| Game's title and link Game's author |
Basic description and overview of the game |
Some praise for the positive aspects of the game |
| Some criticism for the negative aspects of the game | ||
| Gulvadon by Xaq |
A really basic fight engine. Pick one of three characters, beat the enemy character, and get a piece of the password. Type the complete password to unlock a secret fourth character. | It's kind of neat. Picture Colosseum without any of the advanced features, and with only one fight in the game. It's still mildly amusing, though. |
| Very simplistic, almost primitive. The one battle is too easy, and the characteres have no variety (not even the secret one.) | ||
| Arena II: The Sequel by Xaq |
This game is basically Gulvadon with more characters and prettier-looking text (Xaq discovered colors by the time he made this one.) | The supermoves are the nicest new feature. They're basically attacks that do more damage but sometimes miss. |
| There's twelve characters this time but they're still all the same (they can attack, recover, and supermove) so there's not a lot of variety. The fight is even easier this time around; you have enough HP and the enemy does little enough damage that you can just keep mashing the Attack (or Supermove) command until you win. | ||
| Colosseum by Kjorteo and Atomos |
A QBasic game that has RPG-style battles. Things like experience and levels, a shop, classes, and tomes (things you can equip that affect how your stats grow when you gain levels, like the masters in Breath of Fire III and IV) are all implemented. There's also a few secret classes, and an easter egg that lets you start with $301 instead of $300. (Well...why not. :b) One warning, though: DO NOT attempt to play through this game as a Mystic. I think the very first battle in the game is literally impossible for that class. | The rather silly plot has some nice self-abusive humor. The features in this game, from actual levels to tomes to shops, are a nice bonus. One scene in the ending plays out differently depending on your being a standard class or any of the secret classes. |
| The system of having to save up money to buy passes (which are all overpriced) to unlock the next series of battles leads to the game getting incredibly repetitive, as you must fight the same fight again and again before being able to move on. | ||
| Colosseum: Quest for the 5 Runes by Atomos |
This is a prequel to the main Dark Angel series. So, the events that happen here happen before Dark Angel, but they're in the same timeline, which is why I grouped this game with the Dark Angel series and not with Colosseum. It still shares the name, though, because it's based off the same engine as Colosseum. | This game is essentially Colosseum, only much, much cooler. There's more battles, more classes, more features (like elemental attacks), less linearity...it's just an all-around improvement. The passes have even been replaced by a ladder of opponents; beat one and you can move on to the next. |
| Without spoiling the ending entirely, I'll just say that if you're not one of the hidden classes, you get a very, VERY bad ending. Having bonuses in the ending for being a hidden class is one thing, but having to be a hidden class just to get an ending that's any good at all feels like the game is raping you after you beat it. | ||
| The Dark Angel, Part I by Atomos |
If Quest for the 5 Runes is basically what happens when Atomos does Colosseum, this game would basically be what happens when Atomos does Warlord's Wrath. | The storyline is actually pretty interesting, if you can get past the execution. |
| The cheesiness of the dialogue is rivalled only by Warlord's Wrath. Both games have about the same amout of linearity, too. | ||
| The Dark Angel, Part I, Sound Version by Atomos |
It's the Dark Angel, Part I, but with QMidi sound. | Having music at certain spots is a nice bonus... |
| ...It's also a pain in the haunch to get to work. | ||
| Quest by Magepower and Kyros |
A text adventure that can best be described as something like Shadowgate, only without graphics. You're under the control of Satan and you need to run around a hellish household to try and get free from his grasp. | It's good gorey fun, providing you don't mind extreme sacrilegious content. :b |
| The spots that say they're supposed to heal you don't, so the game is next to impossible if you try to kill every monster you see. (You can just walk away from them, though.) The ALL CAPS TEXT can get annoying, too. | ||
| Quest of the Dragonslayer, Part I by Xaq |
This can best be described in the same way I described Dark Angel...this game is basically Xaq's version of a Warlord's Wrath-ish game. | The plot is...well, I've seen worse. |
| Very short (even for "Part I" standards,) and since no Part II or beyond was ever made, the shopping and building up of the plot that happens at the end is all for nothing. | ||
| Warlord's Wrath, Part I by Kjorteo, with help from Atomos |
My first and last attempt at an actual console RPG in QBasic. Atomos acted as the resident QBasic genius and gave me help whenever I was stuck on how to pull off a certain effect, so he gets coauthor credit. The awfulness of Warlord's Wrath is entirely my fault, though; Atomos just showed me how to code in QBasic, I was the one who took that knowledge and made a crappy series from it. | Some of the battles in Part I were...I don't want to say good, but at least better than some of the other ones. Xaq used to think the hide from Gronak game was fun, though I don't know why. |
