ZCW Reviews

  A Minimalist Cityscape-A Mini Motorways Review Following last week's review of the brutally challenging platformer Garlic , I decided to spend this week with a far more relaxed and casual experience in Mini Motorways. Let's see if this minimalist building and simulation game from Dinosaur Polo Club has what it takes to be great. Simply Calming Construction At its core Mini Motorways is all about connecting houses of color coordinated cars to their corresponding destinations. You'll drag roads however you like with limited resources and use infrastructures like bridges, tunnels, roundabouts, and traffic lights to create an interconnected city.  The goal of the game is to see just how long your city can get citizens to destinations before it takes too long. Operating on a normal week to week schedule, at the end of every Sunday you'll get the option of one of two choices-these vary every time. It is your decisions here that affect just how long your city will stay afloa...

  A Tower of Difficulty-A Garlic Review It's fairly rare that a new completely linear 2D platformer slides right under my radar, but that's exactly what Garlic did. In fact I only stumbled into it from a random YouTube video from a creator I had never watched before, so without further ado let's slice into Garlic and see what's hidden here.  First Layers of Fun Garlic wastes no time getting you into the gameplay. You'll immediately be introduced to the all-direction dash, ways to defeat enemies, and the story in mere minutes. As for that story, it's fairly simple and humorous. You want to ascend the tower to met the cyber goddess and finish your journey. Throughout the normal platforming gameplay after certain levels and worlds, you'll play some little minigames akin to warioware where you can earn the goddesses favor. I love that Garlic doesn't pretend to have some grandiose story, it keeps it simple and out of the way.  For anyone more experienced with...

A Failed Reboot-A Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz HD Review Following the recent news of full blown remakes of Super Monkey Ball 1, 2, and Deluxe , I decided this week to check out the most recent entry of the series. Before playing it, all I had previously heard about it was negative, so I'll play it myself and form my own opinions.  To save the suspense, you read the title already, I can say that the negative reviews are definitely warranted.  Beyond Slippery What I immediately noticed about Banana Blitz was the utter lack of precision as compared to the GameCube games from 20 years ago. New mechanics aside, the simple act of rolling around is so overly sensitive yet imprecise it leans on unplayable. Whereas in the original games I could consistently beat the harder levels with the right strategy because of their rock solid controls, in Banana Blitz I routinely found myself randomly beating levels and hardly understanding what I even did to win.  Good Ideas, Bad Imp...

A Brand New Arcade Classic-An Annalynn Review Annalynn is the absolute closest you can get to an original old school arcade cabinet in the modern age. Its simple yet straight forward presentation and controls culminate into a bite sized and enjoyable arcade game.  Faithful  To The Extreme I was immediately drawn to just how faithful Annalynn was to those old coin guzzling arcade games. It's set in a vertical aspect ratio, and even has art to fill up the leftover space on a widescreen monitor similar to what you would see on an arcade cabinet.  In terms of gameplay it's extremely close to Pac-man, just in a 2D side scrolling perspective. You'll evade 4 enemy snakes with different chase patterns and personalities, and by evading and jumping through 15 different floors you'll meet a boss at the end. Hell, you even have a form of power pellets that turn the snakes blue so you can boot them off for points. It's very simple, but it works to the game's charm and furthe...

The Binding of Isaac and the importance of Power Scarcity The Binding of Isaac from Nicalis, Inc and the mind of Edmund McMillen is a game that I'm sure the vast majority of you have heard of in some way or another. Over the past few weeks I've put in many hours into this title yet failed to understand what really kept me coming back.  This perplexed me so much that I made up a new term for it: Power Scarcity. In this article I want to guide you through Isaac's brilliant use of this concept and how it leads to near infinite replayability.  "What the hell is Power Scarcity?"  To explain, in roguelikes dependent on passive items each run plays along some sort of bell curve. The vast majority of runs are somewhere in the middle of vastly overpowered and underpowered.   Somewhere around 2/3rds of every run in The Binding of Isaac are average or below, but the importance of the top third is what makes the difference  It is THIS dichotomy that truly makes Isaac s...

  Extreme Colonial Combat-A Jamestown+ Review It's no understatement to say I'm a pretty huge fan of the "shoot em up" (or often abbreviated schmup) genre of videogames as a whole. When I picked up Jamestown+ I went in with the expectation that this would be a different and more modern take on the formula, in a similar ilk to monolith of reviews past.   What I found was an equally wacky and deep traditional schmup, with enough modern tough ups to reduce the often frustrating past of the genres past.  Old Time Charm With New Age Mechanics What immediately stuck out to me in my first playthrough was the unique setting of Jamestown+. Taking place in colonial America with a mix of sci fi futuristic aliens and technology. While it is an unusual mix, it is nothing so jarring that it would lead to confusion. Another point of note here is the fairly detailed story. While it may not be that grandiose, there is enough of a story here with cutscenes that I'll refrain from ...

A Nokia Era Roguelike-A SNKRX Review Following my usual browsing for new indie games to highlight on this site, a quaint title by the name of SNKRX graced my eyes. And for only $3, it was a no-brainer to try out this unique, bite sized roguelike.  Strikingly Simple SNKRX is a roguelike based off of the classic and simple game snake, but instead of eating pieces to grow longer you fight said creatures with a variety of units in a party of up to 7 segments. With your rag tag team of little units you press on to beat all 25 arenas and defeat the final boss-the cluster.  Being based on Snake, SNKRX's simple concepts make a game that is immediately accessible and fun without having to read any long written guides or nonsense. Each of the units you purchase from the shop gives clear indication of what they do and what they upgrade into. For a game with tons of different units, all with certain synergies and the like, having clear indication on what happens next is crucial. For examp...