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COMPLETE: Sixteen Easy Pieces
Jun. 11th, 2018 07:30 pmAnother ZZT game! This one's... kind of an accident, but a happy, serendipitous one?
Even among the Lord of the Flies-esque teenage collective of edgelords, lunatics, burnouts, furries, and whatever other weirdos called themselves the ZZT Community, Flimsy Parkins was a rather infamously odd duck. He was very intelligent, and the kinds of technical wizardry and puzzle design he was able to come up with in his games is unlike anything else I've seen to this day, in any game. Yet, for all his brilliance, he was... well, weird, to the point of complete incomprehensibility. Like a abstract expressionist artist, his most celebrated games straddled the line between finely-tuned genius and unplayable chaos. There are games of his I've explored through to completion and I still don't know which are which. He could submit a board that looked like Pac-Man's kill screen--and there have been more than a few occasions where that's exactly what he did--and one could never be certain whether there was some hidden deliberate message in there, and if so, what it was.
In short, Flimsy was a riddle that no one in the community ever quite was able to solve. Tragically, this led to him taking his own life in 2015, in part because he felt like no one ever really understood him. It's a terrible thing that never should have happened, which makes me feel all the guiltier and worse for agreeing with the reasoning, but... well, he was right. We didn't. I still don't.
Being a patron of the Museum of ZZT, I get to submit my pick for games which (if they win the ensuing poll) become Closer Look articles. I've long wanted a Flimsy game to receive the treatment, mostly in hopes that Dos knew something, some piece of the puzzle that I never did, and that he could... well... explain. My first choice was to suggest the infamous Flimsy's Town of ZZT edit, but after discussing this with me privately, Dos and I agreed that it would be too much to cover. He does want to talk about "Flimsytown" someday, but that will be a project, and not something that's feasible within the scope of a single month's Closer Look poll. I accept that, and look forward to whatever comes of it when it gets the attention it deserves.
In the meantime, Dos suggested Sixteen Easy Pieces, a pure (and brutally hard) puzzle game. I thought about it, and saw the merits in it (it is a highly interesting and unusual game, to be fair!) but I ultimately decided that by Flimsy standards it was a little too straightforward. I mean, it's a puzzle game. You need to find your way to the exit, and it looks chaotic because there are pusher and slider puzzles. It's hard, but I at least understand the concept, you know? I wanted something with that "what the hell did I just play, and why" feeling. Thus, we ultimately agreed and settled on The House of Asterion.
And then Dos misremembered our conversation and accidentally put Sixteen Easy Pieces into this month's poll anyway. Oops!
Well, that's fine. It does look like a good and unique game, and it won very handily as a result, so people clearly want to see what Dos has to say about it. I want to see what Dos has to say about it, too! We can all look forward to that, then get this out of the queue as quickly as it came in, and put Asterion in next month.
I decided to play through Sixteen Easy Pieces, because I know the Closer Look is coming and I want to compare notes.
Good God. I am greatly relieved that I can honestly say this one at least wasn't my fault, because it is murderous. It's a great game! I loved everything about it, from the brilliant and fiendish puzzles to the combined feeling of triumph and disbelief whenever I figured one out. Not since Hanano Puzzle 2 have I cackled out loud in real life when I completed a level. But make no mistake, for how amazing this game is, it will destroy you.
The biggest source of both its inspired level design and near-impossible execution comes from just how deep into the guts of ZZT itself Flimsy goes, and how many puzzle solutions hinge on things you would never think to do unless you had an equally deep appreciation for ZZT's eccentricities. As an example, at one point you need to set off a bomb next to a transporter and face-tank the explosion, so that you can use the transporter during the blast. Because bombs work by temporarily placing breakable walls around them when they explode and transporters work when there's a wall in front of them, you see. This is a very clever puzzle if you happen to speak fluent ZZT. If not... well, let's just say the game does not exactly come with a tutorial.
(Dos, if you're reading this, I honestly believe this game is a good benchmark for testing ZZT emulators. I downloaded it and played it via DOSBox, but this game really tests and utilizes all the fringe cases for premade enemy and object behavior, and running it is a great way to see if your emulator is handling the weird stuff properly.)
