Merbotia

Merbotia is a game that's a bit of an outlier among the well-received games that have been covered so far. It's very iconic among ZZTers. Popular enough that nearly everybody in the community has played it, but at the same time an incredibly short and simple adventure that really only has its sense of humor going for it. Not that it's a bad game by any means. It's just a very straightforward adventure one could finish over a lunch break. Despite this, it won the June 2000 Classic Game of the Month Award.

So how did Merbotia manage to become a game so many within the community were familiar with? The CGOTM review written by Hydra78 explains it:

Those of you that don't get nostalgic feelings just by looking at this game's funky title screen probably won't agree with me :).

And quite frankly, he is absolutely right. Merbotia's title screen music is probably the most recognized tune composed in ZZT. Give it a listen.

It's very catchy.

The game opens with the player in a small dwelling carved into a mountain. By late 1995, Super Tool Kit colors in games started becoming much more common, with nearly everything on the board being a previously unusable dark color. There's little time to look around before a series of messages pops up, setting the scene.

The left door is locked by a green key, and the bottom door is just locked in general by an object. Touching the right door causes a knocking sound to be played and the player is invited inside to speak with the yellow smiley.

With that the player is given their quest, as well as the origins of the earth and mankind. Find and kill Quatsch.

You're then forcefully shoved out of the room and back into the starting section of the cave. This is done by repeatedly #putting boulders in the direction of the player to push them along. In ZZT-OOP, some commands are cycle ending and some are not. If an object is told to #go n and then #go s, it will stop processing its code for the cycle after it moves to the north. This makes sense for movement since if both lines were processed in a single cycle the object would appear to stand still. Interestingly, #put isn't cycle ending, which means you could produce a long line of pushable items instantaneously. The concept of non-cycle ending almost never comes up in ZZT since rarely can the behavior be manipulated usefully. Pushing the player is one of its few uses.

The forest is basically what you can expect the majority of the game to play like. You've got some lions, and some ammo. Shoot them.

Though, at the same time this board does a nice job showing a slow growth in complexity and polish in ZZT worlds. Plenty of games had forests with lions and ammo to shoot them with. Prior to STK there wouldn't have been any grass made out of fake walls (unless it was a blinding bright green filling the screen). There's also the dark cyan Ä object. Rather than fill the board with ammo, taking up space that could be put to better use, and taking up the player's time to collect it, instead an object is used, represented as a quiver of arrows and giving the player 20 ammo. The bushes are actually objects (though they don't look it), which when touched will tell you that they are in fact bushes (or shrubbery or large bushes..).

In my playthrough I managed to completely miss the oddly colored wall just west of the quiver. Touching it reveals a lever the player can pull. Doing so unlocks the southern door in the starting cave, providing more ammo and health to the player.

Heading north is more of the same. Ruffians instead of lions, and this time some flowers scattered about.

Don't patronize them though.

The northwest corner of the forest has a cave the player can enter, and nothing else.

Unsurprisingly, the cave is dark. Fortunately the player starts right by a torch and there are several more scattered throughout the room.

The cave is devoid of enemies, containing nothing but gems, torches, and these health kits which restore 25 health. The whole room is optional and just a reward for deciding to explore the forest rather than heading straight to Quatsch.

The southwest corner of the forest is a more mountainous region with large boulders and centipedes, as well as another pile of arrows.

If the player has a sharp eye they may notice the small round button in the lower left area which changes all the centipedes on the screen into gems.

Heading to the southeast section of the forest is the entrance to Quatsch's Lair, prominently displayed on a very large sign.

Venturing into the cave you get this intricately carved maze that looks like something out of Pac-Man. This board plays a ZZT rendition of the Super Mario Bros. underground music while you're on it. It's not too bad of a conversion.

It takes no time at all to get to Quatsch. He doesn't shoot attack you directly, rather just very rapidly starts producing lots of lions and bears. At first glance it looks pretty intimidating, there are a lot of enemies at all times, and while the player has a good supply of ammo, it can be tough to get through all the creatures to actually hit Quatsch himself. It looks like it's going to be a tough fight.

Then you managed to hit him once and all the creatures on screen turn into ammo and gems, meaning you'll be able to keep shooting and regain health. One cool concept that I don't think I've seen many boss fights in ZZT use is the placement of a ricochet when you shoot Quatsch. It prevents the player from just spamming a long line of bullets and hitting him repeatedly, forcing you to instead hold back on your shooting a bit.

