This past week, we had the privilege of sitting down and watching a demo for Zorya: The Celestial Sisters from developer Madlife (composed of 10 people). The devs first came up with this game while participating in the Ubisoft University Challenge and saw the game through to its soon-to-be release. Zorya is a puzzle co-op game that will certainly test your skills as a puzzle solver and a good teammate.
Let’s dig into it.
What to expect out of the box/download
Zorya will be a cross-play, co-op (online and local) puzzle-based game that is focused on creating a friendly connection between players. The entire presentation featured two devs playing the game and needing to communicate throughout the game to successfully pass each level. Communication is absolutely the key to success in this game. If you like co-op, then get comfortable for this one.
The base game is going to be $24.99, while there is a Stellar Edition of the game for $29.99 (packed with goodies).
Now that the dry stuff is out of the way, let’s dig into the gameplay.
Don’t come to the light
The crux of the Zorya: The Celestial Sisters is co-op. One player controls the main character, a being that must stay out of the sunlight, while the other player controls the sunlight. Don’t worry, you’re not chasing each other around, rather the sunlight controller shifts the day back and forth while shifting the map back and forth to create an angular shadow to house the ground player. The sunlight player must use shadows to navigate the player on the ground around a map filled with structures in search of an artifact. As you can imagine, this takes time and communication between players, which is the focus of the game’s entertainment – the devs want people to play together and have fun.
The levels that we were privy to during the demo featured examples of different obstacles players were going to run into during gameplay. The levels varied in size, difficulty, and enemy variety. Yep, you’ve got enemies in this game outside of your patience.
The first level, called ARIES III, gave a good introduction to the game. It was a flat level with several broken single-tier structures that the player on the ground had to slowly and stealthily traverse. Why stealthy? There were residents in the structure that would attack the ground player, so the best line of defense in the game was not to be seen. It’s not too difficult when you’re staying in the shadows and when the other player is controlling the light. Once seen, though, the player on the ground can be attacked by the enemies and the only way for the attack to cease is through the sunlight player’s ability to shine a direct sunray onto the enemy and stun them. If that can’t happen fast enough, the ground player can push the enemy away to create space and buy time for the sunray to hit its target. The game has a strong sense of anti-violence about it, even if that description seems the opposite. To complete the level, the devs had to navigate to a floating artifact, which was the end goal.
The second level in the demo, PIECES V, had a series of connected neighborhood houses together. Outside of enemies and staying in the shadows, this level required the player to open gates, press pressure plates, and move/activate switches (via the sunlight). As you can imagine, the structures get larger, and the puzzles get a bit more complicated with additional elements – all while avoiding enemies. Again, communication is the key to success in this game, especially when the levels get more complicated.
The last level the devs showed was called WHALE IV. This was a level to behold. Not only do you have tiered structures on the map, but you also must deal with gates, broken walls (yep, you must consider your environment and what it looks like), switches, and a series of mirrors to reflect the sunlight. You also have enemies too. The juggling seems to get more complicated as the game goes on and the jump from PIECES V to WHALE IV is a great example of the eventual and gradual difficulty arc. That’s how a proper puzzle game should be built.
The puzzles in the demo were fun to watch in motion. The interaction between the players was even more entertaining, as the devs seemed to be enjoying their own game (you can tell it wasn’t forced faked enjoyment). I’m anxious to see what the rest of the game holds in store for players.
Impressions
While we can’t tell you the girth of the game as a whole, we can say that the puzzles seem balanced so far and that Madlife appears to have a firm grasp on a healthy amount of gradual difficulty needed to challenge the player, while also keeping them from feeling frustrated. This is a balance that is sometimes ignored when developers create puzzle-driven titles. Madlife seems to have nailed it so far with what we have seen.
The roles of the two players are very much intertwined with each other, where communication is an absolute key to success, and this is the very definition of a co-op game. It looked and felt like success was only achievable if both players were on the same page. We completely need more games like this right now for various reasons.
As this game continues its path towards completion, we will keep you in the loop.
