Where can I get Turmoil?

Turmoil 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.

Turmoil

During my recent stream of "The Simpsons" and "The Simpsons 2", one of the viewers made a comment that they were glad to see some "average" ZZT games, and not just focusing on the best games out there. This comment surprised me since I think excluding the previously looked at MST3K game, the worlds I've been writing about and streaming have mostly been average or slightly above.

I don't want to be assigning review scores or anything, but I do think that if I had to put ZZT worlds played for this project into a box labeled "awful", "subpar", "average", "good", or "great", that it would be a pretty easy task.

"The Simpsons" would be bottom of the barrel, "MST3K" would be subpar, "Merbotia" would be average, "King's Quest" would be good, and so far I don't think I've covered anything truly exemplary. Maybe Toucan's "Pop". Actually probably "Pop". It's almost like trying to boil a game down to a number is not a good use of my time. Heck I'm already thinking "Wait maybe Merbotia should be good and King's Quest great?"

Anyway, putting aside trying to objectively rate creative expression, I opted to play Clysm's "Turmoil" because I do think it's a very good baseline for trying to grasp the difference between a "good" ZZT game and a "bad" ZZT game. It splits the difference and is about as average as a ZZT game can get.

So recalibrate your perception of average to whatever I think it is, and let's check out Clysm's "Turmoil"!

The world opens to this cool looking title screen with white text and colored highlights. It slowly changes the color of the highlight to match the colors of each of the cast. I distinctly remember browsing people's websites that had some of the ZZT games they enjoyed and choosing to play this one based on its title screen. The typography is on point.

Turmoil is a sci-fi action game, framed around your ship's computer Boris giving you a mission, then beaming yourself onto the relevant planet to complete that mission, and making your way back to the ship. It's a simple structure but it allows things to be flexible. Each mission is self contained, with very little connecting plot, but for a game about exploring alien worlds and fighting off bad guys with lasers, it does exactly what it's trying to.

You can speak with some of the crew before heading off, though there's very little personality to the characters. The pilot didn't even get a name or spot on the title screen.

The crew quarters contain nothing more than a lot of bed and a few weird critters which *sneep* at the player. Sam seems more interested in finishing up nap time than a rescue mission.

The east wing of the ship contains the transporter, as well as sources of health and ammunition.

A player greedy for more gems/health/points will soon break the machine, spilling gems out into the room. Once fully supplied, they can enter the transporter and beam themselves down to the first world, which the editor refers to as "Chert".

A cool little detail is that your ship is drawn floating over the planet not just off in a black void with some stars. Clysm will continue to update the backgrounds for the ship throughout the game.

The player arrives on Chert and shortly afterwards Felix materializes in, guns blazing.

The next screen features a split in the path, with a hut (which I thought was a cave) on the left, and more wilderness to the right. Most likely the player is going to want to check out the hut and will head right on in.

Only for the hut to stand up and attack!

The monster doesn't do anything on its own, but those gray creatures sap away the player's health when they come into contact. Unfortunately for the player they don't disappear after hurting the player like ZZT's built in creatures, nor can they be killed with your gun.

The player has to shoot at the hut's weak spot to defeat it and destroy the other enemies on the screen. This can be a bit frustrating as the gray monsters will block shots and it's very easy to just get surrounded and be unable to do anything but die.

Defeating the cabin means obtaining a green key for later use.

The other path leads to an area where Frog and the stranded Masher can be rescued. The area they're contained it is made up of objects rather than breakable walls preventing the player from just shooting into the cell.

Frog makes an appearance, but with the mission complete it's time to take the portal back to the ship. Mission accomplished.

Lucky for us Masher turns out to be a space marine as found in the space marine database. Mission 2 is essentially the same as the first, just in a more hostile environment.

The gem dispenser is still broken. It'll be broken regardless of whether or not the player breaks it the first time.

The landing immediately puts the player into danger this time, dozens of objects wander around randomly shooting. Your teammates do the same, but are specifically coded to shoot only in the opposite direction of the player to prevent a friendly fire situation.

Frog and Masher are invincible, but if Felix is shot too many times she will die, but don't worry, it's only for this board.

Making my way into the passage leads to this board with some monsters and various holes scattered around. Some of the holes contain gems and one of them contains the red key needed to open the locked door at the end of the board.

The enemies are like those from the previous mission, which means they'll end up packed together in a corner as the player approaches. Fortunately this time a single shot is all it takes to defeat them so the player can safely blast their way through the room.

