It’s unfortunately a lot more limited than you may expect, it’s designed around very limited ideas, but that said it’s still incredibly flexible and seeing how people have designed complex games around those limitations is half the fun.
MegaZeux is a fan extension of it (skipping over SuperZZT) that expands it further and breaks a lot of those limitations, but still has certain odd assumptions about gameplay very much from its era.
It’s the first game released by the developer on the engine which is intended to show off a bunch of the ideas they had. It has a surprise ending that leads into a very bizarre Zeux 3 (which I haven’t beat yet). Zeux 1 was on ZZT but I think was remade for the engine at some point.
Spend an afternoon poking around the site and just trying a few games in your browser, see what it’s about! Then check out the help files and look at the scripting. The biggest downside for me is that if/then statements can ONLY EVER lead to jumps. You can’t process simple logic without jumping to a label to do so …
That’s it exactly.
It’s unfortunately a lot more limited than you may expect, it’s designed around very limited ideas, but that said it’s still incredibly flexible and seeing how people have designed complex games around those limitations is half the fun.
MegaZeux is a fan extension of it (skipping over SuperZZT) that expands it further and breaks a lot of those limitations, but still has certain odd assumptions about gameplay very much from its era.
You can actually play right in browser, try Zeux 2: Caverns of Zeux, https://www.digitalmzx.com/show.php?id=182
It’s the first game released by the developer on the engine which is intended to show off a bunch of the ideas they had. It has a surprise ending that leads into a very bizarre Zeux 3 (which I haven’t beat yet). Zeux 1 was on ZZT but I think was remade for the engine at some point.
Spend an afternoon poking around the site and just trying a few games in your browser, see what it’s about! Then check out the help files and look at the scripting. The biggest downside for me is that if/then statements can ONLY EVER lead to jumps. You can’t process simple logic without jumping to a label to do so …
that does sound quite cool. I’ll have to check this out, feels like something I would have really enjoyed as a kid.
Thanks!