Scan barcode
A review by jessrock
ZZT by Anna Anthropy
3.0
I supported the Boss Fight Books Kickstarter and have received each of the books they've published to date, but ZZT is the one I was most looking forward to and the first one I read. I never played around with ZZT to the extent that the author or any of the people featured in the book did, but I do remember having a few ZZT games and wasting reams of paper printing out instructions on how to build my own games in the editor.
The book is solidly written and well researched, but it focuses more on the culture around ZZT and specifically the author's own experiences as a trans individual in the ZZT community. It shouldn't have surprised me that the book went in such a personal direction (the 33 1/3 series, which seems to be the model for Boss Fight Books, also allows authors a lot of freedom in their approach to the subject matter), and I found the personal stories really interesting, but I think I expected just a little bit more ZZT - which in retrospect is silly as there's really only so much to say about an ASCII text adventure game while there's a whole lot to say about the people who invested so much of their adolescent time in building worlds there.
Overall I found this enjoyable enough to read, but didn't feel it was strongly written enough that I'd recommend it to anyone who didn't specifically have an interest in any of the topics covered in the book.
The book is solidly written and well researched, but it focuses more on the culture around ZZT and specifically the author's own experiences as a trans individual in the ZZT community. It shouldn't have surprised me that the book went in such a personal direction (the 33 1/3 series, which seems to be the model for Boss Fight Books, also allows authors a lot of freedom in their approach to the subject matter), and I found the personal stories really interesting, but I think I expected just a little bit more ZZT - which in retrospect is silly as there's really only so much to say about an ASCII text adventure game while there's a whole lot to say about the people who invested so much of their adolescent time in building worlds there.
Overall I found this enjoyable enough to read, but didn't feel it was strongly written enough that I'd recommend it to anyone who didn't specifically have an interest in any of the topics covered in the book.