I signed up for the DOS Games End of Year Jam earlier this month, wanting a good excuse to make a ZZT game this year. (The only other game I created was for Oktrollberfest, which was a lot of fun for me, but given the nature of the jam is kind of deliberately frustrating to play.)
Since this jam isn't one ran by the ZZT community, I wanted to keep things simple and make something that would be enjoyable by folks who may not have played a ZZT game before. I decided to try to roughly stick to the purple key collecting style of the original ZZT worlds from 1991 have something that's about 80% complete now.
I still don't have a name for it! You arrive on an island, exploring in any of four directions to find the purple keys and unlock the path to Captain Cutlass's treasure horde, solving puzzles, fighting creatures, and drawing the ire of a band of pirates that are scouring the island for the keys to find the treasure for themselves.
It's genuinely been the most fun I've had making something with ZZT in years! Focusing entirely on something simple for a change has led to me getting into the zone numerous times now and working for hours at a time. I'm really happy with it already and can't wait to finish it up.
The game will be published to Itch.io as well as the Museum of ZZT. While ZZT is a DOS game, through a dedicated emulator it is easy to run on Windows, Linux, or play straight from your web browser!
Screenshots below (some of which are already outdated as I tweak things to ensure new elements are introduced to players gently at first)
Look at my cool game