| The story is awful. The naming job for the characters is awful. The gameplay is awful. The battles are awful (and too hard.) Even the minigames are awful. Overall, pretty much the entire series is a waste of QBasic code. | ||
| Warlord's Wrath, Part II by Kjorteo, with help from Atomos |
Warlord's Wrath was to be one really big game, game enough that it was split into parts like this. This part has a lot of bugs in the battle where your stats don't get deducted (if you cast a spell your MP won't go down, you can throw stars without actually losing any,) this actually comes in handy since the battels are still so blasted hard. The later parts need the passwords from the ends of the previous parts to start, but it's not fair to actually make you play all these games, so I'll just give them to you. The password to start Part II is PTDX. Remember, nothing can seduce a Kohulo! :b | The battles seem to have gotten a little better. More people are joining in on both sides, leading away from lame the lame "one on one because that's all I know how to code" battles to actual parties. The story actually starts to pick up...a little. |
| The dialogue is positively goofy. The names are still mostly either bland real-life everyday names like "James," or things that make Final Fantasy Tacitcs' names look pronouncable. When I said the story gets better than it was in Part I, that's not exactly saying much. Overall, it's still horrible. | ||
| Warlord's Wrath, Part III by Kjorteo, with help from Atomos |
The madness continues. More bugs where the game forgets to deplete your MP and stars when you use them, but again that's probably just as well. Oh, Kalu's attacks against the robot sentries in Gyoputros Tower DO inflict actual damage, it just prints that it does 0 damage each time anyway, but don't listen to it. I don't know why it says that. Anyway, the password to start this chapter is GLMQ. | I think the series is starting to come close to having an actual story. The Gyoputros Tower minigame is actually kind of fun if you don't mind the repetitiveness of the robot sentry battles. |
| Any attempt at having a real story is still choked to death by the goofy awkward dialogue and horrible delivery and execution. Even the Gyoputros Tower minigame couldn't save this chapter from the same horrifically linear nature of the entire series. | ||
| Warlord's Wrath, Part IV by Kjorteo and Atomos |
Atomos helped so much this time around that I gave him full coauthor credit. This chapter was actually going to have enough in it to make up for the crapiness of the other three, but it got scrapped. This isn't a complete game; you're never going to find the bad guy and have a final battle or anything, you'll walk around until you get bored and quit. Anyway, you need the right keys to open the doors; you get them by standing in a particular spot and they magically appear in your inventory. Oh, and the password to start this chapter (or what I made of it before losing interest) is CKWW. | The redesigned battle screen had a lot of promise, and the ability to actually move around a map was just plain cool. I vow to learn how to duplicate that technology in some other language (I don't do QB anymore) and put it in a real game someday. |
| Since this was never completed, there's no fighting and no finding anything important in the castle, you just wander around aimlessly, grab the keys, then get bored and quit. The diaogue trying to explain why you have a map of the castle is horribly contrived, and just plain...no. | ||
| QBasic version 7.1 by Microsoft Corporation |
This is QBasic itself. From my experience, version 7.1 runs a lot like version 1.1 (the version most of us grew up on,) only 7.1 can compile .bas programs into stand-alone .exe applications. The fact that it's 6 whole version numbers higher than 1.1 leads me to believe it has at least a few other additional features too, though I haven't worked with it enough to have discovered them yet. | It's QBasic! And the compiler is always a plus. |
| Even version 7.1 is still primarily a DOS program, though it works perfectly with even the newer systems. | ||
| QMidi version 4.1 by Jesse Dorland |
If I'm not mistaken, QMidi comes with templated .bas files with all the code inserted so that with a few commands and the appropriate MIDI file, you can get your QBasic projects to play MIDIs at certain parts. | Having music in games is a neat bonus. |
| If I remember correctly, the instruments are rendered much more poorly by QBasic and QMidi, leading to a very bad version of the song when played in-program. The code and files are also so complex that I never even tried to utilize them; this utility is only here because Atomos used it in Dark Angel Part I. | ||
| QMidi sound drivers by ??? |
Some batch files you run before running a program that uses QMidi. They may or may not be directly related to QMidi itself, all I know is you run them first to make QMidi-using games work. | If you're using a QMidi-utilizing program, I suppose having it work properly is a good thing. |
