As the big budget game publishers tighten their wallets in the aftermath of the crashing stock market, and choose to focus on sequels and generally tried and true formulas for games, we look at the Indie scene for something out of the ordinary.

Zeno Clash is just that, a low-budget-out-of-the-ordinary-Indie-title for the PC, that goes so far into the realms of what’s weird and bizarre that no big budget publisher would likely dare poke it with a stick. Zeno Clash is the debut title coming out of Chilean developer ACE Team, which to my knowledge consist of only four people, three which are brothers. The game runs on Valve’s Source Engine (Half Life 2, Left 4 Dead) and is sold via Steam, Valve’s digital distribution network, for only $20 or so.

The first thing that strikes you as you start up Zeno Clash is without a doubt its art design. The great and colorful art makes Zeno Clash a visual treat, and throughout you’re presented with some of the most bizarre creature and character creations ever seen in a video game, some only makes you wonder what the heck ACE Team were on when the concept art was drawn up. The character voicework is alright, in fact it is both better and more abundant than I had expected from an Indie title.

So what type of game is Zeno Clash? While there is shooting the bulk of the combat is melee based so the game best falls into the more rare category of “first person action games”. You play as Ghat, a young man who has to flee from his clan after killing Father-Mother, a weird hermaphrodite who spawns human children and various weird… things… Tagging along on your journey is your female friend, Deadra. Hot on tail are members of the clan, Father-Mother’s other offspring, and ahead of you is a forest full of insane and bizarre individuals. Explaining the details of the plot in Zeno Clash is almost impossible, it is confusing, to say the least. The story is presented through blurry and dreamlike flashbacks, cut scenes and several playable sequences of events taking place before the killing of Father-Mother. The dialoque is equally bizarre, especially as the personalities of the forests insane inhabitants are explained with lines like “They are not slaves of reality, so they can be insane” or “Armenia peed on herself and starved to death anonymously.”

As a first person action game and brawler Zeno Clash mostly succeeds. The controls are generally sharp and responsive as you time you punches, kicks, counters, block and dodges. The combat is deeper and more statisfying than any first person brawler I can remember playing, but it’s not without its flaws. Things can get rather frustrating when trying to pull off more complicated combos, especially when forced to fight multiple opponents at once. Your planned attacks or blocks against opponent one easily get messed up when you are shoved in the back by opponent two or three. Trying to isolate your enemies so that you can unleash combos 1v1, knocking them down, is key. The combat definitely takes some time getting used to and the average player can expect a few deaths and frustrating moments before getting the all-so-important timing down.

Zeno Clash is the type of game everyone should play, even if just to try something different in a gaming world of sequels and generic first person shooters. It’s beautifully presented, totally bizarre, original and most importantly fun to play. It’s not perfect but for $20 or less it’s pretty much a steal, and with a demo of the game just released via Steam you’ve got no reason not to check it out.

-Daniel Lindberg

Tags: ACE Team, art, Bizarre, Indie, PC, review, Steam, Zeno Clash

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