If you take a look at the front page here, things do seem to be pretty dead. If you're on this page, you might be a ZZTer from that time who was feeling nostalgic and surprised to find that this site is still around. Not “With reprogramming the copier we can KILL EVERYONE IN THE COMPANY.” WTF.Īnd yea, Code Red was really good – it was essentially, as I recall, six separate games in three files, with each one containing two branches, based on whether you a) left your house at night or in the day, and b) peeved your brother by unplugging his game console.It's 2020 and you found your way to z2, what was for a good decade and a half the definitive ZZT archive. You eventually break into a competitor’s business (which, this being a bad ZZT game, is full of lions and tigers for no reason at all) and hear someone at a meeting saying “With reprogramming the copier, we can advertise that they suck, and they’ll go out of business!” Um, right. The most memorable of those was “Death Copiez” – in which somebody has planted an item in your office photocopier which kills anyone who touches their copies. I also have to admit that there are some ZZT packs which are so bad they are worth getting just to laugh at.

I’m sure it helped a lot that Town of ZZT (the “default” level pack) was actually a pretty awesomely designed game in its own right. I’ve never actually finished it, but I like how it arranges the colored text characters into almost photograph-like scenes.ĮDIT: Dessgeega has created a similar list of recommended ZZT games that is worth looking into, over at The Gamer’s Quarter. Trivia: one of the games there, Rhygar, pictured above, was created by the writer of the story of Immortal Defense (long before I met him). I recommend trying them all out, they each have something interesting about them, and playing them is a good insight into the history of independent games (if you care about that).

You’ll need to download the ZZT runner itself to play them. It’s still used to create games even today.Ĭlysm, the author of the classic Game Maker game Seiklus, has put up a nice list of the ZZT games he recommends. The editor wasn’t even intended as its most important feature, but its popularity eclipsed the game itself. The ZZT is an ANSI-based game with a game editor, and that editor was probably the first important piece of game creation software. Recommended ZZT Games By: Paul Eres On: October 26th, 2008

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