♦ Livestream of "Zeux 4: Forest of Ruin" by Alexis Janson (1995). ♦
(1:35) Game begins
A bonus stream for hitting our Twitch subscriber goal! As has been the case, I've slowly been playing through the Zeux series, and Forest of Ruin is where opinions seem to diverge.
On the one hand, after the monotony of shooting identical robots in dozens of rooms, Forest of Ruin is a refreshing change of pace. There are towns to explore, spells to collect, different magical weapons to acquire, and puzzles that are much more involved and engaging than those of Chronos Statis.
On the other... well, a lot of that variety could do with some cleaning up. Some puzzles are extremely difficult, like the infamous fireball bouncing screen that requires you to run around a board with some extreme precision to shove mirrors back and forth to destroy a breakable wall. Others let you get around this by being far easier to accidentally break than solve as intended. Then you get more tedious puzzles such as just playing a bunch of Simon, forced to memorize long patterns to input (just kidding, humanity invented writing for just this purpose thousands of years ago).
The game feels like it's really trying to pad out its length as well. You have to constantly go back and forth between the two main towers, getting something in one to be able to go deeper in the next. The vast majority of rooms are cleared of danger the first time, making for some very long walks until you get the Exit spell. This is particularly nasty when you have to navigate the same now-empty maze time and time again. About the only danger that persists is a room full of crushers that are an instant death if you're caught, and lined with lava, which is also an instant death if you happen to run a little too far past the crushers.
At least the Explode spell is really satisfying to use.
It also has weird decisions like letting you leave your Pentar Orbs behind when you use them to do something, adding yet more backtracking.
I'll be returning to this one in a week or two. Thing is though, I'm still looking forward to it. Forest of Ruin feels far more engaging than Chronos Statis did, and while its design has clear room for improvement, its heart is in the right place.
♦ Play this world ♦
• https://www.digitalmzx.com/show.php?id=1004
♦ Originally streamed on January 29th, 2025 ♦
