ZCW Reviews

A Demonic Thrillride-A Hell Is Other Demons Review Other than a completely ridiculous title, Hell Is Other Demons brought a lot of interesting ideas to the table in making yet another meticulously crafted, pixel art, indie game. I've played so many games of this ilk that steam now feeds them to me with everlasting palette of roguelikes, so I was extremely surprised to see that this game has an actual CAMPAIGN. It's quite interesting to see that as the sphere of gaming has shifted and developers have changed their preferences accordingly, that some devs still run the "risk" of not making some procedurally generated bollocks to pad out their primary gameplay loop to death.  Hell Is Other Demons (I'm calling it HIOD from now on because im tired of a game title also being its own independent clause) is a platform based, wave based combat shooter in which you annihilate all the baddies hell has to offer. It is masterfully drawn, featuring deeply detailed pixel ...

A More Meaningful, and more furry, Smash Clone-A Rivals of Aether Review Many games have tried, and unceremoniously failed, to capture the majesty and movement of the Super Smash Brothers series. More specifically, what makes the second entry in the series, Super Smash Bros Melee, such a joy for competitive, skill based platform fighting. Some tend to dumb down the mechanics and create something less engaging, while others are so invested in making something akin to Melee that they lose their own identity in the process. Rivals is unequivocally itself, but retains much of the key features many crave from these high skill ceiling, movement based, platform fighters.  Inspired, But Varied  Yes, all the familiars to anyone who has previously played Smash Bros are all here, including but not limited to: percent based kill systems instead of health bars, wavedashing, teching, directional influence, and even more hidden techniques like moonwalking and ledge cancelling. Now ...

Roguelite Majesty-A  Monolith Review Monolith is a blatant hidden gem, and a concept I haven't seen done much recently. Yes, it is a roguelite, the superhero movie genre of video games, but it employs mechanics from most modern bullet hell space shooters to create a more unique experience.  You are a little spaceship in search of exploring the procedurally generated vault of levels to reach the end and obtain the power that lies within the monolith. Ain't much more than that, and what else is needed? Claustrophobic Combat The game has a great sense of space, forcing you to make split second decisions and rely partially on your instincts. As you improve, you learn to utilize all of the space you've been given, no matter how tiny the room. By shrinking the scope of the playable screen, combat is always active and keeps you focused through an entire run.  Couple this combat with expert visual design and a killer soundtrack, and each combat encounter is both...

Feline Fury-A Gato Roboto Review Before we get into this thing, I must mention that I CANNOT stand metroidvania games. To me, they almost always devolve into me missing out on an important environmental detail and scouring the entire map for the color coded wall that my newly acquired weapon can shoot through. This, coupled with the industry standard backtracking techniques employed in almost every one of these games, were the reasons why I was sceptical at first to try out Gato Roboto, but I wanted to play something to expand my viewpoints on the archetype.  Clawing, Looting, and Exploring Gato Roboto places you in control of a cat of a trapped space shuttle operator, whose vessel has just found itself on the unfortunate side of a rock and left him trapped inside. As his loyal cat, it's your job to eventually free him and figure out the mysteries of this cave you have stumbled into. Eventually you come across a leftover suit and head inside, and then the adventure truly ...

A Symphony of Slashing- A Furi Review 4/4/2020 Zachary Wilson In the perpetual search to find ways to pass time during this outbreak, I looked towards a game I played at launch but never finished. Furi, the futuristic hack and slash boss rush, was just the thing I needed to scratch that itch for another difficult game.  Ferocious, Yet Fair In your pursuit to kill all that opposes you and escape the prison designed specifically for you, the main character, who is unnamed, has 4 basic moves: slashing, parrying, dashing, and shooting. In what has quickly become my favorite gameplay model-giving the player more simple movesets and letting their applications dictate their complexity instead of just adding more moves-Furi ramps up the specific uses of these simple moves to gradually increase in difficulty and test the player's intuition.  Furi has 10 main bosses, but their difficulty isn't exactly gradual-which was a deliberate choice of the developers-and it lead...

Gorilla Tactics-An APE OUT Review 4/2/20 Zachary Wilson As Corona has divulged into a real issue and left many stuck in place at home, I decided to play APE OUT as a way to imagine going outside and freeing myself from this horrid quarantine. So what better way to escape real life than run around and absolutely murder everything as a supercharged ape? Gameplay and Mechanics I was pleasantly surprised with just how intuitive controlling a giant ape can be. It is clear that  Bennett Foddy ,  Gabe Cuzzillo , and  Matt Boch really took their time understanding their general gameplay loop and movement, and it shows in spades here in APE OUT. As an aside, it is just delightful to be able to scream out APE OUT in all caps while writing this review. Anyway, the base mechanics of the game are as follows: grab and throw. That's it, and that's all that's really needed here. As you move from level to level your moves don't change or evolve, but the level design and enemy...