Where can I get The Underground Bugtown of ZZT?

The Underground Bugtown of ZZT is available on z2 as well as playable in browser via Archive.org

The Underground Bugtown of ZZT

Our first game full of fuzzy data! z2 refers to the game as just Bugtown, but both the game's title screen and documentation use the much longer title of The Underground Bugtown of ZZT. Not only that, but the ZZT file's last modified date is from 1995, while the documentation says 1993.

Nearly every Software Visions release has the exact same 1995 modified date, so most likely somebody split up a collection and uploaded the games individually at some point. It will quickly become apparent that this is almost certainly an earlier release by Janson, who was known for her top quality games and lasting influence on ZZT.

The real reason I decided to play Bugtown was that I had been playing a lot of the newly released Creepy Castle, a game with a predominately insect cast, so I was on a bug kick. As we'll see, it's a rough release, and very much inspired by Town of ZZT, and to a lesser extent the other registered worlds.

From the very opening the influence of Town on Bugtown is apparent. Going over a few of the various elements that make up ZZT worlds. There's also some details on the objects that will be encountered. Bugs, humans, and cops.

The game opens with the player on a train, a box of objects which carries them to their destination on the other side of the room.

Demonstrating the fragility of ZZT's objects, simply moving to the right rather than the left at the start of the game instead causes the train to break horribly!

I'm rather curious as to why it breaks like this. The object's code is basic movement instructions and the player shouldn't actually have any impact on how the train moves. It's very bizarre.

Once past the gate, the player is unceremoniously locked in, forced to make their way towards the town.

There are a few initial supplies handed out, making sure the player will be ready to go once they make it to town, but otherwise the room is pretty sparse.

The next screen is revealed to be a graveyard when the white keys are shown to instead be graves. Up ahead is our first insect friend to make.

The insect is the game's info dump. The player now has a goal, getting the three golden keys which will open the castle vault. There's a warning about the graves, but the only one that does anything is that one by the gems. The rest are purely decorative.

If you want to be a jerk you can get some more money out of them. Shooting a second time will cause the bug to chase you down and throw stars. Be nice to any bugs you meet.

Disturbing the grave causes all the normal walls to be transformed into tigers! ZZT is limited to how many elements with stats can be on the board at once so only the top few rows actually become tigers, the rest just disappear.

A side effect of this, is that since the board is now at its stat maximum, neither the player nor tigers can shoot bullets as there's no room in memory for ZZT to spawn any. Thankfully this means the player can safely run to the exit without having to take any damage.

Having fled from the tigers, the next screen is the hub of Bugtown. Like town there are several open routes to take. There are also plenty more which are currently inaccessible to the player.

The mayor's house is locked with a cyan door, and from ringing the doorbell it's clear the mayor doesn't want to speak with the player.

The town's shop offers ammo, food (for health), and torches. As always, I'm apprehensive to spend any money.

There's a roadblock with a bunch of policemen preventing passage into the town's jail.

The bank is a dark room, and using a torch reveals it to be a combination just like the one in Town.

The last building in the town is the hospital, where the receptionist will tell us we have to wait since we have no emergency. They also warn us to stay out of the vault.

East of the town is the castle and another locked door whose key is on the other side.

WOW. WHAT A FUN ROOM. I did spend some time trying to solve the puzzle, but was missing certain keys and unable to proceed.

Heading south towards the kennel leads to an action board segmented by a few gates. Touching a checkmark opens the next gate allowing the player to proceed. Dungeons of ZZT also has a board called the kennel, segmented with keys and doors, but Janson's version doesn't feel like it's the same thing done again.

The reward for completing the kennel is two green keys, only one of which can be held at a time so there's going to be some backtracking.

The first key can be used to open up the mayor's house, and barge right on in.

But if you provoke him...

Sure enough, all the police rush towards the mayor's house to arrest the player. They surround the player and haul them off to jail. Or at least, right next to the jail.

There are plenty of choices, but not much to them. If the player begs twice, the guard will let them go. If they ask for death they will get a game over. Trying to bribe brings up a prompt asking for five, ten, or fifteen gems with ten or more getting the player out. Ignoring him brings up the prompt again a few seconds later.

