Ready your credits, Choose your ship and try to survive this bullet hell that is just a lot of fun!
ZenoDyne R is a 90's style, vertical scrolling, shoot-em-up and second chapter of the "Zeno Series" (Including ZenoHell and ZenoDeath).
It is actually a remake of the original ZenoDyne, with some tweaks after receiving some criticism.
Graphics
ZenoDyne's graphics remind me a bit of MS Paint, but they are nothing close to simplistic: they feature beautiful art and are as crisp as they can get.
Bullet's are well visible, and the ones (like missiles) that may not be as visible, have a purple aura surrounding them. This, in conjunction with a very small ship hitbox, makes it very hard to get hit unfairly.
Setup and Performance
The setup, done via the Itch.io client is fast and painless. There is good performance, with no frame drops. The only thing to complain about is that the default screen size is way too small for my comfort, but it is easily changeable in the settings.
Props to the developers for specifying that the game works well under Wine for "you dear Linux users". I tested it and it works like it was running on a native Windows sytem.
Sound
The sound features a very intriguing YM2612 (the chip used in the Sega Genesis/Megadrive) soundtrack that is a great complement to the game itself.
The sound effects are crunchy and satisfying. No complaints here!
Gameplay
The gameplay is in the usual style of a "bullet hell" game, you shoot down hordes of ships while avoiding beautiful and deadly bullet patterns until you meet a boss.
Each ship is well differentiated from the others and has a small lore attached, furthermore each ship has two unique fire modes, allowing for some real-time strategies based on which mode you want to use.
Another interesting feature is "Tech Points": these are awarded according to your performance on the level, with bonuses for:
- Finishing a stage without using a continue
- Killing all mid-bosses
- Finishing a stage without dying
Tech points are automatically used in the "unlock list" to award you with new ship types, lore text or even additional lives or continues on your next playthrough. This makes for a game that becomes more accessible the more you play it.
The game also features a "normal" game mode for casual players and an "arcade" mode for experts, which differ in how many points you need to get an extra life and the fact that "arcade mode" features selectable paths that change up the gameplay.
Conclusion
This game is just fun, and very very very hard!
It is simple enough to not feel "overbearing" but complex enough to allow for great replayability and it's just something I want to go back when I don't know what to play (another one is VVVVVV).
A certain game ( Raiden V ) could learn a thing or two from this little gem (yes, I'm still mad at that game).
As usual the score goes from 0 to 100. And this game deserves a good 82/100 , with some blemishes here and there, but definitely worth a try if you like the genre.
Thank you for reading. See you in the next post!
Penaz.