Zone Of Lacryma, a game being created by fremachuca, is a pixel styled shoot-em-up that sees you navigating the cosmos, destroying asteroids and enemy ships, and getting powering up your ship as you go.
The game offers and overall linear flight system, only being able to go forward with boundaries or walls blocking you from the edge of the map, but allowing you to move in all directions using the arrow keys. It starts of fairly sedately, lulling you into a false sense of security, but soon tests your reflexes as stationary asteroids slowly start to pick up momentum and start flying towards you at great speeds. Not only do you have to deal with the over populace of asteroids that are constantly flying at you and make your journey harder to navigate, you’ll come across the opposing military forces that have multiple defense systems in place to stop any trespassers getting through. These enemies all have varying health (as do some of the asteroids) and can make it extremely hard to annihilate them while either avoiding the on coming waves of asteroids or blowing them up as well.
Zone Of Lacryma is minimalistic when it comes to the graphics side of things. Simple uses of colours for enemies, your ship and asteroids make them easy to target and stand out from the purple background (that has a few stars scrolling as you move). Because of this there is no clashes of colour and it wont strain your eyes at all. Where the game lacks in beauty, it makes up for it in spades with its strong combat oriented mechanic and a two separate level up systems.
The first level up component comes in the form of that from an old school RPG-style XP. As you kill asteroids and enemies you gain coins/XP. With each piece of xp you get, your ship upgrades and your bullets get more powerful, adding an additional cannon on each time you progress in level. The two things to mention about this are the facts that when you die or complete a level you’re automatically reset to level 1 and when you take damage in-game you lose XP which can result in you dropping levels as you’re flying. The second RPG component is an upgrade screen. This screen gives you five different modules (Armour, Engine, Energy Bomb, Laser and Magnet) that can be upgraded with the coins/XP you pick up from the derelict remains of ships and asteroids. These upgrades, unlike the former, stay with you as you go. These upgrades give you an initial edge at the start of each combat, which in turn makes each fight easier and easier.
Zone Of Lacryma is fast paced, extremely fun and uberly addictive and will have you moon walking all over your room once you see the yellow lights of safety at the very edges of space.
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Play the Zone Of Lacryma Prototype Here (Browser)