ZZT Games

I don't specifically remember how I ended up here but I've come across a large trove of ZZT Games, an early game development engine that allowed anyone to put together their own games with their own narratives and objectives; through a common set of tools. Every game "looks" the same but this was happening 1991, so that's true of most PC-based things at the time. There are some vaguely familiar titles like the homespun Adventure of Link II or the less widely known originals, ZZT Slayer. If you didn't grow up on ANSI and text adventure games, these are all going to feel fairly crude. They are crude because gaming was crude in the early 90s but there's also something amazingly charming about this plethora of homemade creations.

You can read more about the ZZT in general over on Wikipedia; the most intriguing fact being that it was developed by Tim Sweeney, who also is founder of Epic Games and the creator of the Unreal Engine. The company going head to head with Apple and Google, started by offering a gaming engine for early DOS games. Completely bonkers.

There's more ZZT gaming archive work over in the Museum of ZZT, "a site dedicated to the preservation and curation of the many games and worlds created with ZZT."

After you're done there, cruise through this history of the IBM smiley (the protagonist of ZZT games) and then immerse yourself in Oldschool PC Fonts. You know, for fun!