what does PPDV even mean? The answer is: Purposely Protected Dynamic Visualties. The second question, is what does that mean, and to that question I can do no more than shrug.

What we do have here is a game of no real meaning, made in an era when that alone was a new concept. A lot of PPDV's appeal is in how wildly it differed from expectations of what ZZT worlds should be, and how it presented a new way that they could be. These days, we're all well aware ZZT can be used to create far more varied experiences than just running around fighting bad guys. For the time though, there's not much else to compare to this to.

There were numerous worlds that weren't "games" in the traditional sense by this point in ZZT's history, but none quite like this. You had worlds like Triple Weird focused on comedic writing and art, as well as games that felt like nonsense regardless of developer intent, yet the vast vast majority of releases were still games that challenged players to overcome obstacles and reach an end. PPDV ends up being a formative work that predicted? inspired? the idea of finding the fun in the nonsensical, pioneering a type of game that many would find themselves inspired by, and one that Viovis himself would continue to create for years to come.

So What Are We Playing Here?

PPDV is an experience more than anything else. As a ZZT world, players are invited to step inside, look at some surreal scribbles, vibe to a bit of music, and just slowly comb through what is roughly a series of short stories of little purpose or deeper meaning. You load it up and hit "P" as usual, but instead of starting a grand adventure or learning how to operate the latest and greatest engine ZZT had ever seen, you just get dropped onto a board with a crude man wearing an equally crude chef's hat, and are told that this is you.

It's really not though. I mean, it can be you, but for the purposes of PPDV, Rex Raptor, chef master and butler extraordinaire has very little bearing on anything. He is merely here to provide players with a gentle start to what they're really playing.

Plenty of games would certainly start off saying who you are, what you do, and provide some art of the player character (for example, Dragon Woods). When Viovis does it, something is clearly up. This figure is something you'd expect to see in a poorly-received AOL game, contrasted by background's shading that suggests effort and care being put into presentation.

How "good" PPDV really depends wildly on what you make of it. The world could easily be written off as a load of incoherent nonsense. That's certainly what a few of the games' reviews seem to suggest. While the historical record of ZZT is once again a nearly blank slate save for z2's reviews, there are at least a few hints to the game's reception. Archived Interactive Fantasies review scores have Hercules and Hydra both very unsure about it, giving it a 58% and 62% score respectively. This on its own might be enough to think the game flopped. Perhaps it did, but as Viovis built on what he started with PPDV, minds were definitely changed.

Shortly after its sequel was released, the original was given a Classic Game of the Month award featuring Hercules, Mr. 58% here, now praising it. His review lightly touches on the game's uniqueness, Viovis's style, throws around the word "trippy" quite a lot, and goes so far as to say that the game shows Viovis to be a "true artist".

"Trippy" is of course the ZZT community's home-grown genre. A type of game that's difficult to pin down exactly. Dream-like qualities, weird characters, maybe overt drug references, maybe players saying "ha ha what was this guy smoking when he made this????", and eschewing traditional colors in favor for less realistic choices. What if the grass was ...purple? What if the sky was ...brown? But that label rarely says much of anything about how those games play, and few ZZT games that often get labeled as trippy actually use the term officially. Worlds like Edible Vomit, Pop, and Kudzu frequently come to mind despite none of those worlds' authors referring to them as such.

That label is much more common from the 2000s onward. Of worlds actually tagged as trippy, only six predate PPDV, with one of those being an earlier Viovis release ...which itself has a text file that only refers to itself as an adventure. Given the term's slow proliferation, and the lack of knowledge as to who uploaded what trippy games where and when, it's quite possible that the vocabulary that would later to be used to describe the game didn't exist in ZZT circles at the time of its creation.

Viovis himself opted for the vaguest genre of all: "Miscellaneous" on z2 where the genre field was free-form, which got rolled into "Other" when trying to limit genre option on the Museum. The only thing Viovis is saying with this genre is that this game is somehow different from the rest.

It quickly shows.