If you tell him there's a giant worm behind his back he laughs at you.

But then a hidden object actually spawns a giant worm! Unfortunately, the guard has no reaction to it ever, but it's a cute joke.

Once the player is free, they can head to the town park, which is full of creatures to fight. There's enough forest on the screen that it's much easier and safer to just ignore the enemies and tunnel through the forest instead.

Heading west from here brings the player back around to the eastern side of town. ZZT's boards don't have to form a map that perfectly fits together. It would be just as possible to make going back east from here take the player to an entirely different board.

Going deeper into the forest leads to this screen which is reminiscent of the forest section in Town of ZZT where the player has to make it past enemies that are constantly being duplicated.

It's pretty standard stuff, but I'm unsure what the purpose of the duplicating boulders is. They could theoretically trap the player, but by the time the player reaches them, they'd be right be the way out that doesn't involve backtracking.

Instead, the boulders are extremely dangerous as if ZZT tries to duplicate a boulder but there's a player in the way ZZT has a runtime error and kicks you right back to the DOS prompt. The player needs to quickly go through the transporter in this segment lest they lose their progress.

The cave itself is a few dark rooms, but fortunately not a huge maze or anything. Pictured above is the last screen of the cave with the darkness turned off. It's mostly just shooting a few creatures.

What is neat about the cave, is that the walls regularly flash different colors. There's no design reason this needs to be happen, but this one piece of moss serves as an explanation for why it happens in game.

There's also the the first golden yellow key at the other end of the same screen. These get turned in at the castle, but I'll get to that later.

Next, I headed east of the park to this board with a lake. It doesn't look like much, but I spent a lot of time here. The board would appear to just be full of spinning guns which shoot out bullets randomly, but there's a clear path around the lake, so surely there must be some sort of secret.

But there isn't. There's not a single object on this board. It's just the player and the guns.

Except even worse, the board hasn't been linked properly! As touched on a bit earlier, in ZZT board exits have to be set each way, so the park connects to the lake, but the lake doesn't connect to the park or anything else. If you enter this screen, you are forced to quit the game.

I saved on it.

To avoid having to replay the game from the beginning I had to take my save, rename it to have a .ZZT extension, enable ZZT's debug mode so it would let me edit the save, link the boards myself, and then start playing the new ZZT world that was formerly a save file.

It was a process.

I swung by the castle figuring I could drop off my key now, but still found myself running into a spot where I'd be unable to proceed and unable to escape. This was more than slightly confusing.

Instead, I went back to the bug town hub and headed north this time. The puzzle here may have looked scary, but as soon as you realize you only need to actually make only a few of the pushers move it becomes really simple.

The reward is another dark room. One that's filled with breakable walls and bombs necessary to destroy them. It's very linear, but there is this optional corridor where you can use some of the extra bombs to blast away into a cache of gems.

The next screen is full of worms, long centipedes that I lacked the ammo to safely shoot away. Instead the screen became a sneaking mission, quickly passing by the heads and hoping they continued on in whatever direction they were headed.

The next screen turns the lights back on finally, which is fortunate, given my low torch count.

The factory is very derivative of City of ZZT's elevator. Objects will move the player from room to room until they arrive at their destination. And just like in City of ZZT, any novelty of the game moving the player by pushing them is swiftly eradicated by the tedium of having to wait for the elevator to reach the room the player is currently in.

This bug friend informs the player that they'll need to find a way into the boss's office (hey, that rhymes). The second bug in the packaging department says that the boss knows where one of the three golden keys can be found, so it's important that the player speaks with them.

Both rooms have these music notes that give bonus points when touched, but then oddly they don't disappear. If you try to touch them a second time for more points...

has them taken away from you! It's a weird punishment for the sake of having a punishment.

The puzzle to get into the boss's office is pretty straightforward. It's also the sort of thing that 100% would not work outside of ZZT's text environment. In ZZT there's nothing unusual about a green plant looking identical to a bomb. A plant that turns out is actually a bomb would stand out a little bit in a modern AAA title.

