ZZT

Zzt is a game from 1991, where you play by moving around on a map, shooting at various monsters and solving puzzles.

By itself it's not very special, however it has an in-game editor that allowed people to create their own levels, called "worlds" (using a programming language called ZZT-OP which substantially added flexibility). The simplicity of the game and editor, combined with the strict limitations (like its 60x25 entirely ascii interface) made creating a game a manageable feat even for teenagers.

The result? Thousands of varied worlds made by a dedicated community which remained active for more than a decade.

This is a very bare bones introduction, so here's a more detailed one (by somebody actually involved with zzt) including instructions on how to play zzt today, what games to play as a quick introduction and so on.

That aside, by today's standards, is zzt still worth checking out? Do the user-made games hold up?
Not really, IMO. Unless... you hold a special fascination for user produced content, with all the rawness, wackiness and creativity (or lack thereof) involved.

I'll be reviewing zzt games that I play. But first,

General considerations about zzt

As said above there are many different zzt games, however some flaws imo are inherent to zzt itself.

• Dark rooms suck. Having to use torches, a finite resource, means you feel pressure: you have little possibility to make mistakes and can't decently explore your surroundings. You never know how much dark area is left, so you have no idea if the torches will run out. It also adds a level of confusion to mazes. These things might sound positive when used in moderation, but to me they usually just feel tedious. For this reason alone I skipped the two original worlds caves and dungeons of zzt.
• The possibility to save the game at any point is potentially slightly broken. Of course, it means that if you save often you won't ever have to repeat parts of the game, however this also means that you can get a bit obsessive with getting everything close to perfect (especially after playing a harsh game) and that certain mechanics will never work. For example, if there is a 50% chance of receiving a hit when passing through a certain spot, then the player can always reload as necessary so that he never gets hit. In practice this isn't a big deal, but it still remains a small but not irrelevant detail.
• I don't like zzt's movement at all. Perhaps dosbox makes things worse, perhaps I'm just a noob. But I feel like moving diagonally is a nuisance, especially when horizontally/vertically you can move much faster and easier. And when you have to zigzag between obstacles, it really is annoying and simply not fun.

Now I'll address some things related to most zzt games I've played rather than zzt itself:

• Cheating in zzt is fair. In most video games cheating is considered, well, cheating. It breaks the experience that the game designer had in mind. But when it comes to zzt, sometimes games are unwinnable without cheating. So while I discourage you from cheating by default, if you get stuck and after a while can't figure out how to proceed forward, even after looking up a walkthrough, don't be ashamed to cheat. Zzt games were often designed by teenagers, who probably sometimes didn't even play through the whole game they were making before releasing it, so fuckups in balancing and game-breaking bugs aren't that rare. Give the game a honest try, but be ready to cheat when necessary. Besides, it's extremely easy. Here's how
• Another result of zzt's young audience is teen writing. But I mean, you should be ready for it coming in. One particular recurring feature though that I dislike is the "get lost" npcs. Sometimes when the developer was lazy to come up with elaborate responses for the people living in his world, he would simply make them all tell the player to "bug off", "get lost" or other variant. I find it slightly annoying.
• A gameplay mechanic which is used every now and then that I really dislike is shooting at targets that move randomly from too far. I'll admit that the default zzt monsters are usually tolerable to fight. However when you have a distant moving target that you can't approach, you just shoot and hope for the best.
  This shifts the responsibility of the result from the player's actions to randomness. And that is lame, because a game where the result doesn't depend on your actions isn't a game. For example cards at least give you the impression of control, randomness just gives unfair initial (dis)advantage, and ultimately you win or lose by playing the right card (if you have it).
• Disappearing dialog boxes. If you're fighting an enemy while shooting a lot, when you suddenly kill it the victory message comes instantly and if you accidentally shoot one more time then the message disappears, forever lost.

You can find the reviews here