Vignettes

My own expectations for the game weren't that high. I don't personally care all that much for the more nonsensical trippy ZZT worlds. Though I expected complete and total nonsense, that's not completely accurate. There's some structure here for sure, with the game being broken up into a series of short vignettes, whose exact boundaries can be hard to define. Sometimes it's obvious when one tale ends and the next begins, other times there are some false-starts of a board or two that seems to have nothing to do with its predecessors or successors. If you're going into PPDV bracing yourself for 80-something boards that have nothing to do with one another, that's not what you're going to find. Of course, if you're hoping for a coherent story or even multiple stories, you won't find that either.

You'll find instead whatever Viovis could come up with, until he comes up with something else. This leads to the entire game rapid-firing stories at players, leaving it up to them to decide if they want any of it to stick or if they'd rather just hit that next passage and continue marching towards the end. I feel like I gave this one a fair shake, and don't mind telling you that a few of the stories did capture my attention. As long as you load PPDV with an open-mind, you'll probably find some phrase or drawing that for whatever reason floats around in your subconscious for at least a little while. The challenge is just getting through so many boards to begin with.

The Ladder And The Magic Book

It starts with a ladder.

Then a different ladder.

Now I don't think that these two boards are enough for anyone to judge this game in anyway, but this is pretty much what you're in for here.

Just as quickly as something is introduced, it is discarded to never be mentioned again. Ever onward towards something new. Players are introduced to one of the game's named characters, "ack!" who gives a puzzle to solve. "The brain part", as he calls it. A magical book that helps people needs to be found.

Okay. That's reasonable enough.

Don't expect to hear from ack! ever again.

The book puzzle teaches players that they are not in for a grand adventure. Six giant books are presented, and a number of duplicated scrolls allow players to ask for a hint to figure out which book is the correct one.

There's also the comedy option where you can get a scroll to admit that it farted. With the scrolls, it becomes quickly apparent which books is correct, and without them it's just blind guessing. Again, this is not a traditional game. Viovis isn't trying to stump players and offer them hints to prevent frustration. He's aping a common ZZT puzzle here of finding which object of many is in some way correct.

Back in the day, anybody who downloaded this game with zero expectations, may have been tricked by this gameplay into thinking that as weird as it may be, that this is what the game was going to be like. Viovis eases players into his own world with its own rules by giving players a just barely recognizable "game" to begin with.

"PPDV is the tale of a man's search for a magical book that can heal people" fits in well enough with other single sentence synopses of other ZZT games. "Ned the Knight is a game where Ned must pass three challenges to become a royal guard." "Code Red is an open-ended adventure where you wake up and save the world from aliens in several unique scenarios." It sounds like enough of a basis for a typical ZZT game.

Back to the game itself, players soon discover that what they are after is a blue book about red horsies. Touching any of the square objects next to the giant books gives the subject matter and a prompt asking if this is the book they're after. Nothing happens if you are wrong other than a message laughing at the player, but as far as progress goes, you deliberately are unable to fail.

Finding the book opens the exit, then closes it off with some breakables before handing the player thousands of ammo.

This is the closest thing to traditional gameplay PPDV offers. It's also the only traditional gameplay PPDV offers. At this point, you're playing PPDV. Viovis has lured you in regardless of whether or not you know what to expect of the game.

Bird Cages For People

The next vignette though, is the one that I enjoyed the most of all.

It's different from rest if solely because Viovis himself is a part of it, though like any other character in this world, it hardly matters which character is which.

Viovis, while shopping at Wal-Mart, winds up discovering a weird conspiracy about bird cages for people. "Bird cages for people", is a powerful concept because that's just a cage, isn't it? But referring it to it specifically as a bird cage makes it seem like such a bizarre thing. That phrase is this game's brain worm for me. I am going to be reminded of bird cages for people for the rest of my life.

The cover-up doesn't last long though, as the police wind up not only blabbing, but demoing the forbidden bird cages as well. Ladies and gentlemen, the cops.

But then you go to a board that just reads "A ghost!" and the vignette ends.

