The Forbidden Island

The Forbidden Island is a straightforward ZZT island adventure where a shipwrecked castaway needs to find a way off the island they wash up on.

Gameplay revolves around exploring the islands various biomes, a forest, mountain, caves, shore and desert fighting a number creatures while finding key items to give to villagers that will allow you to work your way through trade quests for other items necessary to complete the game.

Early on it has a very Link's Awakening vibe, with the starting forest including a number of characters from the game pretty much 1:1, though afterwards Mark does his own thing.

The action screens aren't bad. It's not as a charming as Link's Adventure, but there are some interesting board layouts and Mark's use of creatures is generally more varied than piles of monsters in empty rooms. Early on ammo can be tight, forcing players to avoid enemies rather than engage, but eventually supplies start coming in more regularly with plenty and health and ammo to spare.

The game suffers from coding errors that make the game unwinnable without cheats. These take a while to show up. The man in town that is sick with the flu has a #end command too early in his code which prevents players from giving him medicine. This prevents the player from receiving a box of cookies as a reward. Coincidentally, the hungry villager that would accept the cookies checks for the wrong flag anyway, looking for COOKIE instead of COOKIES.

A Yakko Warner doll is meant to be delivered to a seashell collector on the beach, but an accidental repetition of #zap touch means this item also can't be delivered and the flag COIN is never set.

Finally, on the descent from the Desert Mountain dungeon a passage error will prevent players from being able to reach the entrance again.

Bugs aside, playing in a modern source port with cheats to switch boards rather than walk across numerous empty boards can speed up the game immensely and make it worthwhile. For a game by a young author, Mark does quite a lot right even if he missed a number of game breaking issues. This is still a fun one overall.