#zampaniosim

[stuck-in-a-microwave]

organisms adapted to life in cave systems shows us an inkling of a possibility of what an animal adapted to living in a House might look like

[verbosebabbler]

Homestuck Classpect Pixel Redesigns:

I've always wanted to make my own redesigns, both in outfits and color palettes

Hopefully the aspect and class are still identifiable as I mostly kept key concepts similar for both. But in case it's needed, here's the order.

Lord Muse / Bard Prince Knight Page /.Rogue Thief Mage Seer / Witch Sylph Heir Maid

And the aspects should be in alphabetical order. I don't know what the Tumblr formatting is going to do.

[ellienamored]

ever since i was just a little fictive i knew id have to make a zine about the killer someday

[sleepyjump]

This seems really confusing yet cool how would I even start trying to engage with the media of zampanio?

pour yourself a big glass of water and then click here and have fun

just remember that it's a marathon, not a sprint, and that obsession is a dangerous thing, okay? and most importantly: make audio logs or take notes or find some way to record your journey. trust me.

[existentialterror]

ARG notes: ZampanioSim

Okay, a work this metafictional and also that (I think) responds to audience interaction is going to need a high-caliber gimmick. Hang on.

...

Alright. Hey guys, catfishAnabasis (Light) here, taking a moment out of my surprisingly busy day tell you about a weird thing on the internet.

ZampanioSim is an intricate and brainbending ARG. It takes direct inspiration from Homestuck, The Magnus Archives, and House of Leaves, as well as the creator (JR, jadedResearcher/justifiedRecursion)'s previous canon of Homestuck fan-work and games. A major theme is "unreality".

HERE IS YOUR TRAILHEAD.

Feel free to ignore the rest of the writeup and check it out now.

I know very little about JR's other work, right now. However, among my many INTERESTS, I am something of a TMA ENJOYER and an AMATEUR INTERNET INVESTIGATOR, and if I were in a HOUSE I like to think I could LEAVE it pretty easily.

So, yeah. I figured I'd just describe my experience of this rabbithole and maybe you'll want to check it out too. I'm sure this will only scratch the surface.

ZampanioSim is structured as a nested labyrinth. In the same way that:

Homestuck is a webcomic framed as an interactive adventure game about an account of kids playing a video game (Sgrub) that doesn't exist, and

House of Leaves is a novel framed as a found scholarly discussion about a documentary (The Navidson Record) that doesn't exist about a house that doesn't exist,

ZampanioSim is a game-based ARG framed as an attempt to simulate a game (Zampanio) that doesn't exist based on a found FAQ of the game (that only sort of exists).

More concretely, ZampanioSim features a lot of nested browser games, as well as audio, narrative, an actual audience-interactive narrative game (the way Homestuck was originally), external websites, and more.

The starting point is, of course, the House:

ZampanioSim takes full advantage of the browser as medium. There is content accessible via the address bar, developer tools, cookies (I think), the developer console, and probably more that I haven't realized.

Like, to give you a sense of the kind of rabbithole we're dealing with: Here's a map I made of the House outset page today:

...And I say today because the House does change over time. Today (a friday) when I clicked on the EastEast route, for instance, I was greeted by this grotesquely distorted version of Rebecca Black's "Friday":

Okay, let's talk about what we have going on in the House map, starting from the doors and working out. (I've given some of these my own names for clarity.)

North

The Classpect Menu Game:

This, I think, is the main titular "ZampanioSim". It's the part that's intended to recreate the experience of a supposed old computer game, but by and large, you only experience the menu screen, not the rest of the gameplay. You can select attributes (based on Homestuck's Classpecting system + the Magnus Archives fears) gain points and select skills and (depending on your seed) eventually "beat the game". It's glitchy, it's a hellscape, there's an entity or two in the menu system that are trying to talk to you. It's great fun. Contains links to a rabbithole (which you can plug passwords into for more secrets) and + some secrets to you in the credits.

(While mostly the aspects seem to add flavor to the menu options, there's a special class called "Waste". This appears in neither TMA nor Homestuck, but comes from a fan or meta-joke that Andrew Hussie and Toby Fox, the writer and a major composer for Homestuck, are classpected* as the "Waste of Space" and "Waste of Time". By telling it you're a "Waste"you're more likely to get weird glitches and new options in your Classpect Menu game run - there's a fun recurring element in some of these games about the game changing depending on who you tell it is playing. I learned about the Waste trick from JR's youtube channel. Also, setting your birthday as Halloween might also do something.)

I have no idea if the different iterations of games here are substantially different. I haven't checked. There's a lot going on. "There's a lot going on" is a good summary of ZampanioSim overall.

*( Uh, classpecting is this in-Homestuck personality system where game players are a [Role] of [Element].)

Eyedlr: Eyedol Games is the company that supposedly made the original game Zampanio. Eyedlr is their spambot-filled tumblr clone, which also has secrets in it. (Actually, just assume everything has secrets out.)

East

The House Exploration game: It has the same setup screen as the Classpect Menu game, but this one drops you into a game with visuals: An infinite(?) procedural house you navigate with imagery derived from your choices.

Peewee's exploration game: When it's not blasting Rebecca Black's Friday But Weird into your ears, the EastEast route is another procedural infinite(?) maze, except that you type directions to Peewee, a snake guy with goggles who also moves around on his own. This one also introduces named characters we learn more about elsewhere.

