Firstly, let me say thanks to everybody who's supported the Worlds of ZZT Patreon. It is very exciting to be able to write about this sort of thing and know there are people out there who are interested in it!

I also know that the Patreon was started without any specific examples of "This is what I'll be writing" other than a few old blog posts. Hopefully this will provide a good reference for the sort of material to expect! I'm also very open to hearing your feedback and comments, so please do not hesitate to let me know your thoughts both on the subjects of these articles themselves as well as their format.

With that said, let's get right into the first world to be featured in the Closer Look series: Dungeons of ZZT

Dungeons of ZZT

Dungeons of ZZT is one of the original ZZT Worlds and serves as the sequel to Town of ZZT. The file is dated November 2nd, 1991, making it just shy of 25 years old at the time of writing.

Unlike Town, Dungeons was a registered world and not part of the Shareware ZZT package. It cost $6 on its own, or as part of $10 and $12 bundles which included the other official worlds (City and Best of ZZT that is, Caves was a bonus included with any registration). So how does it compare to Town? Let's take a look!

In contrast to Town's static hub, Dungeons begins with the player's back to a moving wall, shoving them inside and locking them away in the dungeon. A scroll and ammo await the player to give them the game's story and goal. The "Evil Dungeon Guards" have captured you and thrown you inside the dungeons. The only hope of escape is to traverse the forty-five rooms of the game and this time, collect the four purple keys.

The hub format isn't actually abandoned, however. Though two of the three paths are locked, the keys are there on the very same screen giving the player a chance to open them up after a brief encounter with some lions. For my playthrough, I opted to head east.

Following the path leads to a screen with a simple maze containing some centipedes and sliders which much be pushed out of the way to progress, as well as a purple key taunting the player.

Heading north in hopes of obtaining the key, instead brings the player to a small section of a larger room, with a series of scrolls warning them that touching the alpha is certain death. I touched the alpha. I was instantly killed for it. This is game design.

There's nothing else you can _do_ with the alpha. You can touch it and die, or ignore it and live.

On my second attempt, I opted instead to head into "The Zapper", a board where the player is blocked from shooting and instead has to rely on energizers to make themselves invincible and run into the creatures instead. A lot of what Dungeons does, is tries to make interesting scenarios to fight against ZZT's default enemies. We'll see a lot more like this progressing through the game and I feel that Dungeons does make very good use of them.

Later on amongst ZZTers, these basic enemies were seen as primitive, and their usage was frowned upon compared to coding your own enemies instead.

Also of note, is that the lower left corner of the screen contains an invisible maze. I personally never found any fun in mazes like this one where there isn't any actual danger.

For completing the Zapper, the player receives the first of the four purple keys.

Upon exiting a scroll reminds them to unlock that door ASAP. ZZT only allows the player to carry one of each colored key at a time, so continuing forward to the next purple key would mean lots of backtracking to actually be able to pick it up.

Once again going through the maze by the Zapper, this time heading right, the player will encounter what's easily the worst screen in Dungeons.

"Don't miss!" is right. This screen is a very difficult test in timing, with extreme punishment. If you miss your shot, you'll be attacked from the "Wrong" objects, each throwing three player seeking stars, and the door will lock you in when this happens. If you're not clever about things, you'll quite possibly lose sixty health! You really need to lead your shots as well, a cycle in ZZT is about 0.1 seconds, meaning it will take almost 3 seconds from the time you fire your bullet to it hitting the target object.

There are ways of mitigating it however. You have enough time to hide in this crevice and usually the stars will die off on their own as their pathfinding isn't the best. (With some luck you can even make it behind the door and safely wait it out entirely.) As if this wasn't bad enough, each time you hit the target the objects blocking the exit only move once, meaning multiple hits are required.

If you simply hold down the fire button and wail on the target, the objects tend to get desynced and stuck, forcing a restart.

Though, it's also quite possible to desync the target itself by shooting it after it receives a signal to start moving, but before it actually does so. This fortunately let me get the object to move to a row where it could be shot, but missing wouldn't be recognized.

Finally free of that terrible screen, you're taunted by yet another purple key. Dungeons really likes doing that.

Dungeons is much more action focused than Town, but it does still have a few actual puzzles. Though compared to Town, they seem both tamer and less notable. This board is even called "Another Puzzle". In the hyper-abstract boards of the original ZZT worlds, a lack of things like text labels can make it really difficult to describe a board compared town which has iconic locations like "The House of Blues", "The Three Lakes", and "The Rube Board".

All the player is required to do is push some boulders into position so that there's a second exit to the main hall, then activate the bomb and time it to explode over the breakables to be able to access the rest of the board.

One thing definitely worth noting is the sudden appearance of tigers here. Touching the object erases the breakable walls, freeing the enemies inside. If you go back and count the enemies, you'll see eight ruffians, eight lions, and zero tigers, but in this screenshot there's suddenly an extra ruffian and some tigers. So where are they coming from?

