Closer Look: Frost 1; Power

Where can I get Frost 1; Power?

Frost 1; Power is available on z2 as well as playable in browser via Archive.org.
You can also explore the world yourself on the Museum of ZZT Public Beta.

Frost 1; Power

The year is 2003 and ZZT's sun is setting. It was the last year with more than 100 released titles, and new members within the community were becoming less and less common. Despite being the beginning of the end, there were still quality games being released. Frost stands out as one of the most notable titles from ZZT's later years, holding up today as a game that offers unparalleled graphics and attention to detail.

Nadir's Frost was held in high regards after it's release. Already a well established ZZTer and popular community member, Frost became a ZZT must-play overnight and has had a significant impact on the late ZZT community in several ways. The game's graphics are some of the best you'll see in ZZT, and I've often used screenshots from it as a way to illustrate the magnitude of difference between early ZZT games and modern ones. At least one ZZTer began constantly messaging Nadir asking about his "graphical secrets" much to his chagrin.

It's a very iconic ZZT game as we'll shortly see.

Before the game begins, you should take a listen to the game's theme-song, composed by MadTom, a very talented ZZT musician.

It's also a _very_ dialog heavy game. There is far more to read than there is to interact with, so be prepared for that.

Frost opens with a cutscene of a gray figure falling from the sky, screaming. His name is Set, he is not happy with where and when he is, but he is prepared to make the best of it and destroy some folks for reasons currently unknown.

Set will never make another appearance in this game again FYI. This board is the last one in the file and may have been added as an afterthought to try and introduce some of the grander things in the Frost universe.

Nadir has a sense of humor along these lines that will show up on occasion.

(Blue Moon was the title of Nadir's first ZZT game)

And there's the rub. Welcome to Zootopia. Frost is a game that features a cast entirely of anthropomorphic animals. ZZT's limited graphics make it so that you're not really getting anything out of being told the white on blue smiley face the player controls is a fox. The world of Frost wasn't designed specifically for the medium of ZZT, so outside of art boards there's no real difference in the characters being anthropomorphic or not.

Again we're dealing with something made in 2003. So we get a good look at attitudes towards furries as well. In short, the prevailing wisdom of the time was: they're bad and gross. I obviously can't speak for Nadir's thoughts on himself, his work, and the furry fandom for the time, but the quick attempt to distance Frost from furry come off as being afraid of being marked with the label. Frost wants its audience to enjoy it on its own merits, not because it has foxes in it. At the time, "furries like this" was a mark against something for a lot of people, and trying to push away that audience to better court others wasn't all that uncommon.

Here we get a good look at our protagonist, Penny Shaïwell, and wow. It is incredibly difficult to portray people in ZZT, and frankly prior to my first playing this game, I would've thought a decent animal person would be beyond what ZZT could do. For ZZT, this is an incredibly complex pose! Again, these characters weren't created with ZZT in mind, but Nadir doesn't look to have made sacrifices for the sake of ZZT. Just the fact that she's been crammed head to toe in a 25 tile high screen is accomplishment enough.

Frost is packed with little details to bring the world to life. This cutscene consists solely of Penny talking with her friend Melissa, and could have been very rigid. Instead, other objects walk into the school, and an object on the basketball court is animated repeatedly practicing their shots.

Melissa likes sword fighting and comics. We have no idea what species she is though. (An unused art board reveals her as a dog.) The bell rings (actually, via #play sound effects), and the two rush off for class.

The world is built up, but unlike most ZZT games which have to rely on telling you, Frost is capable of showing as well. Negative space is used to create a nice mountain range in the background. It's a very pretty game.

This is the first bit of player interaction the game gives. Ms. Feris calls out a move at random, and the player has to press the appropriate direction to perform the action. Each move has the class perform the action, slashing vertically, parrying downward, of thrusting their swords forward. The timing is generous enough (though if you struggle the sequence starts over), and it's pretty satisfying when you time it perfectly so that your sword stays in sync with all the other students' swords.

After the refresher lesson, the class breaks into pairs. Melissa's annoyance kind of goes against her talking up how she actually enjoyed swordfighting in the previous scene. It may have been more true to what's been established about the characters to swap the dialog.

The students are paired up in the next scene, and a helpful arrow points out Melissa and Penny among the crowd. Pointless fact: There are two fewer students in this scene than the previous one. Maybe they're behind the tree in the corner. All the students are practicing their swordfighting skills and are animated like the previous board.

And so Penny kills a girl.

Well, no, they're wooden swords.

