Closer Look: Edible Vomit

Past the rabbit is a non-mushroom building. The landscape in this area is a bit different from what's been seen so far with the introduction of some greenish water to with the blue ground.

Inside the house itself is a flickering fireplace made using blinking colors to flash between yellow and dark red, and a lone occupant to speak with.

Horus ventured into the Karma Kaves in search of fortune, but his greed cost him his left eye. I don't know why losing just one eye would make him blind, but blind he is. Freddy pays no heed to his warning and figures it would be a good place to search for his own fortune of the perfect drug. Horus does his best to warn Freddy that whatever he may find in the caves won't be worth it, but the ferret doesn't care.

Sure enough, just south of Horus's home is the entrance to the Karma Kaves, Freddy's next objective. There's even a sign for them placed just outside the cave's mouth which is made up of black passages for the player to venture into.

The Karma Kaves are straightforward, and honestly don't look all that different from the scenery on the surface world. The right path is blocked off by a huge boulder that Freddy can't make his way past. It may seem like a temporary roadblock, but it's a permanent one with nothing beyond it.

A smaller rock blocks the other exit, but is still light enough for Freddy to move it out of his way and venture deeper inside the caves.

The next screen is a bit difficult to figure out. To me it looks like a large body of water dotted with tiny islands with trees on them, but the water is made of fake walls and can be walked on so I'm not really sure what the floor texture changing is supposed to mean.

Of course, before the player can figure any of this out, they'll need to talk with one of the Weezils Horus warned Freddy about.

Remnants in the code make it sound like there was something more that was intended here. Willy constantly loops checking for a flag called "mov" to be set before jumping to a "move" label. There is no move label in the code so whatever puzzle was meant to be here seems to have been scrapped with Willy placed somewhere safely out of the player's path.

Talking to Willy a second time brings up some questions Freddy can ask.

Any danger posed by the weezil originally is gone, and the player can just walk on by without issue. Willy gives the player a bit of backstory as to why he's eating anybody after the treasure and restates what Horus said about how losing an eye for the treasure won't do any good. He's also certain that there is no perfect drug, and thus no happy ending in store for Freddy.

Up ahead is a small farmhouse with a tiny pasture attached. Some animals wander around at random inside.

The gate can be opened, and some cows may stagger out into the rest of the caves, but there's no consequences for setting them free or keeping them penned in.

There's also this guy in the corner who can only be accessed if you exit the previous board from a specific point.

It's Master Bates! Like the cows, he's just there.

Entering into the farmhouse cuts to an interior shot. The exterior colors become more muted which is a nice touch. Here the chimney smoke is animated, but the fire is still. Oddly enough the fire is actually made of fakes so the player can step into it freely.

There are some drawers Freddy can dig through. The first contains socks. The second, silverware.

Of the three, only the spork can actually be taken.

The only other point of interest is one of the bowls on the table.

There seems to be more cut content here. These symbols are never mentioned again, and examining the bowl sends a command to every object on the board to jump to the label "whest", but not a single object on the board has such a label so nothing happens.

The last portion of the Karma Kaves is east of the farmhouse where the wishing well Horus spoke of can be found.

Freddy is presented with the same offer Horus took, give up his left eye and receive the treasure. He takes it. It blinds him, and the game ends as the board erases itself leaving Freddy in darkness forever.

(He has a second eye! Why is he blind?!)

Okay, that's not how Edible Vomit actually ends. It's just another puzzle. After backtracking to the cyan door outside the temple of love...

The cyan door is as brought up earlier, a giant eyeball. Except this time Freddy has a spork.

No positive reinforcement for this random act of violence.

But Freddy does get an extra eyeball, and I think you can see where this is going.

Yep. Also you can see a bug with scroll rendering here where text overflows the borders of the scroll when a line is made too long due to the indenting of the hyperlink.

No drugs here, just a rope. Not exactly worth losing an eye over.

After lots more backtracking to and through the temple of love, along with another vine climb, Freddy's back on the roof.

