Where can I get Nightplanet

Nightplanet 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 along with the other entries to the Summer 1998 24 Hours of ZZT contest.

Nightplanet

Today's game is one which probably won't show up on anybody's list of important ZZT worlds, and yet it's an award winner. Myth's Nightplanet is a notable title not so much because of the world itself, which is a perfectly playable adventure, but because of the constraints under which it was produced.

In the Summer of 1998, Mono had decided to host the first ever 24 Hours of ZZT contest. The contest was exactly as it sounded. Participants would be given a topic and expected to submit a complete ZZT game created in a span of 24 hours. This wasn't a completely original idea, as the MegaZeux community would hold its first "Day of Zeux" competition which had the same strict time requirements a few weeks before the ZZT equivalent. The 24HoZZT or 24HoZ became a community staple, typically being ran four times per year with the winner of the previous event being expected to organize its followup. Like any ZZT community endeavor this of course became rife with drama and complaints over how things were being ran, biased judges, and lousy topics.

Still, despite the difficulties the contest ran from Summer 1999 through Autumn 2003! The contest was a major part of the ZZT community and always drew large numbers of entrants (albeit far fewer submissions). Of course, if you ask anyone who's participated in a modern day game jam it's easy to understand why. A single day is not a lot of time to make a game, and while ZZT is honestly probably the best medium out there for getting rapid and playable results, it's still a huge undertaking.

So today I've decided to play Myth's Nightplanet, the winner of the first ever 24 Hours of ZZT contest. The topic chosen by mono was "Night". According to the Interactive Fantasies 24 Hours of ZZT Archive, it was judged by Creator, Kev Vance, and xf. Eighteen entries were received. A lot of early 24 HoZZT data has been lost to time, such as the judges scorecards, and here one of the games was corrupt and hasn't been recovered since. The efforts of Interactive Fantasies members in curating their own small archive for these games shows some nice foresight in recognizing their importance.

Myth wisely played it safe and went with the most basic title screen she possibly could. We get a name, an author, a warning that the game was produced after consuming orange fanta, and a "19" in the corner.

The 19 is the game's ID number. These were either given out or chosen by the authors on signup and have no real purpose. Day of Zeux contests would frequently use them and require the games be published anonymously to prevent bias in judging (though they didn't for this very first DoZ which was so close to the first 24HoZ..). ZZTers never bothered with the anonymity, but kept the numbers.

The game first opens with a nice introduction scroll setting the scene. The player takes on the role of a galactic trader who is currently free of deliveries and with plenty of time to kill. Myth does a good job throughout Nightplanet of establishing atmosphere through her writing and I wouldn't be surprised if the authors made note of it. On such a short time limit writing is going to be much faster than attempting to convey this information via graphics, and Myth shows a lot of ability in creating a compelling atmosphere through writing.

Of course, the game is still a rush job as any game made in 24 hours will be. There's a typical ZZTer apology for bugs and permission to edit the game if needed to make sure it can be completed. Fortunately Myth created a cohesive game in this time and no such editing or cheating will be necessary.

Of course, just as I say how Myth focused on essentials I get to point out the nice little details.

The ship is a simple enough design with nothing too fancy. It does have some animated thrusters which flicker red/yellow/white while changing character to create a fire effect. In addition, the stars on the background are objects which walk until they hit a wall, turn themselves invisible, walk back to the top of the screen, reappear, and begin moving again. Staggering a few objects like this creates a simple illusion of movement and the two combine to make it look like the ship is actually flying through space. Both these effects were pretty common in worlds set in space.

Exploring the consoles gives us some insight into the kind of person Mentu is. He's knowledgeable in modifying and maintaining his ship by his lonesome.

But more importantly, there's a mysterious transmission his ship is picking up! Having nothing better to do Mentu opts to investigate. The player is given the opportunity to explore the rest of the ship if they haven't rather than force the game's story to progress immediately which is certainly nice.

The left cargo bay is full of nothing but junk. Exploring the second one brings up some more information about the ship.

"Comfort must be sacrificed for profit". Space capitalism blows.

There's a big info dump but it quickly gets all the background information that the player's going to need. There's a distress signal coming from a mining facility on a planet half shrouded in perpetual night. It's been broadcasting the signal for a century and likely has some salvageable tritactinum which can be worth quite a bit. Mentu's search for profit begins.

I don't think the science is right here? The tilted axis is what causes seasons. For a planet to have a dark side its rotational period should be the same as its orbital period. I may be horribly wrong on this. Whether or not the science works out isn't important however. What is important is that the environment is extremely harsh and for a mine to have been worthwhile, it must also be extremely profitable.

This scene is really well composed, managing to keep the structure's form even when using black on a starry black background by having the dark blue windows still visible on the darker portion of the building. Mentu's ship is also animated and the player can watch it fly downward and land at the structure.

