ZZT's Revenge: Ezayna

This isn't just the opening screen, it's also the title screen.

With the success of ZZT, it was only natural that there would be follow-ups, three of them. Best of ZZT, Super ZZT and ZZT's Revenge. We'll be talking about ZZT's Revenge first because that's what comes with all releases of ZZT after a certain point Both Best and Revenge have the honor of being made from fan submissions, far from the first such game, and their commercial status is odd, so even if I didn't know of earlier titles like Championship Lode Runner it would be hard to call them the first fan made commercial expansions.

I'm going through these in the strange order Wikipedia has them listed under, so we'll start with Ezanya. The story, is the player is a lowly country serf who lives on the outskirts of the capital. Several weeks ago, the King disappeared and nobody could figure out why. But that didn't concern the player's world, until yesterday, they received news from a messenger, first, the King returned, just as mysterious as he disappeared, and secondly, the player's Aunt died and left the player a cottage in town. Thus the game begins, walk into that unusual object, and we have 5 ammo, 2 torches and gems in addition to the standard 100 health.

Sometimes showing only the important bits can leave you questioning how this is a capital.

Go through the door, and you're taken directly to the town. Which looks quite small. We have house, pub and palace...in addition to the part of town where the monsters live. The house has some stuff in it, in addition there are two scenery objects. Above my guy is a bed and below is a plant. Walking into them has some text about them. The door is a white door, can't do anything there yet. At first I think I'm going to go to the pub first, but then I spot a scroll in the middle of town, telling me that the King needs someone to rid the land of some scourge.

It turns out some evil dwarves are raiding the kingdom, bringing with them dragons and demons. Spies infiltrated the palace and took his magical emblems of power; Royal Crown, Jewels, Spectre and Signet Ring. Should I succeed, he'll give me all the fame and wealth I'll ever need. He then gives me a yellow key, guess that's what those doors in the upper right are. The pub functions as a general store where I can get more ammo/torches if need be.

So it's just some simple funneling going on here. I'm a little rusty, but it's not too bad. The only problem I have is that sometimes enemies just don't want to enter the tunnel they're being funneled towards. They just hide and I have to go in and hope I get lucky.

Despite how it looks, turning a dark screen into something visible, it wasn't until I tried to get past the slider puzzle that I started.

I go for the left yellow door, it leads to a dark cave. In the darkness, I hear the sign of one of those monster spawners. It's slow, but not a good thing to hear. I've taken advantage of ZZT's cheat codes to give you an accurate view of the level at the start. It's a tiger spawner. I take it out by the usual method, using my body to kill the thing it spawns. Northwest we have a spinning gun guarding three gems, hardly a fair exchange, but north of it are some easy to reach torches and gems.

As I go through this place, there's a lot of scenery objects, mostly pickaxes which were dropped by the dwarves. And a lot of crates too, north there's a path blocked off by one, and south some worms run around a bunch. Here there's a path through an underground forest, which has spores that hurt you if you interact with them, then a vortex at the end. The vortex warns us that there's some sort of menace above, threatening the dwarves and destroying the earth. He tells me to go after the force that sent us and to not harm those that did not seek to destroy us. He then gives me the "earthpower", which just heals me a bit.

At this point, things get a little tricky. I didn't realize there was a yellow key in a hidden wall on the left, not that it helps, the other door at the hub is guarded by a dragon and it's actually a red door. There's a door in the south of the map, but I need something to open it. It turns out that I forgot about slime and how it works, because there's a block east of the spawner that gets overwhelmed by it if you don't go there quickly. Quickly enough that you can stop the spawner first, luckily. So I go back to the pub, buy some health, ammo and torches, and go forth.

After a puzzle where you move some blocks to create safe passage across a wall of guns, and a few items south, there's this puzzle. Oh, this puzzle. This is why I figured out the cheat codes. See, I tried everything and nothing would let me past, so I looked up a walkthrough...only there isn't one. There's a guide which sort of gives you hints here. Sort of. It tells me to have two blocks vertical...somewhere. I'm really not sure where they're supposed to be, and a reviewer was talking about how they used the zap cheat code to get past this. (which removes objects in the four tiles surrounding the player) Someone who presumably knows more about this game needed a cheat to get past this. Who am I to be better than an expert at this game?

Past the slider puzzle are two dwarves, represented by "coin" icons (for lack of a better term) one wandering around and another standing still. Can't interact with the wanderer, but the standing one I can talk to. He's very helpful. If I explain my quest to him, I'm told I'm a friend of the earth, that much be the vortex. Can't imagine he'd be thrilled to hear I'm here to kill him. Others of his kind would kill me where I stand, but he'll help me as much as he can, which is to just give me another key.

The key opens up a nearby treasure room, hidden behind a secret wall. Which has the Signet Ring. Unfortunately, the way back is not quite that obvious, there's a secret wall in front of what seemed like a teleporter. Turns out that's what the pusher pointing towards the entrance in the block puzzle does. Back to the king, he gives me a key to the Dwarven Citadel, but tells me to rest first. I first check the plant in my house again, and get a leaf for some reason.
 

The reference to Snow White and her dwarves seems to just be to make the rhyme stick.

Since I now have enough gems to hear a rumor from the barkeeper, I decide to hear what he has to say. The King allegedly tortured a dwarf posting messages on the signpost to get the location of the Dwarven Crown. Wait, the Dwarven Crown? Well, we know that the guy who smiled malevolently isn't a good guy, so it's not surprising he's stealing stuff. I'm given two choices of dialog, and I go "hmm...", he then gives me a piece of paper with an anti-poison potion or somesuch. Checking the signpost, I find a message that's obviously related to some sort of door code. Clack green twice, Snow White, blue light, and ruby red kiss.