Another aspect of his simple coding is that he'll try and put enemies anywhere, which can replace walls with lions. After shooting him several times and getting nowhere, I noticed the large pile of bombs amassing on the left side of the screen. Every time you shoot him, a bomb spawns. They slowly get pushed into the main arena allowing you to actually defeat Quatsch with a single bomb.

With your quest complete, you could just return to the start and let that person know you're done, but Sonic256 isn't one to hold the player back from indulging in some corpse desecration.

Merbotia likes to make sure the player always has options.

Once the player leaves the cave after defeating Quatsch, the entrance crumbles and they can never return. It's time to report his demise.

You can see the game's 90s sense of humor showing. Fortunately, despite the Earth's imminent demise, the player is given a chance to stop it.

This very dull room beams you up to the space ship.

Although the passage could've just dumped the player on the ship, instead the actual player is pinned in the corner, and the ship's teleporter produces a player clone. When you move, you'll get warped next to the clone and the clone is then destroyed. Funnily enough that's the opposite of how teleporters typically work. Once on board the player has to get themselves out of the transport room.

Ok, this joke still makes me laugh.

After paying all your gems, the computer lets you through, and a pusher pushes you towards the rest of the ship as your escort. (Kicking the computer just makes it kick back and hurt you.) If you don't have any gems you get to beg the computer to let you through and it will, but telling you to pick up some of Quatsch's gems next time.

Moving up ahead, you find a more suitable weapon, a gun that shoots saw blades. Valve would later go on to steal this mechanic for the critically acclaimed Half-Life 2.

This joke got me good too. The object actually takes one ammo away and shoots you. Even if you noticed it there's no room to avoid it. Imagine dying here.

You then go on to actually practice with the gun, taking a few more shots before finally being allowed to proceed to the main portion of the ship.

You are immediately attacked by a whole lot of tigers representing the ship's guards. It doesn't take long to clear them out thanks to the additional piles of sawblades just lying around, alleviating the player's concern for ammo.

Heading north is another room full of tigers and supplies. Like most of the forest earlier it's optional, but there's a lot of ammo to grab.

The western path is more of a breather with just five tigers and some ammo. There's another sign here as well.

You can also investigate the signpost itself.

I don't know if having a sign in a game counts as a reference to Ace of Base's The Sign. Unless I'm missing something here.

The next room contains the ship's boss. As in the captain, not a boss fight. You actually need to pull up the chair to talk with him.

Choosing this option ends the game!

And with that the boss is dead. (Acting dumb gets the same response as earlier.) The player is now free to play with his corpse.

The objects shoots at you a few times as punishment for making this choice. It's rude to offer it if you don't want the player to take it!!

No complaints about throwing a dead body around to make it splatter blood. It's time to head back to the door in the main hub which required a hand print to be scanned to open.

Having solved the severed arm puzzle, it's time for an actual sort of puzzle. It seems a bit out of place compared to the rest of the game which favored simple action and gratuitous violence.

The walls blink on and off from bottom to the top, so getting hit will push the player upward repeatedly. You need to push the bombs and boulders in such a way to be able to make it across, and also be able to use a bomb on a grate to proceed

There's not much thought necessary to get through. Ideally you'd use the boulder to push several bombs around and block off most of the blink walls with bombs but pretty much any sized gap is enough to get the player through.

The last room of the ship shows the earth being shot at as soon as you enter it. Fortunately, they're shooting it with regular bullets.

A countdown starts, and the player needs to load themselves into the firing bay. Doing this will shoot them off the ship and back to planet Earth!

Worth noting is that when you land on earth you actually lose a large amount of health. There's supposed to be an :ending2 label to jump to if you don't have enough to survive the crash, but it's not programmed in. Similarly, getting mugged and having zero ammo left causes you to get beat up and possibly killed.

And with that, the game ends. It's a very dark ending compared to the silly mood the rest of the game had. Earth sucks, and your whole quest kind of ruined your chances at leading a normal life.

Aside from its grim ending, Merbotia's got a lot of charm to it. The writing is humorous, and while a lot of the jokes don't hold up to a more mature audience, there are still a few good lines scattered throughout. It's short enough that it's simplistic gameplay doesn't get a chance to drag the game down. Sonic256 never released any other games for ZZT which is a shame. Merbotia feels like a good first step in the process of making ZZT games, but there never was a second here.