Weird Games 15 - Seeker of Wisdom (DOS)

"The river of time moves forever onward, while you stand still." -- The Oracle
Nah, not that kind of wisdom.
Soleau Software made a whole range of family friendly puzzle games or other strategy games all the way to early 2000s. Their website was also still online for at least a decade and a half afterwards.
This weird one right here was developed in 1989 and was their second game. Not much of a game though.
Read the instructions? Good because that was a mouthful and should be summed up.
Your runner, the white emoji, has to locate the plans then the computer core and then the vault where this wisdom is located. All the while the evil agent, the red emoji, is trying to capture your runner. What the instructions slightly gloss over, is that the game goes on and on until you do get those plans and fulfil the rest of the objectives even though the levels advance in a sense. You also need to land on the O tile eventually to unlock the computer core and get the numbers to reach the vault. The instructions do mention all of this but in a little overly wordy way.
You cannot control your runner and the "the great deal of strategy" is basically choosing one of the three openings. The skill I am not sure what is and the rest truly is luck. If you have a visual route for your runner, it does not mean he will actually proceed that way and might as well do something dumb... but also smart. You never know. It is mostly all LUCK.
11:46
That made me laugh. Such a sudden "eff you" escape that leaves the evil agent at a loss so he panics and tries to force his way through walls! Wow!

[@Hindbodes]

Oh, this game. This game's got a weirdness to it alright. This might be the most subtly bonkers game you've covered in the series yet. What I mean is that it's kind of reserved and takes extra concentration to see what's inhumanly messed up about it. The way the instructional part of the game is handled was a pretty big red flag. Pardon me if this theory is wrong, but I get the idea that if you press "No" on that "Do you need instructions?" menu, you don't get to read them again without restarting the program. Is that accurate? Then there's the death messages and the random-ass "TIME TRAVEL ENGAGED" thing. Let me tell you (you probably knew already) it is not straightforward to understand this game just by watching a video on it. I'd have to play it myself, probably. Strangely, this concept in action of the player character being a guy who starts at the top of a map, has gravity, and can only move left or right to determine where he falls next has actually kind of been inspiring me to make my _own_ game that uses that general movement and level design, for the last 14 minutes. I genuinely think that this game has taken my scope for inventing new video games somewhere. ( *[sudden realization]* Ooooh, of course! I can put it in the Ten Year one!) Now, I understand that this game uses purely ANSI fixed-width text graphics, right? I've been bothersomely hinting at it to you up till now, but now is the time for me to be up-front and direct about it. I think you would be doing me and probably some other people on this channel a big service by playing just one ZZT scenario in a video. I don't mean to be a bother, but I think leading up to this point I haven't properly informed you on what ZZT actually is. First off, it's not an acronym. ZZT doesn't stand for anything as far as I'm aware. The title is literally just "ZZT". It's also probably the most prestigious ever ANSI text graphics game. It came out in 1991 and allowed Epic Megagames to have the resources to make the games they wanted to make. It's an adventure from a bird's eye view with, funnily enough, the exact same player character model as in the Seeker of Wisdom game above, just with different colours. He walks from place to place collecting keys, shooting bullets, and exploring places to escape from a town or whatever level the player has loaded up. And when I try to play it, ZZT is _hard._ Honestly ZZT is kind of amazing. See, it's not just that the graphics are colourfully charming or the way the game contributed directly and historically to the existence of Epic's Jazz Jackrabbit or indeed their entire company. It's that the game has plenty of Minecraft-obsession-grade custom content on it, with random mofo level packs that started about 30 years ago still coming out _today._ Also, once you play ZZT, a certain Filler Putty arc is going to suddenly really, _really_ make a lot more sense. Just you wait.

[@Hindbodes]

Plus Seeker of Wisdom has that extremely painful and obvious typo where it says "you can escape by spending 10 of you stars..." Fools! 15:24 Compuserve. (ᗒ ᗨᗕ)

[@MadJak91]

There are games that come out weird, weird games due to their limitations and games that were made to be weird. I would still say Helious has it beat (this game is playable in comparison...) but then I am not buying the whole "aliens gave me the sources to finish the game" so it must have been intentional weirdness. If you press F5 then you can read the instructions again! Yes, you have to play it for a while to realize that you are progressing through stages but basically for nothing. Once you get the fact that the objectives spawn randomly while stages still advance, then it is a hunt for those which is based mostly on luck. It is like maze chases but the maze can change every 20 seconds and there are other hazards and you cannot control your guy at all. Plus he only moves as you said. Left and right and can only proceed down unless he gets stuck and has to build steps or uses the trampoline tile. It reminds me of those old physical games where you put a small metal ball through one of multiple openings at the top and then shake and turn the board around to get it to the desired exit at the bottom. I am familiar enough with ZZT, I just have not played it but I certainly can beat one of the scenarios, sure! To me it is going to feel like playing one of the first Ultima games. Yep! Speaking of such screens, sometimes it is interesting to read them or any included order forms and the like for stuff that might no longer exist or currently deals with completely different business. I also wonder where some of the telephone numbers connect to now :D Hotlines and pizza places from my experience here from what I tried, lmao.

[@Hindbodes]

Oh boy, you already know about ZZT! That's a load off my shoulders. I'm looking forward to hearing what you think! I actually had one or two funny "comic" ideas regarding the hilarity of somebody thinking those order forms are up to date. I need to go digging. Yeah the telephone numbers... I _ALWAYS_ wonder about those, every time I see them in longplays. Oh damn and you actually got pizza places. That's lit. I like the physical physics games... mechanical games are so cool to look at. I even dreamed of making one. One that's like a "coin platformer" and goes across a broad wall in a pub. I do think it'd be interesting to try my hand at telling the limitations weird games apart from the purposeful weird games. Rallo Gump comes to mind. I wish there was a complete review for that. Closest I ever saw was James Rolfe do a cover analysis. You know. Of the cover. That the game comes in. Could be nice to have more... Just press F5! "Don't reload your browser, you silly human. This was designed for DOS, not the Internet Archive!" I have a stake in Helious...

[@MadJak91]

ZZT is an often overlooked part of history or one that not too many people talk about. It supported modding which was almost unheard of until games like DOOM popularized it and it also eventually led to Unreal and well, the Unreal Engine which really does not need to be discussed :D I have simply never played it and there is quite the number of games I still should play of various degrees of significance! I tried old Slovak and Czech games but mostly old magazines and overall, if the number still connected, it was hotlines for some products, BS telemarketing and yes, pizza places which was amazing, lmao. Also a few random people who were more than willing to laugh at the reason too! Badass! So far I have not found an old telephone number that would be still IN SOME way relevant! You should try a mechanical game sometimes! I can tell you that a relative's kids might like it and then break it. LMAO. Plus it is fun to come up with algorithms for one that is not your standard game development. Rallo Gump had a nice catchy main theme and uh... that was it.

[@Hindbodes]

Of course... How silly of me! Thinking that Madjak of all people would not know about ZZT! I only found out about it at the first point myself because it was used in this hilarious crazy "adventure" game called Glittermitten Grove. I recall bringing up how much I liked the text graphics in Twitch chat and some dipshit trying to say Nethack looks like that and recommending it to me. Like there's relating similar-looking stuff, sure, and that's all very well if you just intend on similar stuff... But this fucking idiot had so little knowledge of ANSI graphics that he actually thought Nethack had the same graphics as that game. Nethack was ASCII, idiot! I weep for Rallo Gump. Good luck in the next life, Rallo.