The very long rope can be used to create a makeshift bridge between the temple and the Burr-Lynn wall.

Freddy breaks on through to the other side and climbs his way down the wall.

Freddy's made it to Angel. Jimmy the Rat must be close, and then Freddy can finally get himself the perfect drug, but first there's somebody to talk to...

Feeling remorseful for his actions, Freddy decides to do something for the kid. He has a bit of a moment himself as well where he begins to question exactly what he's been doing and if it's the way he wants to live his own life.

Freddy then climbs up into the background and grabs the m00n right out of the sky. Welp.

The m00n is obviously the key to opening up the locked door from the very first board of the game proper. Once again Draco plays with the lighting when venturing into an interior here.

The building is almost completely empty except for a single hole in the wall.

Freddy, having taken the m00n from the night sky, proceeds to snort up a teddy bear via the straw he took earlier.

On my way back to Angel, I accidentally took the stairs instead of the vine up the temple of love and found the child still standing where Freddie took his joint. But that's non-canon.

In Angel, Freddy delivers the bear, but it's too late. Consumed by his addictions the child wastes away to nothing. His last request, for Freddy to give up drugs and save himself before he too suffers the same fate.

Beyond the child lies the end of Freddy's search. Surrounded by oversized mushrooms is a gigantic scorpion.

At the last moment Freddy has a change of heart. He's seen too much lost to drugs to keep using them himself. Maybe he won't make it without them, but he knows for sure that he won't make it with them.

The credits from the main menu are repeated in scroll form.

And the game ends with a plug for a sequel.

There never was a sequel. There was a... remix? Less than two months after Edible Vomit's release, Draco published Inedible Vomit. The game is essentially identical with a few minor changes. For one, the graphics are simplified, and purposely made uglier. The cool blue and cyan colors throughout Edible Vomit replaced with solid greens and browns. It's messier, deliberately so. The game also starts with a #endgame command to kill the player before giving them health to bring them back. This puts ZZT in its game over state which runs much faster than its regular speed.

There are other little changes throughout, object characters, the child being a girl rather than a boy, nothing major. Well, nothing major until the ending.

Inedible Vomit takes a darker path for Freddy. One where he succumbs to his own addictions. Given Draco's ultimate fate, it's hard to say which world has a more depressing ending.

Final Thoughts

Draco created something special with Edible Vomit. It's certainly isn't some after-school special about the dangers of drugs. For nearly all of the game Freddy just wants more drugs, and the player has no particular reason to not want to help him fulfill his goal. It's tonal shift happens gradually, with each character introduced portraying drugs more and more harshly. Skaank is completely on board with Freddy's quest. Stinky is happy with drugs, but clearly going to die from them, and soon. Horus gave up his sight for his greed, and warns Freddy how his quest isn't worth it. The child gets caught up in his own addiction and dies from it, with Freddy's thievery as a catalyst.

It never feels preachy. Freddy's change of heart may be a bit sudden, and Draco's ideas of how to overcome substance abuse are pretty simplistic (I don't think Freddy has a very good support network here), but they come from the heart in a way that doesn't feel like there's any judgment towards those who began to use drugs. Edible Vomit is an introspection on hard drug use rather than a public service announcement. It feels natural. Jimmy may be a giant scorpion, but there's no scary monster trying to convince Freddy that drugs are good. The antagonist here isn't a strawman. Rather, it's Freddy's own habits that could lead him to his own demise, not anyone else's. There's agency here which makes the game feel sincere.

The game had a strong impact on the community. Like Tucan and Clysm's work before Draco's, the aesthetics of Edible Vomit became well established visuals for other games which gave themselves the trippy label. It would frequently show up in listings of ZZTers' favorite worlds.

Draco himself and his drug habits were iconic as well. He was definitely considered the community's resident stoner, likely the first ZZTer of many to become associated with the recreational usage of drugs. The ZZTer IRC channels were full of other experimenting teens venturing into a world of marijuana, DXM, LSD, shrooms, and salvia throughout the early 2000s.

Give Edible Vomit a try. It's a pleasant trip.