Myth's sparse scenery like this works out wonderfully when working with a constrained time limit and is enhanced by her writing giving a feeling of emptiness and abandonment to the planet from just this one board.

This is no rescue mission. The station has long since been abandoned and become devoid of life. It's cold (41 degrees Fahrenheit), difficult to breathe, and not a particularly friendly place. The objective is simple. Find something valuable and leave.

Myth keeps on building up the suspense. The player will see the scroll message about the security system before really getting a look at the board. When they do, they'll see a few split paths all of which require the player to funnel through narrow chokepoints.

Mentu, as well as the player, have no idea what happened on the station and combining that with the chokepoints makes what would otherwise seem like an empty room become a potential threat. Will an alarm go off and activate some security robots? Are there aliens watching? Some sort of plague? It's dark and it's cold and the player has nothing to do but face their face and venture into the station.

Nothing happens after crossing security, but there's not really any relief. At some point the player is going to run into _something_.

And the first something is a lot of skeletons. Whatever happened here happened quickly if there are bodies littering the main lobby.

Investigating, Mentu can see a faint glow on each skeleton. This one has an added detail about their arm.

It's not an abandoned and dead space colony without documents lying around. Nightplanet reveals itself to be a classic "We dug too deep" story. The mine unearthed some insect-like creatures that feed on energy. They reproduce extremely rapidly when given energy, but otherwise are harmless.

So uh, guess what happened.

There's a locked white door blocking this room that appears to be full of wreckage. The sign says that it's a high voltage area. The other exits are labeled with signs as well. North are the systems, east are nodes one and two, and to the south are the quarters.

Mentu picked the wrong planet to land on.

The crew quarters are simple bedrooms with nothing more than a few beds and a desk in each of them (if even that). The player can see that they're almost all empty, but one of them is full of more skeletons.

The room full of dead crew has the name Anubis written on it. The door is locked, as are all the others. The other skeleton has no special message so it's time to explore another portion of the station.

The eastern nodes lead down to the mines, but conveniently both of them have several chunks of tritactinum ore for Mentu to collect.

The player is actually asked if they want to pick it up before doing so, and can't hold more than one at a time.

The only other thing of interest in the room are the controls, but they're all currently powered down like the rest of the station's systems. Well, there is a passage into the mines...

NOPE.

It is time to go home now!!

Oh god.

There are four systems around the room which handle, security, mine observation, communications, and power.

The power is turned back on to the station which allows Mentu to work the other systems as necessary.

The security system offers a few interesting choices, and despite being a century old Mentu can figure out how to work it from his past experience. Highlighting the need for experience to be able to understand an old system makes me wonder how old of a computer I'd be able to comfortably work my way around.

These are definitely references.

Thanks to the earlier exploration of the crew quarters Mentu is able to access the door release function.

The player can only open the last two doors, as Mentu sees no reason to open the others. I only opened door 11 at first since that was the Anubis door and I couldn't recall the other door that had a note on a desk visible.

The mine observer allows Mentu to take a look at the safety of the two mines. Both of them are okay to enter. Usually in these sorts of settings you'd expect to have to power on ventilation or something, but aside from a little radiation there's nothing to fear. Well, other than the hell bugs which skeletonized the crew and are most likely still down there in the dark.

The communications system is responsible for broadcasting the distress call that has gone unanswered for a century until Mentu showed up. You can shut it off and hopefully prevent somebody else from becoming stranded here in the future.

Raising the bulkheads gives access to the station's data logs. Most of them are unhelpful records about mining operations over the years the station was active, but the later entries reveal more about the station's fate.

Mentu learns the truth about what happened. The creatures made it to the mining colony's systems and drained them to nothing. The crew was stranded (I find it very odd that there isn't a single ship on the planet for them!) and couldn't last long with the ever hungrier creatures.

The planet was safe once the energy ran out, but Mentu and his ship's arrival only means more energy for the since dormant creatures.

The records room skeleton can be identified after the log has been read.

Mentu can now access the locked crew quarters and hopefully learn something to help him escape from the nightplanet. The crew died cold and frightened.

"Lacks experience with skeletons" is a very good phrase. This skeleton is the only one different from the others, but was wisely placed in front of an object that makes up the desk giving the player a reason to want to touch the object in hopes of moving it. If the key had been on a random skeleton it would be very easy to miss this key.

Nothing else is any help here.

The power room can be accessed but Mentu can't interact with anything inside yet.

I had to go back to the systems room and open the last crew door here to get an idea of what to do next.

The doctor's plan is laid out, the radiation emitted from the tritactinum will draw the creatures into th emines provided there's enough gathered together. From there an explosion can be rigged to destroy the creatures while Mentu can safely fly off.

