Actually, ZZT isn't a whole lot like rogue. It just has a roguelike interface. It was designed for adventure games and is rather limited to adventure and block-puzzle games, but some people take the built-in language (ZZT-OOP) a step further to make different styles of games (usually referred to as "engines"). Megazeux is a clone of ZZT with much more versatility but less ease-of-use on the designer's part. There are some other clones of ZZT that seek to find a medium, but ZZT is the furthest from "dead" my a margin of fan-released games.
The interface is just walking around in a top-down view as a white-on-blue ascii character 002 smiley; picking up items, shooting monsters, and touching special "objects" that execute ZZT-OOP code through an interpreter. There's a built-in editor and a couple of advanced external editors. There's a sidebar with your health, score, and items shown on the right. Hacks and work-arounds have been developed to give the player an inventory, because this is not built-in to ZZT. The community website is
http://ZZT.belsambar.net.
~nupanick (or other appropriate name)
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Guvf VF zl jvggl fvtangher.