The Search for Pepe

The Search for Pepe: Special Edition is a remake of Pepe+Dogo: The Search For Pepe, an old (1995 or 1996) ZZT game, author unknown.

It was just one of many lost games uncovered during recent ZZT preservation endeavours. This was as much a story as a game, where the author was clearly more interested in telling us about Pepe, Dogo, Denver Dawg et al. and their hangouts rather than having us shoot ZZT creatures or solve puzzles.  Whether this game's title predicted future memes is left as an exercise to the player.

However, as I played it, the game's world-building conjured a vivid image of a cartoon 'alley', the kind you'd see in classic Hollywood cartoons where funny animals hang out and do funny animal things. As basic as it was, this game still struck a chord with me. And so, this remake.

In keeping with this setting, I explicitly set this remake in a faux-hardboiled world with tough guys talking tough. A short glossary of hardboiled slang compiled by William Denton, available online at https://www.miskatonic.org/slang.html, was most helpful.

Remember to try and talk to all the characters in the game by touching them (see 'How to play' below)!

The choice of a pilcrow (¶) as an ASCII character to represent dogs is a historical one within the ZZT community.

How to play

After clicking 'Run', ZZT will ask you to configure input. Select (K)eyboard and (C)olor, this is the standard configuration that works best. Press Enter to pass through the 'About ZZT' information scroll, and then P to start the game.

Once in the game, press any arrow key to unpause it. Controls are listed in the sidebar: use the arrow keys to move,  shoot by either pressing Ctrl+the direction you want to shoot or the Space bar, and interact with objects by touching them. Further instructions are provided within the game. You can close a text dialog box you've read by pressing Enter or Escape.