| Don't even try to ask me how you use these things. It's been forever since I last used them, and I was never into QMidi anyway. These are just here if you want to try Atomos' sound-using stuff. | ||
| Adventure of Sam by Kjorteo |
This series started when I was trying to make a serious RPG in ZZT. I grew frustrated at my not being able to pull off any of the effects I had in mind, and and at the fact that the silly ZZT graphics kept ruining the serious mood. To vent frustration, I made a self-abusive parody of my own game, insulting everything I had done so far. It was then that I noticed that the satirical self-parodying game was actually working, and thus Adventure of Sam was born. | It has potential. It has some good running jokes going for it, such as the Smile Town guard force. Emperor Spade makes a great villain for a game like this. The poor programming killed it, but a modern remake would be absolutely golden. |
| Poor ZZT coding, current-only-at-the-time pop culture references, inside jokes with my own friends (ie anything involving the ZZTeam,) horrible ending that rapes the player...it's just plain not a good game. | ||
| Adventure of Sam 2: Return of Sam by Kjorteo |
The Sam-ness continues. Don't get too attached to this game; even if you looked beyond the same flaws that killed Sam 1, Sam 2 has a bug near the end of the game that prevents you from entering the final tower, effectively making it impossible for you to win (without the ?ZAP cheat to just destroy the wall blocking you.) | This is another game with promise. Everything good said about Sam 1 also applies here, and this game even has more to offer, including people who actually join your party (and do absolutely nothing, but it was a nice idea at the very least.) |
| Everything bad said about Sam 1 also holds true in Sam 2. The programming is poor, the jokes are old when viewed now, and the whole game is just a mess. Add in the fact that you can't beat it without cheating to get past the force field (which says a lot for the poor programming), and this is another example of a good idea with bad execution. | ||
| Colosseum: The ZZT Game by Kjorteo |
This was made for the 2004 Weekend of ZZT competition at z2. The topic was "Authority" and I had three days to make something that related to it. I'm pretty proud of how this turned out, considering the timeframe. Adapted from Colosseum: The QBasic game, also available here. | Believe it or not, this is actually a good game. Leave it to a "You have three days to create a game" competition to do what I've been trying unsuccessfully to do for years: make something new that reflects my actual ability to program. You know, since the last ZZT game I actually released was Adventure of Sam 2. |
| This game has a few signs of being made in three days, most notably the fact that it is unbelievably short. It's also on the easy side. Still, it makes for a good, quick mini-RPG if you have a couple hours to kill. | ||
| Ninja Games by Kjorteo |
This was made for the 2005 Weekend of ZZT competition at z2. The topic was "Fascism" and I had three days to make something that related to it. This game is a bit of a departure for me, since I normally do RPGs, and this is minigame-filled pointfest is more reminiscent of Pilotwings than anything else. | Again, for something made in three days, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Using an interchangeable parts-like system of making one engine for a type of board, then tweaking it for every board that uses it (like doing the same game on three different difficulties,) I can make games that almost take longer to play than they do to make. |
| Even with my method to squeeze gameplay out of the limited timeframe, this game was still made in three days and shows. Like Colosseum, it is very short. Unlike Colosseum, it is actually very hard, or at least it gets hard on the third game day. | ||
| Xaq's *VERY* Mysterious Dungeon by Xaq |
This is effectively a giant dungeon that you must escape from. There's really not much else to say about it. | For its primitive nature, it is playable...I have seen worse. |
| The fights and puzzles are too difficult. The game has no plot whatsoever, except "escape from the dungeon." | ||
| Xaq's *VERY* Mysterious World by Xaq |
This game is closer to the kind of adventure gameplay with silly plot that you see in Adventure of Sam...only it's much, much better. | A good chunk of the humor is actually still funny today. The gameplay has pretty decent design; the world looks nice, the game is solid and stable (no bugs or poor programming,) and all in all it's just plain good. |
| The game is too short, and there are way too many invisible mazes. (Picture a maze made up of walls that you can't see until you bump into them, and then you can only see the part that you bumped into. That is an invisible maze, it is as annoying as it sounds, and this game has far too many of them.) | ||
| ZZT Pro by Kjorteo |
This is a little world full of programming tips for good game design. It's supposed to pick up where similar utilities like ZZT Crime and ZZT Syndrome (both available on z2) left off, being more advanced. | There is a lot of stuff to be learned. It could make you a better ZZT programmer! |
| Like any how-to utility, I'm sure there are a million things I should have mentioned but didn't, and maybe a few things I did mention that you'll disagree with. | ||
