Get ready for a wild ride on one of the craziest rogue-lite deck builders I have ever played. Zet Zillions has you riding around the galaxy on a planet-ship, populating other planets, and blowing up giant space bugs. If that caught your attention, then you are going to feel right at home here. Let’s jump on in and see what this game is all about.
In this review, I will be talking about the following:
Story
It’s the year 2476, and humanity has conquered most of space. You are a commander in the Starbone Vanguard tasked with eliminating any threats to humanity that you might come across. You are joined by Foam Gun, Dok, and Ziggy on the planet ship Baby Violence to explore the galaxy and find a new home in the name of humanity.
Gameplay
Since Zet Zillions is a roguelite deckbuilder, the primary focus of the game is to defeat enemies and build the most powerful deck in the galaxy. You will travel across a randomly generated map to get to the boss at the end of each section. Let’s talk a little about the things you might see on the map. Then we will talk about your deck and how combat works.
Map
There are actually two different mechanisms that are pushing you across the map in Zet Zillions. You will mostly be moving on nodes from left to right while the big bad guy is chasing you. Not only is he slowly corrupting all the nodes on the left, he is also following right behind you. This means he is always on the last node you visit, and this forces you to plan your route so you can get to where you need before he corrupts it.
There are several different node types that you might come across. Most of the nodes are green and marked as unknown. This means they can be anything from a battle to an event. The other nodes are yellow, which are some kind of event. Hovering over the yellow node will tell you what it is. Some of the events that you might come across are labs, escape pods, and even the pineapple god himself. The abandoned labs will boost one of your cards. The escape pod will add a card to your deck. A visit to the pineapple god, though, will reward you with a large sum of pineapples.
Pineapples
Well, what in the world are pineapples in space good for? They are actually the currency in Zet Zillions. Aside from cards, pineapples are the reward after each battle. They can be used to purchase new cards in the shop. They can also be used in various events. Like bribing an officer perhaps? Everything in Zet Zillions seems to have a very creative use at one point or another. That is kind of the whole point of the game, though. You never know what is going to happen next.
Deck
Let’s talk a little about the deck and how it is constructed. At the start of the game, you will select your deck and a companion that can add additional cards or traits for your crazy journey ahead. Your standard deck starts out with Junk and Trash. It doesn’t sound like a very good start, and it really isn’t. The Junk cards are used for armor and the Trash cards are used as ammunition. That is, until you can find cards to do some real damage.
As you adventure through different nodes, cards will be added to your deck. These might be more Junk and Trash cards, or they could be something nice. Nice, as in a pet wolf that levels up as it destroys its enemies. Many a kill squad mech that can do large amounts of damage each time it is played. It can lower the enemy’s shields before trying to populate it with Trash.
Populate it with Trash? That’s right, did I not mention that the Trash cards are actually the synthetic lifeforms from your planet? Well, they are. I told you, you never know what is going to happen in this game. So, let me start explaining combat, and maybe launching your population as projectiles will make more sense. Maybe.
Combat
With each turn in combat, you will draw cards and spend your energy playing them. These are the sorts of things that we have come to expect from a deck-building-style game. However, Zet Zillions is all about keeping things interesting. In this game, not only does your opponent have a armor and health bar, they also have a population bar.
What in the world does that mean, you might be asked. Well, it’s exactly that. We are populating worlds. We are flying around on our little death planet and colonizing different planets by launching our life forms at them until they are fully populated. Once the bar is full, then the battle is over and the planet can be claimed for humanity.
That surely doesn’t apply to enemies, too, though, right? Of course, it does! Why wouldn’t a giant planet-sized space bug have a population bar to fill? The only difference is that anything that is not a planet cannot actually be colonized. So, instead, the enemy gets overwhelmed by all the colonists floating in space around it and is stunned for a turn. 50 little people floating around my head would make me dizzy, too.
The craziness doesn’t stop there, though. Zet Zillions has another interesting component to keep you guessing. At any point during your turn, you can fuse cards together. Not all cards fuse. The ones that do will show you a preview of what they turn into. You just have to hover it over the other cards to find out. Some fusions can create powerful combos. Some, on the other hand, can lead to just more useless junk in your hand.
The fusion system is really quite interesting, and a lot of things focus on it. There are traits that both the player and the enemies have that are activated each time you do a fusion. There are also a lot of cards that have abilities specific to when they are used in a fusion. One of my favorites is fusing the Junk with an artillery cannon to get free hits on an enemy each time I do the fusion.
Checkpoints
You will probably die a lot while figuring out how best to use the population and fusion elements in combat. Luckily, there is still meta-game progression after every run. New cards will unlock as Foam Gun and your companion level up. Easing the pain a little. There are also chapters in the story. Certain chapters work as checkpoints which means you don’t have to go all the way back to the beginning every time a run ends. The story will still continue to progress from a certain point until you hit the next checkpoint. Knowing that you only have to go back to the last checkpoint is a nice feature that stops a bad run from feeling too disheartening.
Conclusion
If you couldn’t tell by now, there is a lot of crazy stuff going on in Zet Zillions. Not everyone is going to like the idea of shooting synthetic beings at their enemies or planets sucking on binkies while you are trying to populate them. I like when games give us something new. As a game reviewer, it gets boring if every game is the same over and over, and there is certainly no shortage of roguelite deckbuilders. Zet Zillions is pretty darn crazy, though.
Even through all of its craziness, is it still worth picking up, though? I think there is a group of people that are really going to like the kookiness here. The animation style, the silly characters, and even crazy cards. I also think that Zet Zillions has some interesting mechanics that deck-building players are going to really like. The fusion system is quite interesting. I also like the idea of populating the planets instead of just blowing them up. Which you can definitely do if that’s your thing.
If any of that sounded interesting to you, feel free to go check out the Steam page and give this one a go. You might love this game. You never know what might happen.
The developers at OTA IMON Studios provided this review key.