Thus, Sixteen Easy Pieces is possibly one of the greatest (most diabolical, but still greatest) puzzle games that I, a ZZTer, have ever played, but I find it very hard to recommend to outsiders. It is impenetrable. If you don't know what ricochets do when you slide a slider in front of them, and therefore it doesn't occur to you to take deliberate advantage of this effect to get where you need to go, then you probably won't even make it past the first level. There are seven puzzle levels, each more beyond the pale than the last, and one final dark tunnel run that, with the limited amount of torches you're given, feels like the Metroid Redesign ROMhack's Hell Run. In other words, this is not a game for non-ZZT experts.
It's also not a game for people with trouble distinguishing colors. There are tons of key/door puzzles, and ZZT's default assets make the doors almost impossible to tell apart even in less chaotic-looking games. This changes everything when you're hinging the solution on trying to work your way toward the red door over there, and oops wait hold on that's the purple door. Where's the red door? And the purple key, for that matter? Oh, no.
If you're not planning on cheating, fair warning: every resource is precious. Some parts are a little RNG as far as whether you can get through a room without taking a hit or wasting ammo, and it is really worth save-scumming to get through those parts unscathed, because you'll need the extra health and ammo later. The first level has an optional white key that's so absurdly tricky to get that I thought Flimsy was just trolling me and that you weren't actually supposed to try for it, especially since there isn't even a white door on that board. It turns out that there is a white door in the second level, and you really are meant to get the white key in the first level. If you go through all that trouble, drive yourself up the wall figuring out how in the world you're meant to get it, finally figure it out, and triumphantly unlock the white door in the second level, your reward is... two extra torches. This is an excellent trade that you're probably SOL if you don't make.
Warning number two: Speaking of save-scumming and being SOL if you don't do a thing, treat this like a Sierra game: save early, often, and in a different file each time, because you will softlock yourself until you get the solution right.
I normally don't care about my score in ZZT games because no one ever does, but I truly feel like I earned the 1,729 points I had at the end of this one. Sixteen Easy Pieces is a work of mad genius, and I feel like I genuinely accomplished something by clearing it.
Of course, "mad genius" counterbalanced by "impenetrable to outsiders" is... fitting for a Flimsy game, I suppose.
Even among the Lord of the Flies-esque teenage collective of edgelords, lunatics, burnouts, furries, and whatever other weirdos called themselves the ZZT Community, Flimsy Parkins was a rather infamously odd duck. He was very intelligent, and the kinds of technical wizardry and puzzle design he was able to come up with in his games is unlike anything else I've seen to this day, in any game. Yet, for all his brilliance, he was... well, weird, to the point of complete incomprehensibility. Like a abstract expressionist artist, his most celebrated games straddled the line between finely-tuned genius and unplayable chaos. There are games of his I've explored through to completion and I still don't know which are which. He could submit a board that looked like Pac-Man's kill screen--and there have been more than a few occasions where that's exactly what he did--and one could never be certain whether there was some hidden deliberate message in there, and if so, what it was.
In short, Flimsy was a riddle that no one in the community ever quite was able to solve. Tragically, this led to him taking his own life in 2015, in part because he felt like no one ever really understood him. It's a terrible thing that never should have happened, which makes me feel all the guiltier and worse for agreeing with the reasoning, but... well, he was right. We didn't. I still don't.
Being a patron of the Museum of ZZT, I get to submit my pick for games which (if they win the ensuing poll) become Closer Look articles. I've long wanted a Flimsy game to receive the treatment, mostly in hopes that Dos knew something, some piece of the puzzle that I never did, and that he could... well... explain. My first choice was to suggest the infamous Flimsy's Town of ZZT edit, but after discussing this with me privately, Dos and I agreed that it would be too much to cover. He does want to talk about "Flimsytown" someday, but that will be a project, and not something that's feasible within the scope of a single month's Closer Look poll. I accept that, and look forward to whatever comes of it when it gets the attention it deserves.
In the meantime, Dos suggested Sixteen Easy Pieces, a pure (and brutally hard) puzzle game. I thought about it, and saw the merits in it (it is a highly interesting and unusual game, to be fair!) but I ultimately decided that by Flimsy standards it was a little too straightforward. I mean, it's a puzzle game. You need to find your way to the exit, and it looks chaotic because there are pusher and slider puzzles. It's hard, but I at least understand the concept, you know? I wanted something with that "what the hell did I just play, and why" feeling. Thus, we ultimately agreed and settled on The House of Asterion.