Taking a look at KevEdit's stat viewer, you can see that there are a lot more stats than expected. If you look closely you'll also see that a lot of the coordinates repeat themselves, essentially meaning that there are two stats per ruffian. The only ways to accomplish this are through corruptions in ZZT's editor, or manually hex-editing a world. When two stats share a tile, whatever is in that tile gets acted upon twice per cycle. It's of very limited use since as soon as whatever occupies that tile moves off of it, only one stat gets updated, leaving a glitchy empty with stats (dubbed a "black hole" by ZZTers) in its place. It's a bizarre bug that very rarely comes up and it's interesting to see it occur in one of the original ZZT worlds.

Continuing on the path leads to one more puzzle, with a little flavor added by the ever helpful "Don't Blow Yourself Up!" sign. The puzzle elements are once again very light, mostly just not getting caught in explosions as you open up more of the board. However there is a bit more to it than that. Due to the required backtracking to get additional red keys as needed, the player will be spending a lot of time in the lower area being shot at by spinning guns. Carefully using lit bombs to push others without activating them can greatly reduce the danger of this area like so:

Of course, as you can see by my health, I also took significant damage regardless.

Exiting the bomb room circles back around to the hallway with the purple key, and this time the player gets to claim their prize. This is my second purple key, marking the halfway point of the adventure! It took me roughly half an hour to get to this point.

At this point, the eastern half of the game is completed, and the only places remaining to explore are the northern and southern paths in the dungeon's main hub. I opted to go south, which took me to a board called Whirlpool.

I did not last! My first death caused by non-alpha related injuries. The Whirlpool is a really good example of creative environments for action scenes. The player must make several laps around the screen, taking a key to unlock a door, while fighting their way through duplicating enemies, maintaining a fast enough pace to not get overwhelmed, but also slow enough to be careful not to clear too much forest and giving the enemies more room to maneuver.

One useful trick is that if the player blocks a duplicator, when the duplication process fails, ZZT will act as if the original enemy had attacked the player, hurting them, but also destroying itself, allowing the player to shut off a source of enemies if they're willing to take a hit.

Without any more tigers, the board progresses much more smoothly. The ruffians tend to congest the area near their duplicator prevent many from even spawning, and the lions and centipedes have simple behavior that makes them easy to deal with.

Of course, by the time I finish the board I realize I missed another mechanic it has, that tends to go underused in ZZT worlds: water! If the player enters the whirlpool area itself, they'll be able to shoot over the water and safely defeat the enemies without having to get close enough to them that they can be attacked themselves.

I really enjoy this board and think it's one of the best in Dungeons. It does a wonderful job combining the basic elements of ZZT into a fun and exciting challenge. As mentioned earlier, later games would purposely avoid using so many of the things that make this board memorable, transporters, keys and doors, forests, water, and default creatures all showcase good usage of "bad" elements in the ZZT toolset.

Pressing onward to the next section of the dungeons, the DEEP DARK DUNGEONS. Good news, they aren't actually dark at all. There are no dark rooms in Dungeons of ZZT. This, is a good thing.

There's a second blue maze here. Heading east leads to a resupply area with plenty of gems and ammo (and lions), so the player has to head west to make progress.

To the west is a free blue key, allowing access to the last exit from the blue maze room. There's a nice touch here with moving the player to a board to collect the key rather than just giving it in the maze itself. It adds a bit of foreshadowing knowing of a board you've seen, but haven't actually been through.

Town of ZZT has an ampersand that gives you some points. This percent sign does absolutely nothing. I have no idea.

The next screen has this object move across the ricochet area shooting bullets making a sine-wave appear that you have to carefully run through to avoid taking damage. You can't shoot on the board so there's no alternative to running and hoping.

I totally pulled it off on my first attempt and let me tell you I am very proud of how well I held down the left key.

Following the path puts you back in this blue key room. I missed grabbing a screenshot on the second pass so you can look at the first screenshot again. Avoiding the center area and heading north through the red area brings you to another oddity

Ok then. I'll just take that key and head west.

And that leads to the third purple key! This next action sequence contains ricochets, which will reflect your bullets back at you, as well as the bullets shot by tigers. It forces the player to keep a closer watch on where they're shooting in some already congested areas. My sole complaint is that despite the abundance of ricochets, there's only one spot where you can make your shots reflect at a 90 degree angle, shooting safely from around a bend. It's a fun mechanic that tends to go underutilized in the player's favor.

Moving south this time leads to another board with lots of creatures to shoot. Of note is the cyan ammo object which gives 250 ammo! It's pretty uncommon to see objects taking on roles that could be fulfilled with prefab elements, but in this case the alternative would be picking up 50 ammo items.

Entering the main area causes the purple object to trap you inside, but the player's provided more than enough ammunition on this board alone to handle things if they take their time. The player is rewarded with a red key and can make their way out of this section of the dungeons.

Back to this board again, the player can now enter the X area. Interestingly, the ammo and centipede in the upper left section are cut off entirely and cannot be accessed.

On the way out, I was mauled by the centipedes as I forgot that this board is marked as one where the player cannot shoot from the earlier segment with dashing across the ricocheting bullets. I imagine that a lot of other forgetful players take a beating here.

