ZxZ

About the game

ZxZ is a science-fiction puzzle game seen from above. A short briefing sets the scene: an Alien Torus threatens the planet, and you, General Protagonist, are sent aboard to find the Big Button that sits in front of a row of Evil Eyes and blow the whole thing up. What follows is one large, connected station of corridors, pipes, doors and machinery.

The only thing you do is walk, but walking into things does a lot. You push barrels and oxygen tanks around, lean on joysticks that move distant robots, flip levers that switch force fields and turrets on and off (one of them even turns the music off), and set off detonators. Turrets fire energy bolts that mirrors deflect and crystals split in two, and many puzzles are about routing those bolts to blow up bombs or clear tentacles out of the way. Fire spreads to anything flammable, and walking into a mirror from above or below takes you to the other side of the station altogether. Force fields, fire, tentacles and bolts are deadly to touch.

All of this happens against your oxygen supply, shown as the bar at the bottom of the screen. Every step and every push uses some of it, touching a crystal costs a lot, and the tanks scattered around the station are the only way to top it up. Run out, or get caught in an explosion, and it is over.

Playing it here

ZxZ was made for WASM-4, a fantasy console: an imaginary handheld with a 160 by 160 screen, four colours, a D-pad and two buttons, for which independent developers write new games. It was written in C in four days for the first WASM-4 game jam, in January 2022, and runs here in the official WASM-4 runtime. Click Play and press X on the title screen and again after the briefing.

The game does not save, and a game over starts a new attempt from the beginning. Enter opens the WASM-4 menu, where you can save and load the state while the page is open (2 and 4 do the same directly), which helps a lot before a risky move. A gamepad works too, and on touch screens an on-screen D-pad and buttons appear.

Controls

Space, V or C also work as X or Z.

A few things worth knowing

Oxygen is a step budget. Standing still costs nothing, so stop and think before you start pushing things around. Remember where the tanks are.

Keep clear of blasts. Bombs and oxygen tanks explode when hit by a bolt or a fire, and take out everything right next to them, you included.

Save the state before experiments. Enter and then save, or simply the 2 key, keeps a copy of the moment for as long as the page stays open. If a push goes wrong, 4 brings it back.

Credits and licence

ZxZ was created by Ścisław Dercz (Michał Jędrzej Stańczyk), who wrote the code, drew the sprites, built the station with a small editor of his own and made the sound. It is released under the 2-clause BSD licence, published with the source code in his repository on GitHub. It runs here in the WASM-4 runtime (ISC licence). The licence text is linked from this page.