Last year, we had the opportunity to preview Zorya: The Celestial Sisters on PC before going on holiday break. It was a fabulous two-player co-op experience that required gamers to communicate and strategize together. When’s the last time you played a game that did that? That’s right, and it was fun. Anytime players can game together, you usually get a good experience out of it (sans when I play Super Mario 3D World with my eight-year-old daughter, who purposely kills her character to acquire the catsuit – don’t get me started). Add puzzles to the mix, and slow and steady gameplay, and you have yourself a certified fun experience.
Long story short, co-op rocks and Zorya delivers.
Now, it’s January and we had the opportunity to play this game with other reviewers during a hands-on event. While I certainly can’t give you a review because we’re not quite ready yet for that, I’m going to do my best to give you some impressions.
Let’s break it down!
Communication is key
As with life, it’s always healthy to communicate with those that you love. Or those that you have paired up with randomly on Discord. Regardless of closeness, communication is a good thing to have, and that is the driving mechanic in Zorya.
How the game works is that one player controls the main character on the ground, who is required to stay out of the sun or otherwise risk perishing under the warm sunlight, while the other player controls the positioning of the sun and its shadows to help the ground player out. The goal of the game is for the player on the ground to get to a special artifact that is located on map that usually features structures, obstacles, and enemy players. The person controlling the sun must move the sun’s position to create shadows that the ground player can walk in to get to the artifact. The sun can also cast a direct beam of light to ignite a beacon that powers doors and platforms, or simply use the beam to temporarily knock out enemies. It’s simple on paper, but much different when you’re doing it.
Going back to communication, the players must communicate what they’re seeing. Since the players have two completely different viewpoints, bird’s eye view versus third-person view, both can see obstacles that the other can’t. Some of those obstacles come in the form of structures that must be traversed slowly through, while others come in the form of enemies armed with spears. The latter can only be repelled two ways. The person on the ground can do an air push to back enemies away from them. This is essentially just a small gust of wind that pushes the enemy back by 5-10 feet. It doesn’t knock them out, it simply pushes them back. The player controlling the sun can stun enemies using a direct sunbeam for a short while. This allows the ground player to get by the enemy and try to snatch the artifact before they wake up, and they do wake up eventually. You can just hit them with a sunbeam again. The session we played yesterday had us cleverly and quickly making sure enemies were knocked out proper. I think the ground player only perished once from an enemy attack. The enemies are quick, so you really do have to be aware of where they might be.
In November, when I saw this game in action, one element that I didn’t notice as an important mechanic is the push function by the ground player. While the beam of light used by the sun player is potent and can go anywhere, once in a blue moon you will find the sunbeam cannot get to an enemy because a structure is blocking it. The ground player must use their push to get the enemy out into the open so that obstacles blocking the sunbeam can be avoided. It’s a subtle mechanic that should be appreciated because of its incredible importance. It’s quite genius when it comes to added strategy in the game. The ground guy yesterday actually pushed an enemy off a platform and onto the ground so that I could hit him with the sunbeam. It was a power move that I didn’t consider, but it’s an important mechanic.
Regardless of beams or pushes, all the above is still wrapped inside the main mechanic of the game — COMMUNICATION. The writer I was gaming with during the brief session was a fantastic communicator during our game. He called out what he was seeing on the ground, and I warned him about enemies I could see from my point of view. We also communicated about the puzzles we were trying to figure out, which was a lot more impactful than expected. Since the shadows were key to progressing in the game, and no matter how the sun was positioned, the shadows were specific and finite in their locations, which forced us to talk with each other about a plan of action to get through the levels that didn’t have enemies. We talked and talked, as his life depended on me not short-changing him on shadows, and his progression and eventual artifact collecting depended on him calling out what he was seeing. It was so much fun. We made it through three levels before the session was over, and we almost made it through the last, but yours truly sucks at keeping people out of the sun. That’s surprising considering how much I hate the sun in real life.
Anyway, while the early stages of the game were easy on the surface, as they were essentially a tutorial, the puzzles became more complicated as the experience progressed. The game threw out moments where we had to connect shadows together to make bridges or activate pillars with a sunbeam to get platforms moving so that the ground player could follow the shadow underneath to the artifact. There were a lot of tricky moments in the playthrough, but nothing that was overly frustrating, which is great! I think the big element that helped alleviate some of that frustration was…wait for it…communication! Sharing strategy and deciphering the puzzle as a group helps to keep the rage quitting to a minimum. There is something about sharing frustration with someone that makes it quite frankly less frustrating. It’s a genius mechanic that makes sense. It’s like playing an online version of an escape room.
Anyway, after the session was over, I walked away wanting to continue playing the game. I may never see Gavin again, and he is probably thankful for that because I wasn’t the best puzzle-solver, having someone to play this game with made such a world of difference with entertainment value.
On that note, let’s wrap this preview up.
Conclusion
Zorya: The Celestial Sisters from Madlife hits Steam early next month and we will have a full review at launch. What we can gather about the game from our short gameplay session is that it has all the makings of something special and should be considered if you’re looking for a fun, non-violent co-op experience.
We’ll be back soon with a full review next month.
