Paradise Under Attack!

In a world where the population can change their shape at will limited only by their mass, the new hotness is Paradise, where the sky is the limit! Throw on your Paradise Helmet and you can be small as a mouse or big as a house! Go on a public server to hang with your friends, or join a private server for more specialized needs!

All is well until Beachfront, a Paradise server set in a coastal city, is attacked with a virus that transforms it into a nightmare world, and causes anyone who logs off to suffer electric death through their helmets! The virus kills thirty before anyone realizes this, and Darkscythe, its fascist creator, holds Beachfront's userbase in his slimy grip! The Cyberspace Bureau sends three agents, and none return alive!

Out of options, the Cyberspace Bureau turns to its last resort: Takami Bluesky, security consultant by day, hacker by night, unable to use the Paradise Helmet and thus immune to the virus! It's now up to them to break into Beachfront and rescue its userbase from Darkscythe's dungeon of death! But they must act fast, for if they don't make it in time, Darkscythe will shut down the server and kill everyone!

Can Takami save Beachfront and solve the mystery of Darkscythe's identity, or will evil prevail?

A Modern Classic of ZZT!

Cyber Purge is a post-cyberpunk action/puzzle game released for ZZT in 2021. Marked as among the Best of ZZT within months of its release, it provides high-octane action with occasional steps into the realm of puzzle-solving! Fight your way through Darkscythe's dungeon, save the vivid personalities held hostage, and find the data you need to capture Darkscythe once and for all!

Now it has arrived on itch.io with a fresh coat of paint! This update features brand-new character art, an expanded story and other enhancements while retaining the gameplay that defined the acclaimed original! Enjoy the new opening sequence that sets the stage for the cyberspace mission to come, and the redrawn ending that makes your reward for winning all the sweeter!

Content Warning

This game contains mild profanity.

With the content filter disabled, the fascist villain Darkscythe makes references to the atrocities committed by the Nazis. However, the filter is enabled by default, and must be disabled by the player for this to occur.

Credits

This game was developed by The Green Herring, using ZEdit2 by Lancer-X, starting July 7, 2020 and initially released on February 16, 2021. Playtesting was done by Snorb, PogeSoft, Bluey and Zephyr.

Special thanks to the Discord of ZZT for their input, especially that of Lancer-X, PogeSoft, WiL, kkairos and asie, without which some of the more out-there parts of the game would not have been accomplished.

The web version of this game runs with the assistance of asie's Zeta, an emulator allowing ZZT to run on modern platforms. All four versions run the game on asie's ClassicZoo, an upgraded version of ZZT itself for various platforms with numerous quality-of-life enhancements compared to the original engine.

For more information about ZZT, as well as access to thousands of ZZT worlds, please check out the Museum of ZZT! You can find more ZZT games here on itch.io by searching for the "zzt" tag!

Bonus Gallery

All downloadable versions of the game come with a bundled gallery of artwork for the hostages you can rescue in the game! These are offered as PNG raster images, and also as XBIN and ANSI-format text art images! You can use apps such as Moebius and icy_view to view text art!