Bytten

For me, there's no genre that is more exciting than the one of shallow arcade blaster. Those are the the sorts of game that put you in an agile spaceship with an infinite number of bullets, and give you an everlasting hoarde of enemies to blast. Zig is one such game.

Take one spaceship with rotary controls and an arena. Add aliens of various types and abilities and that's pretty much the whole game. In Zig, the whole arena spins around instead of just the spaceship.

Zig is a fun shooter for those who like shallow but intense arcade games. It's got lots of frenzied excitement and plenty of variety in the types of aliens. The graphics are every bit as stylish and the action every bit as frenzied as Japanese arcade games like Warning Forever, and those games are arcade showcases.

The game has a strong retro feel and you even get to fight asteroids, pac-men and space invaders in special rounds. The space invaders one is particularly mean because they get faster as they are destroyed and if you die with one invader left then you will probably lose all of your lives in rapid succession, killed by a lightning fast invader before you can do anything.

Many of the graphics are wireframe but that is the style of the game, and all of the graphical effects such as the explosions are implemented brilliantly. There aren't many sound effects, there could have been more I think, but the sounds that are there have a clean analogue sound that works well.

New enemies are introduced in new rounds but generally speaking Zig is a game that requires no thought, only instincts. There are some upgrades but a lack of variety will inevitably harm the long term draw of the game. Controls or volume levels can't be customised, and some sort of difficulty level might also have helped those who struggle with the intensity of the game.

There are plenty of freeware shooters that give the same gameplay experience, but many expensive games don't match this level of style and attention to detail. The lack of music is my only major gripe.

Keywords: zig review, ben campbell reviews, ben campbell games, zig scores, pc game reviews, indie game reviews, independent gaming.