If you enjoy trippy visuals, bullet hell shooters and incredible chippy audio, then you may wish to add Zenzizenzic to your Steam wishlist.
Adult Swims has been on a bit of a roll in terms of bringing games that are simple in concept but devilishly difficult to master. You may recall my love/hate relationship with Landon Podbielski’s Duck Game, and I’m starting to feel similarly about Zenzi.
Playing the game is a little like staring too closely at those old Fruitopia commercials (REMEMBER FRUITOPIA???). Your tiny square of a spaceship fires little bullets at other geometric patterns whilst you avoid even more geometric patterns that want to destroy you.
If this sounds a little confusing, it should be. I mean, look at this beautiful chaos.
The soundtrack is excellent. The difficulty is ever-more punishing as you progress. I haven’t had this much fun looking at explosions since Cipher Prime’s pill-blasting hit Intake.
Your lifetime score doubles as currency, and you can spend points you’ve earned by blowing up baddies on new challenges, weapons and levels. While action RPGs tend to be more within my wheelhouse, Zenzi is nice when I want a quick session of deep concentration, bright explosions and a great soundtrack.
Zenzizenzic is available for Mac and PC on Steam for only $9.99, and I think it’s well worth your ten bucks. The game is definitely not for those who are easily frustrated. If you’re looking for a challenging shoot ‘em up where you get to watch numbers increase, this is a beautifully stylized work.
If you can, try to play this using a gamepad. Keyboard controls are acceptable, but you’ll likely feel happier with your performance if you have the benefit of some buttons and sticks.
4/5
