I've ha-ha-only-serious described ZZT-OOP as “object-disoriented concurrent INTERCAL” before. The #zap/#restore and #lock/#unlock commands rhyme somewhat with INTERCAL's ABSTAIN/REINSTATE (or IGNORE/REMEMBER, seeing as keeping important state implicitly in the program counter is a pretty important technique in ZZT), and sending a ‘message’ is basically remote GOTO.

Bonus points for using an extended editor to put normally-impossible values in stats fields to exploit different engine behaviors.