Penny's sword hits Onyx, who apparently already has issues with her.

The three minutes line is great and is very much a PE teacher thing to say. The teacher breaks things up before they get heated, and the swordplay resumes. Onyx vows revenge, and leaves.

Looks like the whole thing started due to some teenage prank war. Onyx is presented as somebody who tends to take things way too far. The bad blood is old news to Penny though, who hardly sees any reason Onyx should still be upset.

The player is taken to another beautiful board with a sun just starting to set, and again using negative space to portray a background of the city and the mountain range. The house on the left appears to have ivy growing on it, a detail that's completely unnecessary but shows the amount of effort that was put into making these scenes look at good as they do. Speaking of detail, the brown clubs on the left are named "garden lemur gnome things".

Penny and Melissa promptly appear and begin walking down the street. They don't just walk, they walk _diagonally_, which is a pretty big deal for ZZT which has no concept of diagonal movement!

Without using the trick for diagonal movement, given the perspective on this board, the objects would be walking at a funny angle down the sidewalk, or have to zig-zag their way down, alternating between moving east and south. So how does it work?

ZZT's movement is typically handled with /[dir]. This makes an object move once per active cycle. Tim Sweeney was kind enough to realize that long repetitive lines like /e/e/e/e/e/e/e/e/e/e are a bit clunky for extended movement, and added a #walk [dir] command as well. When an object is walking, they will move in that direction every active cycle until they are told to stop walking. (They can also jump to a :thud label when they hit a wall.) Unlike regular movement, walking doesn't end a cycle and ZZT-OOP code is still processed, which includes a regular movement command. By walking south, and also moving east, the end result is that the object can take two steps in a single cycle! Note that it's two steps and not a single diagonal step. The object can't be blocked to the south and the east, and then move diagonally southeast.

This technique never got used all that often, so it does stand out here. It can also be used with the same direction for walking and regular movement to move in a cardinal direction at speeds faster than anything else in ZZT.

Sure enough, the bushes rustle and Onyx and another character jump out in ambush.

The girls get into a fight, and Penny loses control.

And so Penny kills a girl. For real this time. This game has magic in it, you had no idea, and this scene probably caught you off guard! Magic and its role in this world, is a major component of Frost. We're only just now getting to what the game is actually about.

A stranger shows up, discovers the grisly scene, and promptly runs off.

The writing in this game is generally good enough, but I can't get over how lax Penny is about killing somebody. You could argue that she's in a bit of a stupor now, having blacked out like that, but her immediate concern being "oops I killed a girl in broad daylight" comes off really poorly for an otherwise likable character.

I'm condensing this dialog into single text boxes here, but don't forget that all this dialog is happening one line at a time, and the characters are moving around and interacting with each other, approaching and disengaging all the while. These scenes are not static, and the constant movement makes these scenes into proper cinematics and not just a slow feed of dialog while some objects sit in place.

This dialog was probably written multiple times with that object name. ZZT's default editor has a habit of sometimes deleting an objects code for no apparent reason. Nadir always used the default editor rather than Kev-Edit or ZZTAE.

tl;dr -- Magic has been illegal for 200 years since some war. Penny broke the law and the punishment is exile. She's also been given a tattoo to mark her as a user of magic (the symbol on the game's title screen)

The game's introduction is nearly over. Penny's getting kicked out of the country, and forced to start a new life.

Penny does her best to not make things sadder than they have to be. Melissa has bestowed upon Penny the comic books she borrowed.

Penny's mother is definitely taking the loss of her daughter hard. Mom has bestowed upon Penny the family sword.

Mildred's emotions are much better conveyed compared to Penny's earlier lack of emotions over accidentally killing somebody. This is the family's only appearance and the first impressions are positive.

Mist gets a stereo out of the whole thing, so it's not all bad.

The last family member to speak with is dad, and there's some writing here that really stands out.

One of Frost's reviews on z2 is simply titled "foxes use tampons ahahhaha". The ZZT community at this time being mostly teenage boys, there was nothing more hilarious than a game mentioning tampons! It was the height of comedy.

I don't know what Nadir was thinking when he decided to include this sequence, but it's honestly a completely understandable request! You're getting kicked out of the country, and have to begin a long walk to another city elsewhere, you darn well better have tampons if you need them. I feel like most modern games would still be afraid to bring up any mention of periods, lest the illusion of women as pure creatures who definitely don't have bodily functions be shattered.

Goodbyes mostly said, Penny is now entirely on her own, as ready as she'll ever be to make her way to Alsace.