Yoshi and Luigi: The New Adventures to Save Princess Daisy

At the time of this review, this ZZT world was recently displayed in a Worlds of ZZT stream. I'm glad I was there for it, because this is honestly an incredibly "ZZT-feeling" game.

This game's dialogue, humor, and style pay a low-key homage to the Yoshi and Keesh games from the '90s by Chris Kohler and Al Riccitelli; but at the same time, the authors put their own spin on it and added in some characters from their other works (including, apparently, an entire written story continuity that the authors have worked on! wow!) -- for a ZZT player like myself, it felt nostalgic while also simultaneoulsly feeling fresh. I don't know if there are any other Mario/Yoshi ZZT games that gave a nod to the Super Mario Bros. movie, but I'll admit I laughed when I saw it. Anthony Scapelli, from the Yoshi route in particular, is an absolute goldmine of quotes.

The graphical quality tends to fluctuate, but you will frequently see drawn large enemies in the game; they're often kind of a hoot to look at! My favorite board, visually, is probably the board after the Scapelli fight. As for sounds, the game borrows the classic Super Mario World tune from previous Yoshi games, and there are often original sound effects/jingles; they vary in quality but it's usually fine to listen to them.

The gameplay is, unfortunately, where this game suffers a bit. Aside from the fights with large opponents, there are boards that can be a bit confusing and unclear on what you need to do, particularly in one of the Luigi boards where you have to find an invisible object to get a key necessary for progress. On top of that, during some of the boss fights there will be a lot of star spam; you don't get a lot of health in this game so you may need to abuse the ?HEALTH cheat to survive and see more of the game. There are also quite a few bosses that probably take far more shots than they ought to, but you at least get entertaining dialogue from them most of the time. One last gameplay issue that I wanted to bring up is that, in certain boss boards, you can softlock yourself if you aren't using cheats by getting a Key from the boss and unlocking a Door that doesn't actually get you any progress; I imagine it'd be an easy fix though.

All in all, though, I still think this world is worth experiencing! If you don't have time to play it, at the very least you ought to take a look at the Worlds of ZZT stream of it. I do hope the authors of this game continue to make more ZZT worlds; I'm interested in seeing what more they produce!