The reward for completing this room is ammo and gems, along with a second red key to replace the first. It's not really much of a reward given the infinite ammo supply on the ship, and the gems being useless since they're not giving any health here.

This giant god-knows-what helpfully directs the player and crew on where to go.

But keep talking, and you'll get a white key necessary for finishing your mission.

This is the part where I managed to open the save prompt between being brought to 0 health and ZZT triggering a game over. It's the first time I've ever seen that happen! I didn't know it was even possible.

Heading south from the battlefield leads to another group of trapped people to rescue. The red key from the eastern path is necessary as well as the white key from the giant creature's mouth.

The people are grateful for being rescued, although I still haven't unlocked the back door so they all get stuck in front of it.

The white door shows off something that I don't believe we've seen in any of the ZZT worlds explored so far. This board connects to itself, which allows the player to run off one edge to another. It's a bit of an unnecessary design decision here, but definitely something worth noticing.

Whether Felix is shot or not in gameplay, the story assumes that she was. The third mission is a simple one, just a simple pickup of some mineral for reasons unstated. Masher opts to go with the player, while Sam and Frog stay behind to help with the rewiring.

In the crew quarters, Felix is resting up. The crew's genders aren't directly stated, but we find out that Felix is a she here.

After resupplying on health and ammo, Masher and the player are transported to the surface of the mining colony and speak with the mine's leader.

As soon as the player enters the mine, they're trapped inside by a landslide. Fortunately, all the creatures are on the other side of the wall cutting across the center of the board so they're not in direct danger. The landslide is actually a cinematic effect, that destroys the passages back out and creates some breakable walls for rubble. It's actually a bit of a surprise when it happens!

Heading east the player will run into the monsters, which just like the yellow creatures on the last planet, charge at the player and are defeated in one shot.

Although all the game's enemies are extremely similar, just the use of varying colors and characters to represent them honestly adds to the atmosphere. I think the use of non-conventional characters makes them stand out despite their simplicity. ZZT is full of abstraction in its graphics, but enemies being green triangles stands out as weird and gives them an alien feel.

Traveling deeper into the mines there are still more triangular aliens, and a set that gets spared since I didn't go left from the entrance immediately.

Through the passage lies the boss of the mines, a large creature that rains down bullets on the player. The player's first instinct is probably to run to the cyan box on the left, which is just a trap that shocks the player and takes away health when touched. Rude.

Not surprisingly, fighting the monster involves shooting its weakpoint. Since the player's bullets can destroy enemy bullets, there's no real danger once you're lined up and firing.

With a splorch and a splat the monster is defeated, and the player can now safely collect the gems and proceed to the next area. I'm not sure if this room looking like a skull and crossbones was intentional or not.

The creature turns out to have been blocking the rear exit to the mines, allowing the player to make their escape and find Van and Masher awaiting them.

I love this line.

Boris proceeds to tell the player about the next mission, which the rest of the healthy crew is already working on. The bright planet is called "sun" in the editor, which is probably not a good place to beam people down to.

Felix is able to speak with the player, mostly to complain about being bored stuck on the ship with nobody to talk to other than Boris. She also gives you a pendant, which physically appears on the screen by means of an invisible object moving into position and appearing.

Meanwhile in the transporter room, the gem device is fixed! It's slow, but the player can fill their health up one by one as much as they like before they head to the bright planet below.

The planet is indeed quite bright with the ground being solid white and having to be tunneled through

The next screen is a sort of boss fight. Like the monster in the mines it shoots down bullets at the player, but here you can just shoot it apart piece by piece until you've created a safe path for yourself.

The next two screens involve dodging bullets that ricochet back and forth across the player's path. I doesn't take much to get past them and the player is permitted to fire their own bullets as well if they want to safely destroy the bullets rather than try to time their way across.

Bad news up ahead as the player runs into Sam and learns that Masher may have been killed!

The monster continues the trend. Bullets shoot down, player shoots up. Once the boss is defeated, Masher can be found inside.

With Masher is serious need of help and no way to communicate with Boris, the player and Frog take their chances and venture through the portal onto another ship. The only information given is that the captain wants to speak with us, with no indication of whether or not this ship's crew is to be trusted.

The captain explains his bargain and requests the player follows him, with no other options available, they're forced to oblige.

Instant betrayal! The player and Sam are left to die on board the ship. Poor Masher is going to be roboticized, and there's no telling what happened to the rest of your crew.

