Closer Look: Frost 1; Power

After many, many cutscenes, the game finally begins in earnest. The player has control of Penny and it is their goal to guide her safely out of the forest to Alsace.

To the east is a haunted swamp. Penny has no reason to go there and will refuse to continue in that direction.

To the west is the proper path forward. Nadir does a nice job conveying a forest here, with the roughly circular shapes of all the different trees. Compare it to something like Deceiving Guidance's forest which tries to draw every individual tree and ends up being much muddier versus the distinct floors and walls of Frost's forest.

The main gameplay of Frost consists of running into creatures to attack them with your sword, while the creatures attempt to run into you and attack before you can. It's fortunate that the game's graphics and storyline bring the game up so high, since the combat is pretty bad. The enemies react fast enough that it's difficult to run into them directly, and just being adjacent for a moment is enough to take 5 damage. The creatures take two hits, and are knocked back from the first hit so if you can't get them against a wall, they'll get away and begin the process anew.

All that blood is from each time I was bit. To be fair to Nadir, this combat would likely go much more smoothly outside of Dosbox where it's possible to run in a straight line and turn on a dime. The emulator's key repeat issues with ZZT make things harder than they should be.

Sandwiches are provided in the chest as a source of healing, under the circumstances, it's not really enough. To make matters worse, there are hidden duplicators that create more enemies, so it's not actually possible to clear out an entire board.

Up ahead is a bridge that's been blocked by a giant rock creature. The stream here is animated to create the effect of flowing water, and there are also plenty of stones and bits of moss on the ground, adding some more detail to the forest than just having trees. The sprinkling of decorative objects again contributes to making these environments feel less sterile.

Poor Stumpy! Penny's only hope is to turn back and enter the haunted swamp.

Just getting back to the split path is an ordeal. Penny is almost out of blood.

There's a pretty clear split here between happy peaceful forest, and spooky haunted swamp. The trees get darker, and it becomes too dark to really see the grass.

Penny isn't exactly one to believe in monsters, and figures whoever is living in a swamp probably just wants to be left alone.

The trees in the swamp are drooping, there are reeds everywhere, as well as a few graves, and you can even see a Rogon. That's called world building.

I like this a lot.

When the player is aligned in certain spots, swamp monsters rise out of the water and begin shooting. It's easy to be caught off guard, but they're spaced far enough away that the player should have ample time to get out of the way. Compared to the forest, the swamp is honestly less dangerous.

At least until the actual undead appear! Penny's dismissal of the swamp being haunted would imply to me that this is a world without ghosts and skeletons as things people believe are real. Her reaction to seeing undead in a world that shouldn't have any is pretty calm. Maybe Ilititoa does have these things, and Penny just disregards them since she was raised in a magic-free environment where such things were essentially non-existent.

Or maybe the reality of the situation doesn't hit her until just now.

This next screen introduces zombies and bloodflies, both of which are easier to deal with the the polliwogs from earlier. The zombies will move straight towards the player once they're aligned with them, which makes it a lot easier to run straight into them without having the enemy move away during the approach. The bloodflies have similar behavior, and also are defeated in a single hit. Since both creatures mostly try to move towards the player, it's easy to get them stuck against a wall which makes avoiding them an option.

Like before, signs guide the player where to go, and like before the player will find the obvious direction blocked, and have to take the "wrong" path in order to proceed.

Heading to the house, once more the tiny details make the most out of the scene. That one window has _curtains_.

The fourth wall is totally broken. Penny knows exactly what's going on here.

Heading east leads to the lake along with the usual assortment of zombies and killer flies. There are also several keys and doors scattered throughout the board. The upbeat sound effects from them stick out. It's not often that built in items get use out of later era ZZT games, but they serve their purpose just fine here.

The zombies here in the corner don't move until the door's been opened. Otherwise, they'd almost certianly be pinned up against the door waiting for Penny to open it.

The path ends here due to the high water levels. Though it's pretty clear that you'll need to investigate the dock.

This effect is SO GOOD. The giant squid is made up of a variety of invisible walls with dark cyan backgrounds which makes them appear to match the surrounding water. A lot of special colored ZZT items are used as well to produce STK colors like the dark purples and white on gray normals. Check out the code to make this beast rise from the waters:

There's even a dark cyan slime used to spread water on the jetty! The attention to detail here is astounding. Shortly after the creature rises, the player is teleported away to the next screen.

