Looneytown

I played this random little ZZT world mainly because it was of the oldest non-official ZZT worlds on the Museum. And 'random' is a very good way to describe it.

The DESC.SDI file, dated 2 years after the ZZT world, calls it a 'silly ZZT game' but still 'really good'. As more pre-STK worlds are being recovered and uploaded to the Museum since its creation, the 'really good' isn't complete overconfidence. It's short, mostly competently coded, and doesn't ape the original ZZT worlds too much. It looks quite good for a 1991 game and replaces the default yellow borders in all but one of its boards.

But what of the game? It is quite random and silly, but its tone would not be out of place 10 years later (albeit with more profanity). You start the game by being asked to kill a character who spouts the cheery mantra quoted above when you interact with her. Actually, you kill most of the characters you meet (which they encourage you to do), or they turn into creatures to kill. Other highlights include entering a toaster full of enemies and a bank you are encouraged to rob. The game ends with a tease for a lost sequel.

Thirty years on, this is a curious artifact that somehow survived to end up here on the Museum, with in-jokes that only the author and his friends understood.