Fred! Episode 2: Ffreddiannia (v2.00 Gold)

For the longest time, Fred! Episode 2: Ffreddiannia was my ZZT white whale. I first glanced at the whale during the introductory scenes of Sivion, where a password preventing access to that particular game required noticing a character in Fred! Episode 2. But when I downloaded the game, problems ensued. The game boasts one of the largest file sizes ever recorded for a single-world ZZT game, and this caused it to crash my computer whenever I loaded it up. Because of being unable to play for so long, I built it up in my head as a grandiose adventure stacked to the gills with content, storytelling, and programming proficiency. Years later and those technical constraints have been overcome, and I was finally able to harpoon the white whale. But the whale meat, how did it taste?

First, the name Fred conjures up a bevy of assumptions. Freaky, geeky, kinky, awkward... or a stern older German man. With the silly name of the game setting, the name of the player character, I expected a raucous comedic adventure. But instead, you get a basic story with some slight silliness in the character and setting names. You find yourself transported to a holographic planet (which has no real bearing on the plot, but you may surmise that this is a simulation) The king has been overthrown, and the evil Kkountt Ddrackula and Kkingg Kkongg have taken up residence in the smaller castles. They must be defeated, and the king rescued, for Fred to get the chance to return back to his home world. Apart from the literary device of repetitive consonants, this could be any number of ZZT games from the era.

The overall gameplay involves wandering a large, interconnected world, piecing together what you need to do to defeat the baddies (the Count and the Ape). You don't really get much in the way of clues on how to proceed, and frequently you will come across barriers to progress, which make you go "Oh, so that's what I need to do!" The areas tend to be fairly spacious and large, filled with as many enemies as possible before memory limitations are hit (This is undoubtedly the reason for the large file size mentioned earlier). Most are prebuilt but you will find an assortment of different snakes, each with their own combat style (such as ones who will disappear and reappear, ones who will jump on you like white on rice). There is an awful lot of backtracking across empty rooms, though the pieces fall together eventually once you put together the map of the game world. Some assorted invisible walls make progress even more frustrating. The main areas, of which there are a lava cave, lakeside, castle dungeons, and a City Hall, all conclude with a boss fight. These bosses usually just spam you with throwstars and require emptying out all your ammo on them.

There is limited interaction or puzzle solving, just a small town and an interaction with a Barney lookalike (hey, it's a 90's ZZT game, you know he was gonna show up). Who demands you pay him 40 gems to get to the Count's castle, however it's actually 70 gems (I looked at the programming, thinking it was a bug). A town ruled by corrupt Democratic official in City Hall (Eric Adams?) has a rudimentary economy where you can purchase more food (gives you health) and ammo. These give a bit more variety to the drudgery of enemy spam and endless backtracking, but at the same time also shows you just how much better this game could be if it was a much tighter, more succinct experience.

When playing, you may stumble upon a transporter that leads to 2 separate side stories with no bearing on the actual games. The first involves an usurper who overthrew the king of a cavernous land. The dialogue and writing in this particular sidestory is well-done, and the pacing is exceptional. The brisk pace of this has you interacting with the townspeople, fighting a few enemies, solving a transporter puzzle, and finally defeating the Usurper, the variety making it feel satisfying and fulfilling as opposed to the slog of the main game. Brevity is the soul of wit, they say. The other sidestory involves being captured by aliens, solving a simple jailbreak puzzle, and escaping by ship. This one plays like one of those Code Red scenarios but in fast forward, it's a bit too inconsequential to bother with, however.

So, at the end of the day, you are hoping that this is a quirky, geeky, goofy game... but it ends up being your boring old grandpa.

THE GOOD: A large, interconnected world to explore. Contains additional sidestories, with one being much more interesting than the main game, at about 1/10th the length. A few simple puzzles, a rudimentary economy and townspeople interaction. These all show that this game had the potential to be something much better.

THE BAD: The game feels very aimless at first, and requires frequent backtracking. Overpopulated with monsters, invisible walls, and throwstar spamming bosses. Unsatisfying story and ending.

OVERALL: At the end of the day, you are hoping that this Fred is a quirky, geeky, goofy game... but it ends up being some boring old grandpa.