Fortunately a helpful alien is also in the containment area with you. They blast a hole through the wall setting the player free.

From there the player needs to activate a switch opening the doors and use the provided boulders to block off the ship's lasers.

Up ahead the player and Sam will run into Frog and Masher. The situation is grim.

While everybody else (including your new alien friend) is able to return to the Plecostamus, nothing can be done for Masher. The player has to abandon him knowing he'll be made into a cyborg slave.

Back on your own ship, the situation looks even worse. The right half of the ship has been destroyed, the autopilot is dead, and it looks like Boris is as well. The cracked screen effect looks great here, as does the ruined motif of the ship.

The crew quarters are no better, with a collapsed ceiling and sparks flying everywhere which hurt the player when they come into contact. They only do 1 damage, but the cramped room and sheer number of them mean the player will likely lose a lot of health getting through.

It does mean seeing what's in the back room at least. The escape pods. One of which is missing, so it looks like the last unaccounted for crewmember may be alright after all.

Sure enough, by tracking the other escape pod Felix is found on this forested planet. She promptly collapses and Frog sends you and the robot to look for help while they put Felix to bed.

Up ahead is this strangely designed cave entrance. It's made of boulders that need to be pushed away to access. Visually I can see it as a cave, but the aesthetic is kind of ruined once you begin pushing parts of it around.

This cave is part of a larger cavernous system, filled with green bats which flap towards the player until they're shot, just like all the other enemies. Investigating the small white dot reveals a yellow key, but that's all that can be done for the time being.

The other path leads to an area full of water and enemies which haphazardly shoot at the player. The poor alien is afraid, leaving the player on their own to make the crossing.

It becomes more treacherous up ahead with bullets flying everywhere and evidence that this board will have to be traversed multiple times.

The waterway funnels into this canal and we get our first signs that there may be intelligent left on this world with these structures. I do like how something as simple as having the purple walls run vertically down the entire screen gives the board more depth, as it looks like the canal must be passing through some gate.

Inside the building is more of the caverns seen earlier. The caverns here are a large maze which connect from room to room in sometimes odd ways which prevent the player from ever hitting a dead end.

The caves look pretty cool stitched together. The way they wrap makes them a bit non-euclidean. For example, the top left two exits connect to the bottom right ones. There's little for the player to really do while inside them however, just a few bats to shoot and gag items to collect like dead batteries and pennies.

Eventually though, the player will find the exit and come out south of the river crossing screen. This takes them across the canal from earlier and lets them explore the rest of the ruined city which is just this one building.

(I managed to forget to go west here and pick up the hidden white key on the shore, but it won't make a difference as it's just for bonus points on the last screen.)

Inside the house is a cyborg.

Boris is ok! Thanks to brain transfers and cyborg bodies he now has a physical form.

The crew is brought back together (except for Masher, who is never spoken of again). They're unfortunately still stranded on this planet and have no way to call for help, but they're all safe at least.

Plus there's air hockey.

And so Turmoil draws to a somewhat abrupt close with this nice view of a sunset.

Final Thoughts

I really like Turmoil, and I think it's a lot of fun to play through yourself. The game is pretty easy, and the combat involved is fairly barebones, but there's definitely plenty of charm to it. Despite the simplicity of the game's graphics, Clysm does an excellent job creating worlds which are both varied and memorable with little more than some small exposition by Boris.

The game's cast is very samey. None of the crew really seems to have much personality, to the point where I completely forgot that though the game seems to end on a positive note, Masher is just gone. Boris is the only character who ever really has a chance to show any personality.

Turmoil is a game that fuels the player's imagination. When you look at what's actually there, it's not much, but it's just enough to get your brain to start filling in the blanks on its own. The missions are just an excuse to send the player on a journey across the galaxy, fighting strange creatures, helping those in need, and moving on to the next planet when the situation's been resolved.

It has its memorable moments, like the surprise hut ambush, a feat that would be difficult to pull in a medium that isn't ZZT. (Then again, there's always Baba Yaga.) The missions play out very similarly, but always feel fresh.

The ending is rather strange, and I wonder if there was ever an intent on making a sequel. It happens rather abruptly in what feels like the height of the story's tension only to just come to a sudden stop. There's a lot left unanswered in the ending. Masher is just gone and the crew is stranded. It's a pretty grim situation, but this new life on an alien world is one that the Plecostatmus crew looks forward to with a boundless optimism. This world is just their latest mission.