Bring Back The Twin-Stick Games

Zenzizenzic – Previewed

By Julie Morley

Zenzizenzic is beautiful and simplistic but also full of surprises.

Ruud Koorevaar had no experience with game design let alone any knowledge of it; so when he decided to make a game in Unity about a year and a half ago he was completely blind going in. In that year and a half, though, an interesting game began to shape in his experimentation and learning. Before he knew it, he was designing what we know now as Zenzizenzic.

Shoot ’em up games are pretty awesome. Every level increases in difficulty and you’re feeling like an absolute god the entire time things are going smoothly. They build off of your adrenaline rush and ability to cope with chaos. They present the beauty of a challenge that we ever so elegantly accept, doing our best to get an attractive score. It’s a rush. It’s a feeling of accomplishment. It’s badass. You know it, I know it, the entire world knows it.

It’s colorful appearance and fast paced gameplay is guaranteed to suck in players and keep them involved.

With Zenzizenzic, we have a little something different. Shoot ’em ups are designed to challenge the player and nag at them. That’s right, they’re that grimy, obnoxious, nagging voice in our head screaming “Is that the best you’ve got? Surely you can do better than that!” Of course that’s going to be a challenge! Just by digging at someone like that, the idea is implanted in their heads that it’s time to give it one more try.

level is different and has its own set of weaponry and enemies.

Especially since we’re creatures who learn. We rely on our abilities to fail, learn, and try again to perfect ourselves. It’s logical to want to try and try again. Why do you think Flappy Bird was so popular? People wanted perfection. People had that nagging voice challenging them and they went for it.

Zenzizenzic is just like that. It’s in your face, unpredictable, addictive and it gets your blood both pumping and boiling at the same time. It’s expected to be released for Windows, Mac, and Linux with both single and two player capability. It’s appearance is simplistic and abstract which keeps the player immersed but not distracted by the visuals.

So no experience is like any other.

There are five unique levels in Zenzizenzic, each equipped with different kinds of weaponry, music, and enemies. Which each level, the difficulty increases and the enemies are more obnoxious. Feelin’ pretty confident about your gameplay? Guess what, here’s some more enemies for you. Bet you lost your confidence, eh? You’re doing another try? Fantastic, that’s just what we’re aiming for.

Y’see how that goes down? Addiction can be a bad thing but this is all in good fun. And hey, if you keep at it, you’ll unlock a bonus level or two. You just need to get that score high enough.

And that’s what makes Zenzizenzic revive the shoot ’em up genre.

The majority of Zenzizenzic is completed and the Kickstarter campaign is the final push to have this beauty cleaned up and done. .

Ruud intends to Zenzizenzic around July of this year but for those who are a bit anxious, there is a free beta linked for download on the Kickstarter campaign page.

[facebook][tweet][Google][pinterest][follow id=”Cliqist” size=”large” count=”true” ] [author image=”http://cliqist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/julie.jpg” ]Julie Morley is a freelance writer and comic artist from Spring, Texas. She attended the Academy of Art University for two years, studying Animation and Illustration. Whilst here, she learned about writing comic scripts, storyboards, and general storytelling.  Since leaving college, she has been working on personal comic projects, stories, and illustrations. She aspires to release a self published comic within two years. For the majority of her life, she has been playing console games, typically being third-person shooters and sandboxes. Her favorite game of existence is Dark Cloud II (Dark Chronicle) and her favorite Indie game is Gone Home.[/author]