And then Dos misremembered our conversation and accidentally put Sixteen Easy Pieces into this month's poll anyway. Oops!
Well, that's fine. It does look like a good and unique game, and it won very handily as a result, so people clearly want to see what Dos has to say about it. I want to see what Dos has to say about it, too! We can all look forward to that, then get this out of the queue as quickly as it came in, and put Asterion in next month.
I decided to play through Sixteen Easy Pieces, because I know the Closer Look is coming and I want to compare notes.
Good God. I am greatly relieved that I can honestly say this one at least wasn't my fault, because it is murderous. It's a great game! I loved everything about it, from the brilliant and fiendish puzzles to the combined feeling of triumph and disbelief whenever I figured one out. Not since Hanano Puzzle 2 have I cackled out loud in real life when I completed a level. But make no mistake, for how amazing this game is, it will destroy you.
The biggest source of both its inspired level design and near-impossible execution comes from just how deep into the guts of ZZT itself Flimsy goes, and how many puzzle solutions hinge on things you would never think to do unless you had an equally deep appreciation for ZZT's eccentricities. As an example, at one point you need to set off a bomb next to a transporter and face-tank the explosion, so that you can use the transporter during the blast. Because bombs work by temporarily placing breakable walls around them when they explode and transporters work when there's a wall in front of them, you see. This is a very clever puzzle if you happen to speak fluent ZZT. If not... well, let's just say the game does not exactly come with a tutorial.
(Dos, if you're reading this, I honestly believe this game is a good benchmark for testing ZZT emulators. I downloaded it and played it via DOSBox, but this game really tests and utilizes all the fringe cases for premade enemy and object behavior, and running it is a great way to see if your emulator is handling the weird stuff properly.)
Thus, Sixteen Easy Pieces is possibly one of the greatest (most diabolical, but still greatest) puzzle games that I, a ZZTer, have ever played, but I find it very hard to recommend to outsiders. It is impenetrable. If you don't know what ricochets do when you slide a slider in front of them, and therefore it doesn't occur to you to take deliberate advantage of this effect to get where you need to go, then you probably won't even make it past the first level. There are seven puzzle levels, each more beyond the pale than the last, and one final dark tunnel run that, with the limited amount of torches you're given, feels like the Metroid Redesign ROMhack's Hell Run. In other words, this is not a game for non-ZZT experts.
It's also not a game for people with trouble distinguishing colors. There are tons of key/door puzzles, and ZZT's default assets make the doors almost impossible to tell apart even in less chaotic-looking games. This changes everything when you're hinging the solution on trying to work your way toward the red door over there, and oops wait hold on that's the purple door. Where's the red door? And the purple key, for that matter? Oh, no.
If you're not planning on cheating, fair warning: every resource is precious. Some parts are a little RNG as far as whether you can get through a room without taking a hit or wasting ammo, and it is really worth save-scumming to get through those parts unscathed, because you'll need the extra health and ammo later. The first level has an optional white key that's so absurdly tricky to get that I thought Flimsy was just trolling me and that you weren't actually supposed to try for it, especially since there isn't even a white door on that board. It turns out that there is a white door in the second level, and you really are meant to get the white key in the first level. If you go through all that trouble, drive yourself up the wall figuring out how in the world you're meant to get it, finally figure it out, and triumphantly unlock the white door in the second level, your reward is... two extra torches. This is an excellent trade that you're probably SOL if you don't make.
Warning number two: Speaking of save-scumming and being SOL if you don't do a thing, treat this like a Sierra game: save early, often, and in a different file each time, because you will softlock yourself until you get the solution right.
I normally don't care about my score in ZZT games because no one ever does, but I truly feel like I earned the 1,729 points I had at the end of this one. Sixteen Easy Pieces is a work of mad genius, and I feel like I genuinely accomplished something by clearing it.
Of course, "mad genius" counterbalanced by "impenetrable to outsiders" is... fitting for a Flimsy game, I suppose.