Showing, and not just telling, the mysterious woman's hands do animate with a simple glowing effect around them.

"This is the best board ever." - Me, playing Frost in 2003

"This is the best board ever." - Me, playing Frost in 2003, 5 seconds later.

Can I keep gushing about this art? Especially the skunk magicing the giant squid board? The perspective on the squid is so well executed. ZZT's low resolution and and non-square tiles make doing anything at an angle a pain to look half decent. Nadir's artwork is really unmatched. The same limitations also make curves frustrating to draw as well, but that tentacle doesn't look angular in the least.

This sequence plays out like a comic book, with each board as a new panel. There's clear thought to the composition of each board. Compare the trees on the board where the squid is being attacked to the board with Penny being pulled out of the lake. There's a level of consistency here that's really unmatched among ZZT games excluding straight up copying and pasting boards.

The screen actually fades to blackness as Penny blacks out.

Penny awakens in the house she saw earlier, with Henna taking care of her injuries. Apparently the swamp actually being haunted is a new thing, and Henna's mentor is dead from the whole zombies craving flesh epidemic that's going around.

The player is transported to this board, depicting Silver's recent demise. He kind of looks like Sly Cooper, but wearing pants.

Concussions be damned, it's time to save Stumpy. The player is given control again and gets to collect Penny's things.

No chance to explore the rest of the house, the player needs to exit entirely once they leave the bedroom.

Penny meets up with Henna and they begin traveling together. For those of you in the audience wishing to ship these two, Nadir kindly provided the name for said ship.

You do have to backtrack to Stumpy, which means running away from enemies as much as possible.

Skeletons annihilated, it's now safe to leave the swamp. Although, the swamp creatures that pop up and shoot at you are alive and well, so do be careful of them.

The rest of the trip goes without event, until you reach the board with Stumpy, which triggers a warp to another art board.

Henna patches Stumpy up, and the two decide to made the trip to Alssace together. "My map says there's a pretty low pass through 'em. We'll be fine." is a line to note, because ZZT doesn't actually display it correctly! Since one of the lines starts with an apostrophe, ZZT treats it as a comment (or pre-#zapped label, same difference), so the sentence just ends. It's not noticeable at all since the sentence still work without it, and at worst looks like it's just missing punctuation.

And so the game ends, with Penny having gained a new friend and traveling companion, and the player stuck waiting for a sequel. Alas, the sequel was never completed, though an incomplete version was released by Nadir in 2007 with author commentary sprinkled throughout.

There was also a period where Nadir tried his hand at telling the Frost story via a webcomic. The comic has about 30 pages, covers everything shown here up to Penny arriving in the woods, and cleans up the writing enough that going from the comic to the ZZT game, there's a noticeable difference. It'll be posted on the Museum beta site (both public and private) later this month, so be sure to check that out!

Final Thoughts

This game extremely captivating. Its world is clearly one that was thought out and whose surface was barely scratched in the first game. I keep repeating myself, but the game's graphics, both in the dedicated art boards as well as those with player control are without a doubt some of the best seen in ZZT.

The writing is pretty solid. Nadir seems a bit afraid of creating a dead serious world and the writing definitely imparts a bit of lightheartedness even when the situations can be pretty grim. Penny's reactions can be a bit underwhelming, but overall there's nothing eyerolling here. Some plot threads aren't really explored, like the whole Set character, and the exact mixture of fantasy/sci-fi/reality that's blended together isn't really defined. It's a bit like the blend of magic and technology you'd see out of a Final Fantasy game, but the world isn't really developed to the point where you could confidently guess whether something like computers or guns exist. Exactly what can and can't be done with magic isn't explored either.

Such criticisms about the unknowns of the world would likely not apply had the series been completed of course. Frost includes the "1" in its own title. Of course the first chapter wouldn't have all the answers.

As for the gameplay, it feels a bit tacked on. I'm not surprised Nadir later tried to tell the story through comics, since it seems like a better fit. The combat seems to be there for the sake of having more traditional ZZT gameplay, and not just calling the ZZT world a cinema. Playing under Dosbox, you'll probably need to cheat for health, but while it's a bit harsh on the player, it's not the sort of thing that makes you wonder how it was supposed to be enjoyable.

It's a shame the series was never completed, but even the brief foray into the world of Ilititoa offered by Frost 1; Power is a trip worth taking.