I suppose something that feels busy in a ZZT game wouldn't be too busy in another game, man that doesn't help at first glance.

So to start with, you have the option of using a key to get an invulnerability potion to get across the rows of spinning guns. You have to do this of course. There are invisible walls in the room in the middle. Because this level wasn't hard enough without it. Next, you have to go to both doors that are just lines. Why? Because they're poisoned, and you need to use that potion you just got. Well, make it anyway, that's what the alchemy room is for. Things are less on a clock at this point, but things are still tricky.

See those dwarves in the lower left? You need to kill them, but using ammo on the red one is going to make you run out. Instead you just have to drag it against something and hope for the best. It'll drop two keys, a green and a cyan one, cyan's for the east door. Green opens the doors in the prison, of which the only not containing an enemy is the eastern one. There a dwarf is about to die. Apparently he was the one who accidentally gave the King the keys to the Dwarven Kingdom, by beating it out of him.

North is far more mundane. Outside of the obvious lasers and enemies, you get bombs. That's all it really takes to take out the spawner. The west side is just a big fancy enemy you can shoot, that's what the bombs are for. Between these three things, you get enough cyan keys to go through the doors. The thing in the center there are the jewels I've been tasked to get. Despite the warnings, I have to. He gives me the white key and tells me to rest again.

Reminder, this would be dark and I wouldn't see anything beyond my home.

The barkeeper has no new information, and I decide the door in my room is the best choice. This room is dark, I took a screenshot with it off for information purposes. It doesn't occur to me for a few moments what's going on. This is the world overrun by demons. This must be the right choice, I can't imagine anything else being better. The objective here is to just take the potion in the upper right and take out the dragon in the throne room, which then opens the door on the right.

Monsters are in the four corners of the left room, walls of guns in the upper right, and then the king on the lower right.

That leads here. This is what the message was for. Unfortunately, you need to take out the monsters that are exposed by this. You really need to have loaded up on ammunition for this. At this point I've just been cheating myself the stuff. This was probably not a good way to start off this expansion after the cobwebs of having not played it in a long time. Then there's a bit where you have to thread the needle of those spinners...while under threat of spinning guns.

At the end is the King again. This is...trouble. He seems to have some sort of bizarre pattern, shoot him when he's one symbol in order to hurt him, otherwise your shot bounces off. Except that isn't true. Instead...you need something I don't have to hurt him. I guess I need to reload.
 

If you use the bombs on that area in the far left, you'll cut off one way of getting out of there.

The other white door is quite curious. You can't shoot here, so you're basically just dragging bombs so you can reach the staff in the upper left. The vampire bat is an annoying thing you have to run away from. I'm not really sure how someone is expected to play, short of heavily conserving their resources and demonstrating levels of skill far in excess of what ZZT usually asks. Also, once you grab the staff, you have but a moment before the red asterisk causes some slime to spawn, potentially trapping you before the spinning guns can get you out.

The events repeat back with the King again. Now I have to get him the Royal Crown. It turns out that if you screwed up working with the sliding block puzzle earlier, you're screwed out of reaching the blue door now. This is getting to be quite difficult for us mere mortals. This is different from my usual playthroughs, I'm sure the developer actually could beat it reasonably, but man, I have no shot of it without cheats.

The classic ZZT vehicle/elevator.

Another very dense level. The elevator moves quickly and automatically, so I don't go in an order I would like. I start central right. Crates to block the shots of some dwarves, who act like spinning guns. A tiger spawner, which I don't actually take care of with the bombs. That dwarf there is friendly, give him ten gems and you get a key. Which I use to open a room on the upper left, moving that slider away from the key and over the guns. Sadly, that doesn't help me get past the horde of monsters there.

Central west seems empty at first, until you open it and realize that the odd objects can be searched, there's a key in one. Now I can go through either room on the bottom. I decide that the lower right one is the wisest, take out that spawner. Curious, there's a yellow door down there, but no key as far as I can see...and then I realize I can't go bakc out. Darn it. So I reload and go to the lower right. This is the Dwarven King, and he won't let me go past him to take the crown. Like the human King, whose name I have omitted out of its length, I can't hurt him. But unlike the human King, I can just walk past him, rob his crown and everything else, then continue onward.

I go back to where the blue door is, and the purple dwarf is the one who helped me earlier. He's dying, much like the others, but he gives me the EarthSword. Aha, this must be what I was missing. Funny how being smart led to me being in an unwinnable situation earlier. Then again, for all the cleverness this game has going on, it's surprisingly loose with keys, since I can easily leave some place with spares I shouldn't have, as often they only guard some treasure. The king disappears when I give him the final piece, and oddly, sleeping in the bed is the answer to getting the final white key.

With that, it just becomes a matter of running into the King until he dies. You get a text crawl and then a nice shiny picture. Feels disappointing, but that's too be expected, the only person I cheated was myself. But not even an explanation of why the King turned into a demon and why the Dwarven treasures were so powerful? That said, I'm not really sure how many people could, since this felt very tight as far as resources go. This isn't even survival horror in how much you're expected to conserve, this is like a Kaizo hack in its precision. Kind of strange from a levelset promoted to official status. Next up, we'll see the specifically named Fantasy.

Side note, I know I said I was going to play something from 1984 this week...but I was just sick enough to make that too difficult to stick to but not sick enough to stop entirely. That said, I have determined that Falcon Patrol 2 isn't something I'm going to be spending much time on. It's basically Defender, but without the hostages and against one enemy type. Not bad exactly, just not much to talk about.

This Session: 3 hours 50 minutes