So there's the second golden key. Unfortunately for me, I'm still holding the first one, so I'm forced to leave it behind for now.

The factory exit returns the player back to bug town, and by this point I was pretty low on health and had a good amount of gems so I decided to do some shopping.

Of course, I had to make sure to keep enough gems to purchase a ruby key that the mayor had mentioned earlier.

The not actually ruby key can be used to open up the shopkeeper's vault, promptly replacing it for a cyan key that can be used in the police station to enter the town's mall. Through the police station...

Most of the stores within the mall are closed, which is a shame because I'd love to have seen The Famous Store of What.

Havoc 'R' Us is exactly what it says. Just a room full of worm heads and some ammo and gems. It's possible to grab all the items before the worms get too close.

Keys 'R' Us meanwhile consists of a single employee wanting to sell us a purple key. Thanks to the four gems in the Havoc store, I have just barely enough money to afford it. Once again, paying for non-essential items in a ZZT game shop nearly screwed me over.

The purple key is the next step on this key exchanging quest. It's used to open the vault in the hospital.

And opening the vault gives the player the combination to the bank vault!

The bank vault is just like the one in Town of ZZT, with the stupid push button right at the start where an unaware player would push the button and stop themselves from ever being able to access the vault and rendering the game unwinnable.

Alexis however, learned from Sweeney's mistake and if the combination has yet to be entered correctly, the entire series of sliders resets, meaning you can't break the game here! It's a triumph for thoughtful design.

And of course, wouldn't you know it, the reward is the third and final key and I'm still here holding the first one, unsure how to get rid of it!

Needless to say, this board gave me a lot of trouble. At first I thought the board might have been accidentally unbeatable. It seemed I could never make any progress due to missing a green key. I originally wound up cheating my way through, only to realize my mistake when I began writing this article.

Remember how there were two green keys back here? I didn't. You're supposed to use the second green key on this board to be able to complete it.

That made the puzzle seem solvable, but it then appeared that it was impossible to make it back out of the room once inside due to the red slider to the left of the white music note object.

Eventually I figured out that this was also a mistake on my part and the room is 100% beatable and 100% of an understatement for its name.

Honestly trying to break it down via screenshots would be a nightmare. I just made a video of the solution instead.

There are numerous points where doing things out of order can make it impossible to clear. I hate this board.

Of course, even after getting through the castle's main area, there's still one more puzzle to solve before the player can return their keys.

The last puzzle to solve is hitting the logical equivalence symbols to make the walls move and work your way through the board until you can finally get rid of a key.

But at least now it's finally over! Bugtown is full of vaults, but they've all been opened now.

The vault opens up slowly through this colorful section just as the entrance to Town of ZZT's palace opens. The checkmark then tunnels through the room, creating a new path again just like Town.

Bugtown ends just as Town does, with a little you win screen followed by a swift game over. After that slightly confusing puzzle, I'm thankful for it.

So, The Underground Bugtown of ZZT by Alexis Janson. Bugtown is... a mess? There were certainly less playable games out there by this point in ZZT's history, and Janson would go on to become one of the most well respected ZZTers whose games were inspirational, and whose contributions with things like Super Tool Kit were revolutionary for the scene.

Bugtown however is clearly from Janson's earlier days. It still follows the template introduced in the official ZZT worlds quite heavily, but doesn't really bring anything new to them. If you've played Sweeney's ZZT games, you're not likely to be impressed by anything in Bugtown. Janson hasn't really found her voice yet in Bugtown, and gives us what today feels like a mediocre knockoff of Town.

There are still a few glimmers of what Janson could do hinted at throughout Bugtown. Improving Sweeney's bank puzzle to allow for multiple attempts was a welcome change and genuinely surprised me. The scene with the mayor and being dragged off to jail is a good early example of complex interactions between objects, and with a bit of humor added to it.

Overall, I'd have a tough time recommending somebody plays Bugtown just for the sake of playing Bugtown. Playing it and seeing how it compared to later Janson games might make it more interesting to see how Janson's work refined over time compared to the much more crude Bugtown. Games like Code Red and Mission Enigma were gamechangers for ZZT, but Bugtown is just a buggier version of Town.