Zephyr - a casual review

[bloomer_au]

I finally got around to playing Zephyr tonight. While it has some novel technical features, including audio speech and the almost never used in games double hi-res black and white mode, the game design is vague and the whole thing feels randomish and elusive.

Your ship flies endlessly forward over the planet's surface. Moving up and down changes your height above the ground, and moving left and right rolls the vista correspondingly, ala Buck Rogers. Also like in Buck Rogers, there is a finite play area. Move too far left or right you won't be able to go any further, though it's easy to not notice you're at or near the edge since the barricade is transparent. Both the top of screen radar or the numerical 'Sector' readout are more helpful than your eyes in this regard.

The planet surface is dense with clusters of interesting looking structures, equipment and even alien dudes. The trouble is, they're all basically just walls. I've experimented at length with colliding with and shooting different objects, and the only commonalities are that they are all indestructible and you will explode if you fly into them.

The printed instructions are vague: "Cross the different sectors and destroy your enemies."

I have yet to be able to identify a destructible enemy. This doesn't mean I haven't hit anything which gave me points - I have - but it seems that the player's shots can only strike targets that are at or beyond the horizon, meaning if you hit something shootable, you can't see what you just shot. There is no visible feedback on a successful hit, and the audio feedback is a pipping noise. However, a reduced framerate proceeds the phases when bad guys will shoot at you, and this seems to correspond to moments when you might be able to get points by shooting stuff (them?). My high score is 1800, and it was achieved in a state of mild bewilderment. I didn't play any better or worse on that game than lots of later games in which I felt I could fly the plane better. I just kept shooting at different parts of the horizon, hoping to hit things.

Regarding the 'sectors', there may be a tiny translation hiccup in the instructions, since the sectors actually identify your ship's horizontal position (sector 1 is when the ship is leftmost, sector 32 is when the ship is rightmost) rather than game levels. The voice announces 'Niveau Un' (Level 1), suggesting there are more levels, but I've yet to get off the 1st one.

Enemy shots coming at your plane are fairly visible, but behave inconsistently re: your horizontal movement. I have a feeling the height of your ship is relevant in dodging some shots, but I don't know this for sure. Also, the shots' height can't be determined by looking at them. When a shot is sailing towards me, my instinct is to change heights and veer away, but this is no guarantee of safety.

Obviously the biggest problem with the game is the fact that your shots seem to do very little, and what they do do seems to occur offscreen. I can't reliably identify what I'm meant to be shooting at (and watching the demo has revealed nothing, either). If anyone knows any better, fill me in!

Playing tips:

-- Fly at high altitude 75% of the time. This will let you fly over almost all obstacles. If you fly at only 10m off the ground, you're guaranteed to collide with anything you see.

-- Keep away from the extreme left and right edges of the playfield. When you need to dodge a bullet, it's better to have a choice about which way you're going to move. At the edges, you can forget you're at the edge and get stuck.

-- Use the radar to spot the densest clusters of obstacles ahead of time and steer away from them

-- Always go for the fuel if you see it: Fly high into one or more of the big K signs.

-- While doing all of the above... keep shooting. You might get points :)

-- Definitely start shooting whenever the game speed drops

- Wade