I recently came across yet another Metroidvania title with a great deal of promise and a great deal of substance in its early stages of development. Zapling Bygone is a sci-fi Metroidvania following the story of an alien asylum seeker named Zapling, who after fleeing his home planet comes across a completely new world inhabited by strange and dangerous creatures and must traverse it in a bid to call it home. I’d had one eye on this game for a few weeks leading up to this article, and a Q&A will be to follow as soon as possible, but for now, I wanted to give my verdict on the game in this early stage of development, and happily, my verdict is extremely positive. 

 

Graphics

The game makes use of traditional 8-BIT visuals set on a weird and wonderful alien planet reminiscent of many classic or independently developed games within the genre, such as Metroid, Xeodrifter, and Axiom Verge. What has been shaped in the way of environmental design is very interesting to look at, albeit it’s only a very small section of what is soon to be a particularly sizable open world, and I can’t wait to see what the rest of it looks like when the full project is released. Already packed with numerous different areas to explore, it’ll be even more interesting to see how the mythology of the game is expanded upon. 

 

Gameplay

The game is a traditional Metroidvania and primarily takes inspiration from Hollow Knight, relying on exploration, combat item collecting, and gaining new abilities in order to discover new areas. The player character must find different types of skulls in order to gain additional abilities that can either fool enemies into thinking you are one of them or to gain other strategic advantages; it works in a somewhat similar way to Skul: The Hero Slayer. Something else I was pleasantly surprised to find was that there is actually an easter directly referencing another indie game currently in development that I covered some time back; Scrabdackle by Jakefriend. I interviewed Jake some time ago:

https://scousegamer88.com/2021/03/23/qa-with-jakefriend-scrabdackle/

And so I slipped the lead developer of Zapling Bygone Stevis Andrea an additional question about their relationship and how the easter egg came to be, so it’ll be interesting to learn more about that in addition. But besides which, the game in its current state shows great promise in terms of its wildly varied combat system, level of exploration, and the design of the boss fights, which reminded me of Teslagrad in particular. 

 

Controls

The idea of the game’s general control scheme is fine, and once it’s released I’m sure the concern I’m about to express will be ironed out during development, but my advice would be that if you’re playing with a PlayStation 4 controller, the controller mapping is not immediately established, and it takes a little bit of adjustment. Below is my own personal mapping of the controls for Zapling Bygone, which worked just fine to me, so if anyone is thinking of trying the demo, and are using a PS4 controller, refer to this mapping:

 

But otherwise, many of the control mechanics themselves are either very unique or very reminiscent of other Metroidvanias, such as the Ori games or Blasphemous.

 

Lifespan

With only a portion of the game’s world revealed, and the promise on the Kickstarter page of at least 6 different areas to explore throughout, it indeed has the potential to last an extraordinarily long time. Whether it does end up lasting as long as the average Metroidvania, or maybe even longer, depends on how much is given to players to do throughout. But with the insane amount of collectibles, there are throughout the demo alone, I’m confident it will be made to last an exceptional amount of time. 

 

Storyline

The basic premise of Zapling Bygone follows the alien lifeform Zapling as he crashlands onto a brave new mysterious world in a bid to call it home and overcome the many dangers it poses to him. The charm of the game’s story exists not just in its basic premise, but in its backstory, which can be periodically discovered across the entire game, similar to the likes of The Swapper, though I can already tell that this game’s story is going to be far more immersing than the former. It certainly has the potential to spark wonder, controversy, and fan theories that can possibly make for one of the most interesting Metroidvania mythologies yet. 

 

Originality

Though clearly not without its sources of inspiration, it certainly had the potential to stand out among the circle of indie Metroidvania games. The extent of which would depend on how it does to try and break away from the likes of Super Metroid, Guacamelee, Dust: An Elysian Tail and others, and how much emphasis there is on this being its own fully cohesive concept. The combat system and the world mythos has a lot to them, and elements are there unlike a lot of Metroidvanias I’ve played, but it will be interesting to see exactly how much effort the developers put into making this game truly their own, and not just coming across as a collection of features and ideas based on other games. 

 

But overall, I was extremely impressed with how Zapling Bygone looks, plays, and tells the story of the main character and of the world around him. Since the Kickstarter campaign began, the idea has gathered a great of momentum from backers, gamers, and streamers alike, and it’s not hard to see why. If you’d like to try the demo out for yourself, you can download it now for free via the link below:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1489110/Zapling_Bygone/

 

Or if you would like to back the game on Kickstarter, you can do so via this link:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/9fingergames/zapling-bygone

 

In the meantime, I hope you guys enjoy playing Zapling Bygone, and tell me what you think of this game. I hope you enjoyed reading my assessment as much as I did putting it together.

Game on,

Scouse Gamer 88