| ZZT by Epic Games (formerly Epic MegaGames) | ZZT itself. You need ZZT to run the ZZT games (which are referred to as "worlds" within ZZT.) When you run ZZT, the default world, "The Town of ZZT", will come up. You can it W to switch to any of the other worlds you have (if they're in the same directory,) or E to load the editor, with which you can make your own ZZT worlds! This package comes with The Town of ZZT plus the other three official worlds Tim Sweeny (of Epic) made, a world that has a tour of all four worlds, and a world with basic example of things you can use in the editor. | What can I say? It's ZZT and ZZT is awesome. Plus, this has all four Tim Sweeny worlds, ZZT usually only comes with The Town of ZZT. |
| Like QBasic, it's a DOS program. One that works perfectly even in the new OSs, but still. Mouse support is worthless, best to pick keyboard when configuring. | ||
| ZZT Tools by Software Visions | A whole bunch of ZZT Tools by Software Visions. Among a large assortment of miscellaneous tools is Greg Janson's Super Tool Kit (STK,) a ZZT world with each board holding a collection of various things (creatures, items, etc.) in a total of 18 colors (36 if you count the blinking versions of the original 18) over 7 background colors. Copying these into your game, you can completely laugh in the face of ZZT's normal 7-color limit. | STK has become pretty much standard for ZZT programs. Utilizing STK colors makes all the difference in the game's appearance; ZZT's standard colors are just so limited that games done entirely in them look bad by comparison. |
| STK is comprehensive, but huge. Holding more boards than some entire ZZT game worlds have, you almost have no choice but to go with an STK toolbox or make your own from the boards in STK itself. Also, I've never really tried anything else included in this package, so I don't know if the other stuff is good or not. | ||
| The CKit by Kjorteo | Many people have taken the vast collection of STK boards, and compressed their contents onto one board or a series of two or three boards. These boards, or "STK toolboxes" (not sure what they're really called, I just call them that myself) are then imported as the first few boards of a game world, and their contents can be copied and used in the actual game without having to fight with the countless boards in STK itself. The CKit is nothing more than an early attempt from me to make an STK toolbox. Included is the ZZT world with the CKit, and the two boards of it in exported .BRD files. | For its earliness (you can tell it's old when I'm credited as ChocoboKick,) it's not bad. While it doesn't have everything I personally find useful, it is a pretty good collection of STK items reduced to two boards. |
| It's a little outdated, and some things that aren't very useful are included while more important things were left out. Of course, that's my opinion, different programmers use different things, so maybe others will love it. Who knows? | ||
| The KjKit! by Kjorteo | I was disappointed with how few things were on the CKit, so I tried again, this time pooling pretty much everything I could into three boards. Like the CKit, I packaged the actual ZZT world as well as all the individual boards in ready-to-import .BRD format in this zip file. | ZZT programmers may note that three boards is quite a lot for an STK toolbox. However, this thing has almost everything, so in most cases, those three boards are all you need. That actually makes it smaller in the long run, compared to having to import several STK toolboxes just to cover everything. |
| I couldn't include literally every single thing ZZT has to offer, so there might be some of you who would want to use something the KjKit doesn't have....check first, though; while it doesn't actually have everything, it comes pretty darn close. | ||
| STK Add-On by Chronos30 | Chronos30 made two more things with STK. These aren't STK toolboxes; they're whole worlds with each individual item on its own board, the way STK itself has them. MoreSTK is basically just that, more ZZT things available in STK's amount of colors and backgrounds, essentially things the original STK missed. WeirdSTK is a collection of things that have been altered somehow and are just weird (for example, Objects that have no alterable statistics and act like Breakable Walls.) | It's always good to have more things redone in STK colors. MoreSTK is an excellent, if not almost necessary addition to STK itself. |
| The things in WeirdSTK are cool just to look at and mess around with, but their weirdness (and arguable bugginess) makes them almost totally useless when trying to make an actual game. | ||
| The Z-Files by Zenith | Zenith compiled a countlessly large collection (two worlds' worth) of STK toolboxes that other people made. There's so many, you can look at each programmer's style for what they included and how they included it, and there's enough variety that there should be something for everyone. | More STK toolboxes than you'll ever need. Get this, STK itself, and Chronos' STK add-ons, and you'll have everything you'll ever need and more to make a high-quality game. |
| Not all of them are what one would call very good. I recommend using them as sources to make your own STK toolbox, but mind the copyright info on each of them. | ||