Players control a smiley face to battle various creatures and solve puzzles in different grid-based boards in a chosen world.

It has four worlds where players explore different boards and interact with objects such as ammo, bombs, and scrolls to reach the end of the game.

It includes an in-game editor, allowing players to develop worlds using the game's scripting language, ZZT-OOP.

He marketed the game by distributing it across shareware vendors and bulletin board systems, earning money through mail orders for registered worlds.

The goal for players are to reach the end board, progressing either by collecting purple keys to open locked doors, or gathering objects throughout the world.

Puzzles consist of untangling combinations of boulders, sliders, and pushers, or mazes that can include invisible walls and teleporters.

[5] Players eventually learned additional ways to add more colors to the game utilizing commands and different text characters, and editing world files.

The PC speaker permits seven notes at several different octaves, and instruments with unique pitches of clicks, pops, and snaps to represent percussion.

[citation needed] Video game programmer Tim Sweeney, studying mechanical engineering at the University of Maryland, first developed ZZT as a text editor in Turbo Pascal.

From there, he designed his first levels from text files, creating different boards similar in style to Atari's Adventure, while continually offering additions to the game and editor.

The text-based graphics allowed him to produce ideas such as talking trees or interesting characters without breaking immersion.

[12] He shared it with friends and neighborhood kids, taking notes of their joy and excitement playing his own game.

He operated his company out of his bedroom, having orders sent to his parents' address, where he would send the remaining episodes on floppy disks by mail delivery.

[14][19][20] After Sweeney moved out of his parents' house to establish proper corporate headquarters for Potomac Computer Systems, then renamed Epic MegaGames, his father Paul Sweeney, continued fulfilling mail orders to the original address under the Epic Classics label, allowing for purchase of physical copies of ZZT.

A comment from Computer Gaming World billed ZZT as "truly charming", finding the gameplay simple to learn.

[21] Benj Edwards has called ZZT an "influential and underrated game", crediting its current enjoyment from playing community made worlds and making unexpected things with the "fairly robust" built in editor.

[28] They found that games that attempted to expand and push the engine further are generally "rough around the edges", or "more functional rather than good".

[20] Shortly after the release of ZZT, Sweeney started a level designer contest for registered users to make their own worlds and submit them to him.

[19] Furthermore, he believed that games with cutting edge graphics and sound similar in commercial quality to Super Nintendo Entertainment System or Sega Genesis games would have higher sales in the shareware model, taking influence from Commander Keen and Duke Nukem.

The game provided the community with an outlet for creativity and self-expression without artistic or programming skills, especially among stigmatized groups such as transgender people.

[35][36] Tim Sweeney has claimed that tens of thousands of workers in the game industry have previously made worlds in ZZT.

[38][39] On January 28, 2023, the original source code for ZZT 3.0 (without third party content) was uploaded to GitHub under the MIT License with permission of Tim Sweeney.

[41][42] Rock Paper Shotgun has made comparisons to Minecraft and Roblox, in its ability to serve as a start for new video game developers.

Wired and Hardcore Gaming 101 found similarities in its seamless blend of gameplay and editing to LittleBigPlanet.