It's The End Of The World!
I was just going to comment on the bugs, but then I read some nearly 20 year old review and must defend this game. It's The End Of The World! is an all time classic, despite its unfortunate bug troubles. It might not be the best ZZT game of 1996, but it's the most ZZT game of 1996 for sure. It's short enough that I'd easily recommend it as a Rosetta stone for mid-90s ZZT expectations and trends as long as you're familiar with how to use the cheat prompt.
But I'm really here for the bugs, of which I encountered three.
Firstly, after crashing your hang glider in the castle, players are able to head in two directions. DO NOT GO LEFT. The left hall is completely empty.
Later on after fighting King Chord, players will take a passage that brings them to the left hall board, but on the outside, allowing them to proceed with the game. Due to a passage color mismatch, the player isn't placed on any passage and the current player position is used. If you visit this board earlier, the player will be inside the castle, requiring the ?ZAP cheat to get back on track.
That one can be avoided, the next one, cannot.
In the ice castle players acquire two keys by solving puzzles which in turn provide access to another room with a third key. The doors to enter this room mention your old keys being stuck and lost, but the flags aren't actually cleared.
This causes a problem since the door that requires the third key lets tries the other incorrect keys first. Players need to either ?ZAP the third door or manually clear the key flags with ?-KEY and ?-OTHERKEY.
Said door leads to the ice castle's boss fight which has another potential soft-lock, albeit one easily avoided. The boss can only be defeated by setting off the bomb which is done by surrounding it with some walls that move when shot. If the bomb itself is shot, a message reads "Nice try.", after which the object fails to return to its main loop checking for the walls. Simply avoid shooting the bomb directly and the boss fight will work as intended.
