About
ZZT is a 1991 action-adventure puzzle game and game creation system by Tim Sweeney for MS-DOS, notable for its built-in editor and its own scripting language, ZZT-OOP, that let players build and share their own worlds. The Reconstruction of ZZT is a reverse-engineered recreation of the source code for ZZT 3.2, the last official release; the compiled output is byte-for-byte identical to that release. Because ZZT's original source code was lost, the project rebuilt it through careful reverse engineering, a process the author documented in a blog article.
Getting started
Building requires a DOS environment (e.g. DOSBox) and Turbo Pascal 5.5 via the included BUILD.BAT script; a Free Pascal build is also possible with some code modifications, though the resulting binary is about 40KB larger. To create ZZT worlds, use the built-in editor (press E) or a community tool like KevEdit.
Additional notes
- License
- The bundled LZEXE compressor was confirmed in May 2025 to also have MIT-licensed source code.