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Painful memories in Zu

  • Zugzwang
  • 03/24/2015 09:59 AM
  • 1929 views
This game is a reference in the list of Brazilian RPG Maker communities. It is the winner of the “Make a Game, Win the Game!” and other contest forums. I decided to review the game, to inspire communities. It is created by exigent artist but is always frustrated with his works, later was hired to Terraria You can follow his twitter (@CrownoO), and acess the pages for the game. If you’re lost, you can look for gameplay video on youtube.


Zu is a short game, made in RPG Maker VXAce Lite. With traditional battles of the engine, the emphasis is on mystery and exploration.The graphics, is what count the most in the atmosphere of NPCs than the story itself. The story is about losing someone important to you. The plot is great at the beginning and end, but the world-building suffers from the lack of depth in relation to the central plot.The game has:

- Good soundtrack
- Good original drawings
- A great boss fight
- Good design and ambiance
- Good plot
- Good strategies with skills and equipment
- Lud.Sakura battlers



Zu is another big name in the list of games that blend RPG and Puzzle / Exploration. The genre is quite unusual, but it has been successful in Maker scenario. The game is intentionally mysterious, since from the start. The peculiarity is that, unlike most traditional creations, this obscurity is not a secondary element of the script. It is the real atmosphere in which the narrative is constructed. It has great graphics, good challenge and great boss fight. It is short, beautiful atmosphere, but gaps due to the time for completion. Of course, the story confirms the psychedelic graphics. Here, you are Allan, a young man who wants exchange for personal fulfillment, and decides to make a deal with an unknown entity called Zu. And so it ends up being teleported to his world via a strange box. Now you will need to explore it and search for a way out. The density of the plot, however, is in Eliza, a loved person, the girl cited in the introduction. It is the cause of adventure, the detail of the story, and the cathartic element of the completion of the script.

The fascinating aesthetics of Zu



The graphics are made to generate this atmosphere, and the sound effects seem handpicked (and were). The choice of using Kevin MacLeod compositions was perfect. The introduction is beautiful. The NPCs, enemies and the design of the menus have been specifically detailed for this purpose, despite the limitations of the engine Lite version. The title screen, the cube-shaped menu, the mist effects and the parallax backgrounds are spectacular. I highlight the columns flying over the scene, something I've always wanted to perform in a game, :P.



We got into another discussion: the impact of the characters. Zu has remarkable characters besides the protagonist, in my view. Intentionally or not, the characters remind us of the beak doctor costume used by Middle Age physicians to deal with the Black Death. (But this is not clearly stated in the plot. This symbolism is not used.) Perhaps the inspiration is in the bird symbolism as melancholy, see Sing Sorrow by Korn (music admired by the creator) or the band Katatonia.

The meaning of NPCs are only on the aesthetic level, and is this element that unites them to the story. There is no narrative symbolism able to insinuate a explanation or meaning in the game universe. We understand the operating mechanism of the game, but there is a chasm between the amoral creatures of the world and the predominantly negative figure of Zu. What is the relationship between them?



Again, the gap between the last boss and the conclusion of the story indicates an abrupt break. He does not assign a sufficiently strong meaning to the position he occupies.. We expected something bigger. It is basically the impasse between the moral conception of the script and the little development of the meaning of the NPC’s for beyond to an exploration gameplay. The enemy did not meet the requirements to be the ultimate adversary within the established narrative.

From a theoretical perspective, all the characters of a game have some motivation, including the most simple-minded monsters.We did not look at this detail as we got used to pre-established worlds such as Tolkienian mythology or the Dungeons & Dragons books. The risk of losing the internal coherence to create a setting out of the ordinary is high. In Zu, you’re in a world within a mysterious box composed of different feelings and memories. Unfortunately, there are no hints as to how this experience relates to the NPCs.

Gameplay



Allan is somehow connected to the strange box that carries. This is the justification for the skill tree system, with a beautiful design. The battle system, however, presents a problem, not so much technical but on purpose. He seems to be there to fill the gap, to quickly create a difficulty that should be generated otherwise. It was contemplated the possibility of excluding it, and was set up in a hurry. We know that the substitute non-dull puzzles would be time consuming. Imagine the game production time as To the Moon. Again, the short period in which the narrative was created hindered the development of the game.

Furthermore, the intelligent use of skills can yield excellent strategies to fight. Especially at the end. You need to think how to use Astral skills (AP) and Energetic (EP), or even physical attacks with the best equipment.



More mechanisms sounded like artificial attempts to simulate difficulty. You have to guess the manufacture of an item at least difficult to be dropped (if that is possible). And the addition of ingredients to get is not even intuitive. Additionally, when he does wrong combinations, the player loses the items. Well, just save and load the game repeatedly to get over it.



But Lyre of Lamentations, used to execute the puzzles, was an excellent choice. The difficulty was well adjusted, and the idea of opening passages from songs fell perfectly into the scenario. And the same applies to the puzzles of the statues, very well placed. Now, a funny thing. It was only allowed me to obtain the lake map after it became completely useless. Requires persistence release it too, especially in such a small game. Just like in real life, there is always someone willing to bargain your soul for nothing,;).

Some easter eggs in the project: “I hated this map”

Posts

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CashmereCat
Self-proclaimed Puzzle Snob
11638
This is a good review, even if some of the sentences are difficult to read because of weird sentence structuring. This probably due to you not having English as your first language. Other than that, I got the gist of what you were trying to say, and it seems like a really well-structured and in-depth review.

Created by an very exigent artist and always frustrated with his works, later hired to Terraria, Crowno.


Really? He got hired to work on Terraria? Good on him!

I like those Easter eggs as well. Does that mean that this project is unencrypted?
Yes. It is a unencrypted project.

As I said in other place:

"I love video games. Especially indie games. I try to make games and pixel art.
But all are terrible.

Here I try to write out the native language to meet new people.
But my English is terrible too.

Thanks for the comment!
Pages: 1