Bathroom text: Procredural bathroom maze, unless it's just some text telling you to take a break. ZampanioSim really likes telling you to take breaks and hydrate, so that you can better appreciate and spread Zampanio.

Absolutely not. Also, I'm a busy woman. I have to finish this writing summary first.

South

The Train Game: a game - notably not a maze - where JR walks down a series of train corridors and monologues to you about the game and the "reality" behind it.

The mazecrawler game: You tell a little guy how to navigate an infinite(?) maze - and if you choose right and open up your browser's Console menu, you can learn a great deal more about

West

The only West route is AdventureSimWest, which is an actual text narrative game where readers submit commands that the author incorporates into updates - just like early Homestuck. It's still going. The logs are extensive but it's mostly about the antics of a new employee at Eyedol Games, which is stuck in a time loop.

Other

Then there's some other scattered clickable text -

The truth about alt: An exchange between two shapeshifters.

A transcript: A dialogue between two people who apparently work for Eyedol Games.

The lower left leads you to an apparently rotating selection of other Zampanio-related games. I particularly liked NagaGirlfriend.

None of this is even the stuff you can reach this page exclusively through the Console menu.

And much more

And there's a lot of stuff that's NOT branching directly off of the house. There's other things you find buried in links or by searching - a discord and a wiki that both straddle the line between in-character and -out, Archive of Our Own content, a youtube channel, the Eyedol website...

Is there a "story" to ZampanioSim?

Yes.

Like I said, there's a lot I haven't seen yet. But what's going on is something like this:

JR is attempting to recreate this game, Zampanio, of course, and tap into its fanbase. The game Zampanio is an infectious meme. Eyedol Games is a transdimensional company that is perhaps both trying to spread the meme and contain it, by removing its spores, e.g. the Zampanio FAQ - the thing that inspired JR to make ZampanioSim - from the internet.

Various parts of the game recognize that they are fictional and may identify you the reader/player as "Observers".

There are a few recurring characters who have gotten swept up into the meme, either working for Eyedol or trapped in ZampanioSim or both, and have followed it from variant to transdimensional variant.

(this is an image from homestuck. it's a reference.)

Japes aside, this is a brain-bending, very cool, and completely ludicrous unfiction project which I believe is made mostly by one person with an unparalleled hand for web sorcery, whimsy, and vibes. The vibes are so good.

The host website, Farrago Fiction (which AFAICT is a multi-person project), hosts a number of often-homestuck-inspired weird games and simulators.

I know ZampanioSim is now a few years old and is still actively updating. Consider checking it out.

2024-08-24 edit: Part 2!

[lovelessarchitect-archive]

So I can't even post about the game now. Every time I even mention it, the post gets absolutely flooded with bots. From now on, when you hear me mention the game, I should hope you know exactly what I'm referring to.

Can't focus on what happened. Found a house to crash at for a little while. I really wish I could divert my attention towards figuring out what to do going forward, how to get my life back in order, but I can't. I need to find out what the hell is up with the game.

I've been looking online. There's a small fanbase surrounding this thing, but the strangest part is that there are no other mentions of its existence anywhere. No Wikipedia article, no resellers, not even a solitary name-drop on any forum outside of the dedicated community. For a game supposedly made in 1972, which is a doubtful claim on its own considering the complexity, one would imagine there would be more information anywhere.

This is really starting to seem like a Polybius situation. Except it's not an urban legend, which is the scariest part. Why is the game I've been playing for the last month being talked about like it's some lost fabled artifact? Why have none of the forum posters even mentioned playing the damn thing? Fuck it, I'm making an account and posting there tonight. I need answers, and clearly, they all do too. Maybe I can help.

————————

Curator's Note: Archived 4/29/2026. This post and the series of posts that followed it were the reason I wanted to archive this blog in the first place. The idea that Dollie actually played a real copy of Zampanio has always kind of sent a chill down my spine. I always assumed she was posting in character, but in hindsight, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Years ago, when that forum still existed, I had a sort of manic episode one night. In that state of mania, I decided to cross-reference the date that Dollie's account was made with this post, and it lines up. Now, she could have just been a lurker who got inspired, but I had also decided to talk to some of her friends. People who actually knew her before she disappeared off the Internet. They confirmed that all the stuff about "M" kicking her out and her struggles with housing actually happened to her. That wasn't roleplay.

With that in mind, the idea that this post was in any way a fabricated event just doesn't line up. Putting a random bit of worldbuilding into what would otherwise be a vent post just does not make sense. And that leaves us with the conclusion that Dollie actually did play Zampanio. That Zampanio is a real game that really exists. And I don't know what to do with that idea.

One of Dollie's friends told me I reminded her of Dollie. That we had a similar passion for the truth. The idea that I'm like her is more terrifying now than ever.

[ewombat]

What the fuck is a zampanio

Zampanio is a memetic infohazard propagated by people discussing and creating fanworks of it.

Researching zampanio can and will kill you. There is no safe way to interact with zampanio and any further investigation puts you at great risk.

Thank you for your time.

[princess-eternity]

so zampanio is very something. i may be developing an obsession, ill type out my findings so far tomorrow. currently lying in bed unable to stop thinking about it.