Star Coffin
You wake up on a ship, and no one's there. At all. You need to flee, but can you navigate the dark, labyrinthine decks to the escape pods? Will you have to face what caused the ship to be deserted, and survive?
Star Coffin is a ZZT game created for the Glorious Weekend of ZZT Blitzkrieg-a-thon organized by Glorious Trainwrecks in May 2012. It's a short, tense action game with strong survival horror overtones. The layout of the ship, and choice of palette help in giving it that 'horror' feel.
The author makes excellent use of a monochrome palette, building the whole environment out of white terrains and objects. The oppressively white, sterile rooms (some of them devoid of anything to interact with) suddenly give way to dark rooms. The tension of having to navigate them with a torch is highlighted by the white palette, as all the time the player just sees the light of their torch reflected back at them. While negotiating spawning enemies. To ZZTers, the sound of multiple duplicators in a dark room will bring its own sense of dread.
Navigating these dark rooms is pleasantly tense. The duplicators duplicate aggressively, and the rooms are designed to be tight and claustrophobic. While some passages are numbered to indicate what level (or deck) you're on, it's easy to get disoriented. However, the plentiful supplies mitigate any serious stabs at survival horror and allow a less adventurous player to just tank it.
A self-imposed no-ammo or no-health items run would make this a more challenging game, and is something to try. Someone less familiar with ZZT and the way it plays will find the game a more tense play.
