Tag Archives: zzt

Night Conjure

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Made right on the heels of Parallel Universe and The Punctuation People, Night Conjure was created for the very first 24 Hours of ZZT competition in the summer of 1998 under the theme “night.” It was highly influenced by games in the Zelda series, and the protagonist, naturally, has to save the world from evil forces that arrive at nightfall. The game returns you to the same locations multiple times as the day progresses into night.

It was the first game to take place in the fantasy realm of Nellad, which was also the setting of 1999’s Megazeux game The Grand Mage.

Looking back, this has some of my most interesting board design and most attractive aesthetics in my ZZT work.

ZZT games require ZZT to run. Download from Z2.

Parallel Universe: Chapter 1

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Subtitled “Dual Plane,” this was meant to be the first in a long serial adventure inspired by the ZZT series Chrono Wars and two episodes of Sliders I saw at my cousins’ house.

This was my first attempt at a serious ZZT adventure game. It has some embarrassing themes of young earth creationism.

ZZT games require ZZT. Download from Z2.

The Punctuation People

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In this platformer, Paul Paragraph is on a quest to rescue the punctuation people (that is, people who are various punctuation marks) from the Evil Copy Editor.

Upon encountering a few “jumping” engines in ZZT demo files, I immediately became obsessed with creating a Super Mario Bros.-like game in ZZT. Most of the enemies are patterned after classic Mario enemies, and the player can collect coins.

This was the first ZZT game I released that received much positive feedback from the ZZT community. Most of my subsequent games would also be engine games.

ZZT games require ZZT to run. Download it from zzt.org.

Ancient Castle of the Dogs

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Originally begun as part of a cancelled Bob 3 adventure game, this action-adventure game delights in bad puns and giant dogs (with weak spots on their noses). Features some programming and design elements from Glynth and originally released to Glynth’s website right before New Year’s Eve 1997. The last game I released to use the “star system” of recurring characters playing different roles.

In 2012, ZZTer and Glorious Trainwrecker Viovis/ghettowreath published a write-up of Ancient Castle of the Dogs as a “ZZT Essential.”

Bob 2: A New Adventure

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Bob 2 is a lot like Bob: The Adventure in time. It’s a little more sophisticated in its mission structure, but it’s also really not. It was released within a couple months of its predecessor. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this game is its reuse and recasting of the characters from the first Bob game in new roles, like actors. Not that these were terribly deep characters.

ZZT games require ZZT to run. Download from Z2.

Bob: The Adventure

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My first completed ZZT game, Bob: The Adventure is an attempt at mimicking the comedy adventure games like Llama Masters (by Scott Hammack) that I really enjoyed at the time.

I cannot quite figure out exactly when the game was first released, though I estimate in September or October 1997, since I worked on it over the summer. That was the same summer I discovered ZZT. At the time, I did not have Internet access at home nor my own website, so the game was released on my cousin Glynth’s website.

ZZT games require ZZT to run. Download it from Z2.