We’re within the midst of a Metroidvania renaissance. Metroid: Dread, Ori, Hole Knight, Useless Cells, and extra have saved followers of the style absolutely satiated in recent times. 2024 has already seen the launch of one of many style’s greatest in Value of Persia: The Misplaced Crown.
The DNA of all of those video games and extra might be present in Tales of Kenzera: ZAU. That is the debut undertaking from Surgent Studios, helmed by actor Abubakar Salim. Salim, a veteran of stage and display, is a lifelong fan of video games and with ZAU turns his hand to improvement.
An extremely private undertaking, Tales of Kenzera: ZAU displays on grief, impressed by the lack of Abubakar’s father, Ali. Ali was a software program engineer and launched Abubakar to gaming. Ali handed away in 2013, and it’s this grief that’s on the core of Tales of Kenzera: ZAU’s narrative.
The sport tells the story of Zau, a younger man who’s making an attempt to revive his father, a process he and the participant secretly is aware of is fruitless. Zau has to seize the souls of a collection of titanic monsters to submit them as an providing to the God of the Useless.
Tales of Kenzera: ZAU’s story is essentially advised by way of dialogue married to comic-book-style renditions of the sport’s characters. These comedian guide characters are the sport’s strongest visuals, and we’d like to have seen absolutely animated cutscenes on this artwork fashion.
The sport’s vocal performances are robust, and the characters by no means outstay their welcome, even when they’re largely unremarkable. Tales of Kenzera: ZAU is stuffed with attention-grabbing lore in regards to the sport’s wider world, however this info is usually given to the participant as a reward for locating a secret on the earth.
We’d have most popular a few of this info to be barely much less obscured, however having lore as a reward somewhat than a brand new ability or ability level is an attention-grabbing change.
Tales of Kenzera is stuffed with rock-solid platforming challenges. Hanging a stability between powerful and controller-breakingly annoying, Kenzera’s platforming evokes Guacamelee, Tremendous Meat Boy, and the aforementioned Metroid Dread.
Whereas your motion choices are pretty restricted, it’s utilized in many extremely difficult methods. There are second-perfect jumps, prolonged platforming challenges, and a few sections that can have your fingers contoured in a vice-like grip across the controller.
“Hanging a stability between powerful and controller-breakingly annoying, Kenzera’s platforming evokes Guacamelee, Tremendous Meat Boy, and the aforementioned Metroid Dread.”
The sport’s fight is essentially cut up between two completely different modes, every represented by a masks that imbues Zau with completely different powers. The Moon masks is extra ranged, whereas the Solar masks is up shut and private. You possibly can swap between the masks at will, which makes for fast-paced motion, however the sport’s fight isn’t massively deep.
Some fight areas within the sport will lock you within the room till you’ve defeated all the enemies, which might be irritating. It’s a little bit of a stumble following an attention-grabbing part of platforming to then be compelled to do considerably pedestrian fight.
The sport’s Metroidvania parts equally don’t really feel absolutely explored. For Metroidvania, you actually don’t spend an excessive amount of time returning to earlier areas to unlock secrets and techniques, a difficulty that grows on the sport goes on. This aspect of the sport feels most like one thing from a studio’s first sport. There’s an absence of depth, and the sensation that the attention-grabbing masks idea might have been expanded additional.
Visually, the sport is a mixture of highs and lows. The environments are vibrant and visually distinct however by no means encumber the platforming gameplay. Every of the sport’s areas blends realism with fantasy in attention-grabbing methods, and it’s a massively vibrant world to discover. The combo of Afrofuturism and fantasy makes for a novel setting that is stuffed with ingenious visible setpieces.
The true draw back, and the sport’s largest presentational weak point is the character fashions themselves. The humanoid 3D fashions really feel dated and misplaced within the environments, they usually’re proven in a fair worse gentle when in comparison with the cartoon renders of the characters.
It looks like there’s a filter lacking, or a degree of element problem as we usually had characters’ eyes notably bulging out of their heads, which was distracting when performed in opposition to a few of the sport’s extra poignant moments.
Tales of Kenzera: ZAU is a good begin from a promising studio, even when it does characteristic some hallmarks of a studio’s first sport. We’d be extremely to strive a follow-up from Surgent Studios as soon as the teachings from their first foray into improvement have been realized and a few of the rougher edges have been buffed.
The sport nearly stands confidently alongside different Metroidvanias, even when it doesn’t elevate above its inspirations. The sport’s excessive factors are its platforming problem, its evocation of Bantu tradition, and its central analogy of the sport’s problem mirroring the problem of grief.