I really like the finality of the "Mentu now knows what to do" line. A man. A plan. A tritacinum. Nightplanet.

Of course, this plan hinges on Mentu entering the dark mines.

Only the northern mines give a message before entering them as well as torches. The other mines entered earlier just let Mentu walk in at any time which seems like a minor design issue.

For all the tension Myth managed to build earlier, actually entering the mines winds up being a low point for the game.

Here they are with the lights on. The player needs to navigate this winding little path and place the tritactinum blocks in the cavernous area.

The issue comes from the fact that that has to be done one block at a time and a lot of blocks are required! Five for this first mine is a lot of walking the same path over and over.

When the last block is in place the detonator is set and the creatures begin to flock in. There's no actual change to the board when this happens or anything. I'd definitely believe this to be a case of the time limit beginning to get in the way of the game.

The other mine needs seven blocks to be deposited inside. It's incredibly tedious. The few torches provided won't be enough to get through the entire sequence either.

It's a good thing the second mine is basically a straight line from end to the other because otherwise cheating would be necessary. I was also a little let down neither mine had a skeleton for whoever it was that tried to follow through on the doctor's plan earlier. There's some indication of this with one mine requiring fewer blocks be placed inside, and I think it was a missed opportunity to show them along with a skeleton.

It also would've been cool if each mine needed half as many blocks of tritactinum!

More insects begin to flood the second mine. It's time to prepare the detonation and get off this planet.

And it wouldn't hurt to bring back a little something right?

I go to cross the wires, except the power's still on so I kind of electrocute myself. Thankfully this isn't a Sierra game so Mentu lives to shut off the power and try again. (You will die if you try it again.)

The Spanish is of course "High voltage flavor!" which was definitely a marketing slogan of Fanta. We were warned earlier that this game was fueled by the drink.

The mine observation system warns the player about the dangerous levels of radiation in the mines now.

Mentu can now power down the station, but doing so will mean it can't be restarted again.

This time Mentu can cross the wires and get ready to get off the planet. The power is off but the wiring still manages to begin starting the chain reaction to the station's destruction.

There's no actual time limit in play, the player is just expected to leave at this point.

If you picked up an extra block then you can get a slightly different ending, which is really just mentioning that you'll make some profit. The standard ending just mentions taking off above the explosion and being done with it.

When I took the block, I half expected it to cause a bad ending where it meant that a purple creature would make it on board my ship, but that's not the case. However, if you don't shut off the emergency distress beacon then you can get an alternate ending:

rip

The game ends with a large explosion illuminating the icy wasteland of the planet's darkened hemisphere. Again Myth does a great job of taking advantage of the mostly black background allowing her to create some lighting.

The game ends with a ZZT credits board. The mystery has been solved, Mentu got his valuables, and the threat has been neutralized. Myth gives plenty of shoutouts to some other ZZTer/MZXers and reminds you that this game came out during the Clinton administration.

The aplogies are very unecessary! The science isn't why anybody was playing the game! The plot is nothing amazing but it moves the game along just fine. The game's graphics are servicable for the main gameplay portions while the cutscenes are very well done. The writing is strong even if the dialog for the dead crew is a bit more by the book. The obvious puzzles is an interesting way of looking at it. They don't really feel like puzzles, and the game feels more like a modern indie game that's more concerned with telling a story through gameplay than being something to beat.

The credits screen doesn't have a #endgame so I'll accept that apology.

That's almost all there is for Nightplanet. The game has a single unused board which is pretty great.

This notes board has a little bit of dev commentary about how much work they put into the game, and the disappointment that it's for a simple little game jam and not some years in the making masterpiece of gaming. It's a shame! Not that the effort wasn't put towards something "better", but that Myth felt this way at all. Making a game in 24 hours is an accomplishment itself, and there's a lot of capability shown here. If anything Myth should have been proud for what she accomlished here!

I don't know what it is about these contests, but people loved to put these random stats about their creation in them. Food eaten, hours slept, shows watched, and music listened to all come up quite a lot.

I'm impressed by the 90 minutes of sleep. I participated in a few 24 Hours of ZZT contests and would frequently plan to pull all nighters, but never came anywhere close to actually doing so.

Also the Simpsons episodes were reruns going by the dates the contest was held. I was really hoping we'd be able to know what episode aired.

Final Thoughts

Nightplanet is an excellent showcase on what you can do with ZZT on a time limit. Playing it sets a high bar for the contest and I don't expect most of the other entries came close to this. You wouldn't guess the game was made in a single day. Myth demonstrates a strong understanding of what to go for in a contest like this, focusing on telling a story above all else, and it absolutely works. The world is extremely tiny, empty, and there's very little to actually interact with, but you'll never notice it while playing because you'll be more invested in figuring out what happened to the station and how to get off it yourself.