Zenozoik

The game that was nearly Zeno Clash.

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By Nathan Davis on 26 May, 2009

Before indie developer ACE Team created Zeno Clash, the team worked on a prototype it called Zenozoik: Shattered Land. It was to be a shooter role-playing game in a medieval fantasy setting and, unlike Zeno Clash, didn’t much focus on the melee side of things. It was never finished, but the developer recently wrote about and showed off an interesting video of what it managed to create. Aside from the name ‘Zenozoik’ being adopted as the world in which Zeno Clash transpires, it was clearly the birth place of many familiar characters.

Zenozoik was planned to be an “adventure that merges the action of shooters with the immersion of role-playing games,” says developer Edmundo Bordeu, as he reads from the original design document. “The game is set in a hostile and primitive world filled with fantastic creatures, medieval clans armed with bizarre firearms, and powerful gods.”

Why did ACE decide to start over with Zeno Clash instead of finishing off Zenozoik? Well, not only was the gaming experience watered down due to feature creep, it was too much of an ambitious project for the small team. “I think that what we did wrong in this game was not focusing enough in one or two strong innovative features, and instead trying to make a huge game with a little bit of everything,” explains Bordeu. “When we started development of Zeno Clash, we realised the melee combat could be the most fun feature, and decided to focus on it above all else.”

The game had some curious features that are worth mentioning, however. One of those was effectively a single-use deus ex machina that the player could whip out at any moment. Bordeu says you could “pray to a goddess who would help you in any situation, but she would help you only one time in the entire game.” The game was also supposed to sport a melee combat system, but it wasn’t given much thought, quite unlike the centrepiece it is in Zeno Clash.

Allowing a flexible level of choice in certain situations was something else ACE tried to implement, but like many before it have already discovered, this can be pretty difficult to pull off. “One of the very difficult to implement features we were working on was the possibility to always solve problems non-violently,” says Bordeu. “In one case, for example, you could either kill a guard, or you could talk to him, go hunt a bird for him, and then he would let you in. That doesn’t sound too complicated, but when you need to create alternative objectives and solutions to every situation in the game, it gets really complicated.”

There were also plans to include a system where non-player characters, from thugs to guards, were mostly all neutral and grew to like or dislike you, depending on your behaviour toward them. Just like in real life, aiming your gun at someone was going to get you a response.

Ultimately, it’s undoubtedly a good thing that ACE dropped Zenozoik, as it does sound like the creativity was spread pretty thin. Nonetheless, see the below clip for a demonstration of the game that inspired the creation of Zeno Clash – apparently, clapping was also one of your powerful abilities.

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