This is what I'm talking about when I say the lines between these things are kind of blurry. The next board is a fresh start, and this board has nothing to do with either adjacent board. As far as describing the events of the game, they're really just non-sequitirs. Sometimes an end is a beginning, and sometimes that beginning itself is also an end.

Those Two People Who We Were Supposed To Be Killin

The next story is another one I enjoyed. These two coming back to back and so early on in the world gave me a renewed hope that maybe I would end up leaving PPDV as a fan. Of course, trying to justify why any vignette clicks when others don't is pretty much impossible. It's really just a matter of which phrases Viovis uses that lodge themselves into your specific brain.

I suppose I like this one for the idea of some hitmen forgetting who they're supposed to be targeting and deciding to go on with their hit regardless? That probably won't end well for anyone except perhaps the intended targets.

There's also something to be said about the acknowledgment that this information can be recovered. This guy just doesn't want to.

Not that it matters much, as he then screams and explodes into a mess of gore (red slime) that Viovis allows to fill the entire screen. The thousands of ammo given after finding the book earlier was given for good reason.

A simple series of words drawn on the board follow. It's the "Die, 2 names I forgot!" that gets me every time I see it.

For as little "storytelling" as there is, the giant letters come off to me like a comic book panel being obscured by onomatopoeia. Most of these vignettes don't really resolve in any way, but with two targets and two zaps... Well, you can put two and two together.

Zombies

Then it's off to some zombies, where Viovis's technique for hammering these out becomes clear. A series of very similar boards play out an identical cut-scene (to be generous). First there's a laugh, then the player comments that "you're not yellow", which I cannot connect with anything. Finally the zombie is shot and destroyed.

This happens over three boards which are obviously built from one-another. On the third board though, rather than just shoot them, there's an ultimate attack with some visual effects put into play. The fake walls that make up the floor are turned into tigers, empties, boulders, and bears repeatedly. However, this is not a full screen effect as the stat limit means that only a few rows of creatures are produced. This keeps the actual player safe from harm.

Games like Card Prime exploited the effect of hitting the stat limit mid #change to produce a wave effect by changing limited regions of the board into enemies, reaching the stat limit, and then changing them into something without a stat before repeating the process. It's not the greatest look, but it is something that will surprise you the first time you see it.

Viovis, doesn't implement a wave, allowing the original set of creatures to return to the starting element again for a fresh start. This causes only the first few tiles to impacted rather than rippling through the screen. I feel like the effect as actually seen was a deliberate choice though rather than not considering the stat limit, or at the very least deciding to keep the effect as-is once it was fist tested. It's odd enough to fit right in here.

(Play this board from the file viewer to see it in action. It's a bit too flashy still for me to want to make a GIF out of it here.)

Final Fannerific / Do You Want To Run To The Store

Experimentation within an already rather experimental title? Viovis says no more telling one story at a time. Here he starts the next chapter of the game only to immediately start another, resolving that second one, and then resolving the first. At least as much resolution as there is for anything in PPDV.

Or maybe it's all one story! It is impossible to tell.

Perhaps we're playing some Final Fantasy, perhaps we're just doing some quick shopping.

It really feels like the game shifts a bit here. Viovis comes up with a new special effect to use, and it really just takes over for a bit, popping up sporadically from here up through the game's end. Once again, the medium of choice is slime.

These slimes are allowed to do their usual thing, while an object slowly gets to work processing the breakables, transforming them into other walls creating some very random looking patterns of color and texture across the board.

Honestly, it looks great, if a bit intense. Unlike the effects on previous boards, this one continues to run even after the slimes are gone, cycling the board's visuals in a way where I couldn't help but stare for a moment. It's kind of like a ZZT lava lamp in a way.

All ZZT games released prior to 2003 require either purple keys, a purple dinosaur, or an RPG engine. PPDV fulfills it duty with this scroll.

By not actually having an RPG engine, I am saved from the curse of poorly made ZZT RPG engines. This is a great way to win me over.

And hey, some more of those slimes again. This time, the speed at which the walls are changed is cranked up significantly, which still looks kind of neat, but is far too intense to just embed. Free eye strain and headaches await those who want to see it for themselves.