Could 1,000 monkeys operating 1,000 typewriters generate the complete works of William Shakespeare? Maybe not! But could thirteen tiny gremlins who live in a computer keyboard write a poetry compilation in 48 hours? They sure can, if they're the crack team in the hit video game ZZXXX the Gremlin! Take control of a gremlin who has taken control of the mind of an adjunct Women's Studies professor in this thrilling pastiche of classic Commodore 64 titles. It's 50% Mavis Beacon, 50% Manchurian Candidate, and 100% retro fun!
[Download Game]
N.b.: for now, anyway, this game is only available for Windows. (And yes, the irony of a video game about computer viruses only being available as a .exe file from a 2002-ass-looking website is not lost on me.)
Game Features
- Three original chiptunes
- Five original poems
- Seven original cutscenes
- Nine exciting endings (only eight of which are bad!)
- The adjective "chalchiuhtlatonal"
- Cutting-edge(?) academic satire
- The first (and last) quotation from Julia Serano's Whipping Girl in a video game
- A cameo appearance from a former president
Some Background
I made ZZXXX the Gremlin in a single weekend back in 2015 for a game jam. The whole game - all the coding, all the sprites and cutscene graphics, all the music... all me. (OK, there's a couple public domain photos in there.)
I was tempted to dump this in the juvenilia drawer like a lot of my earlier attempts at video game development, but when I replayed it... I was surprised to find that I not only enjoyed the game on its own merits, but that I could see in this game the seeds of the career I would make for myself a decade later. (It's a game about quasi-lipogrammatic poetry!) If nothing else, it's a charming relic of the late Obama years.
The "remastered" version of the game available for download is pretty much unchanged from a decade ago; I made the controls a tad less floaty, made some of the graphics display properly, added a bit of feedback when you get hit... that sort of thing. But I estimate that 90% of the game's code, story, etc. is unchanged from 2015, for better or worse.
You're Still Here?
Wow - I can't believe you're still reading this page! Well, I might as well reward you for your persistence...
- You can download the original score from this game (all four minutes of it!) at this link.
- And, if you're stuck, here's a cheat code for you - mashing the "9" key on your keyboard during a level will reset ZZXXX's hit points and typo meter, rendering you effectively invincible.