Heading out takes the player past the blue maze and back through the Whirlpool screen before letting the player return their third purple key, and proceed to the final northern branch.

And sure enough, right at the start of The Kennel is the fourth purple key!

Ok, no, I didn't actually skip a whole bunch of content. It's a very silly mistake to make though. Of all the key colors to use, purple is probably the worst choice. Of course if the player takes this route early on, they may be a bit paranoid of using that key as there may be two purple keys along the northern branch.

The Kennel itself is some much blander shooting compared to some of the more unique environments seen throughout the rest of the game, but could also very well be the first path a player chooses to take. It's also very lacking in resources compared to the other paths. If you pay attention to my health throughout this playthrough, you'll see it goes up and down quite a bit due a good mix of combat and gems.

The next board, The Four Stages, is a return to form, breaking up a room into chambers which require the gems to be collected before being able to proceed to the next.

And after you complete the three chambers, the fourth springs to life as an object creates a wall and transforms the boulders into tigers.

Following the four stages is this board, with a path locked behind four doors.

The next screen is a fun little puzzle called The Key Machine. The player has to press the buttons to operate the machine and get the red keys out. It's a fun early example of some complex object interaction.

Alas, you can still break it...

But perhaps this behavior was noted, the player only needs four red keys to proceed and this puzzle offers them six. If you were so inclined, a lot of screens use red keys and it's possible to exploit this a little bit.

There's plenty of running back and forth between the machine and the room with the doors to unlock. While boards like The Whirlpool take advantage of the one key per color limit, in this case it turns into a tedious trip.

Moving past the red doors is the final puzzle, known only as "Puzzling?". Unfortunately, it's very much not. Simply line up the boulders so the pushers can move. Dungeons does a much better job with action, but a much worse job with puzzles than Town did.

The reward is a purple Z which just says "ZZT!" when touched and gives no reward.

The next screen is one seen way back at the start of the game, with the killer alpha. More ricochets and tigers, with some key grabbing for good measure. Once again I opted to purposely take a hit to disable a duplicator, in this case getting two for the price of one!

And again coming full circle, the player finally obtains the last purple key, which was seen from the very beginning.

With the last key in hand, it's finally possible to escape from the dungeon!

Hitting the switch causes the guard to move out of the way, letting the spinning guns slowly chip away at the walls and open the path to freedom. It's a bit of a slow process waiting for them to decide to shoot however. The firing rate is actually turned down to two.

Heading towards the exit, there's a whole lot of ammo that won't be needed, and scrolls warning you that you haven't actually escaped from the dungeons just yet!

The final challenge of Dungeons is to collect all the gems in The Fritz. The board itself is chaotic looking, but other than the three tigers in the lower right, there's no enemies that can escape until you knock down a wall for them.

Note that my health jumped from 16 to 70. If the player's made it this far, they'll have no trouble finishing this final board.

The penultimate board is a celebration of the player's ability. The colorful walls turn into spinning conveyers, and a scroll offers a 10,000 point bonus for escaping. The guards open the gate allowing access to freedom.

And so, Dungeons of ZZT comes to a close, with the twist ending that dragons with very long snouts like to play ZZT at their standing desks.

So how does Dungeons of ZZT compare to Town of ZZT?

Personally, I think it's a notable improvement. While the exact order the registered worlds were created is unknown, this at most the fourth ZZT game ever made. It shows considerable improvements in gameplay, with a lot of very well designed action boards compared to Town's much more haphazard enemy placement. Many fan made ZZT worlds suffered from poor enemy usage as well, but Dungeons really exemplifies how well you can construct an action filled board without the use of a single object. Resources are ample, and you'll likely finish Dungeons with plenty of ammo. Health is well staggered and it seems like just as you get dangerously low, you'll find enough gems to bring you back to a safe level. Another plus is that at least some of the paths offer exits after getting the purple key, as opposed to backtracking through cleared boards again. Not every path does this unfortunately, and the paths are much more winding than Town's, allowing you to make a wrong turn on the way out.

But, then there's the target shooting board, which demands a tremendous amount of care for a player who in 1991 has only ever played Town of ZZT prior to Dungeons. It's overly punishing, and demands repeated successes. If not for being able to break it in the player's favor, it would be possible to render it unwinnable as well. Many of the other puzzles also felt lacking. Town's puzzles, I found to be difficult but not overwhelming, whereas in Dungeons, everything felt very simplified. Though I don't doubt that for many people, the easier puzzles are seen as a pro and not a con.

In short, if it's 1991 and you spent $6 ($+2 shipping and handling), I'd say you very much got your money's worth.

And how does it play today?

Quite well! ZZT's gunplay tends to be very poor these days, but there's clearly thought put into these action boards rather than just a room with some lions. These boards tend to be more cramped, which makes the enemies more threatening and means you won't have to wait several seconds for a bullet to travel across the screen to hit anything.

Where can I get it?

Dungeons of ZZT is a part of the official release of ZZT itself. You can play it directly on archive.org or download it from z2