Spawned from a draft comic and hailing from a two person Polish studio,
Zniw is a 2D animated point and click adventure that asks the big
question - who doesn’t like dinosaurs?
Zniw
is a smallish yellow dinosaur looking for a “hatchday” present for her
mother, but who through a series of escalating events ends up in a
variety of places engaged in a multitude of tasks, striving to get home
but seemingly getting ever further away. Stumbling across a strange
village inside a mountain, she stumbles into an even stranger intrigue,
one that includes a thief, a small furry mammal infestation and
mushrooms.
Keeping the animation style of its origins, and drawing inspiration from
“old school” point-and-click’s, the game delivers 10 hours or so of
gentle, enjoyable, family friendly adventuring. No deaths, no language
warnings, and no actiony bits; a limited amount of time to work out the
next bit of a conundrum is as close as you get (eg distract a character
and then perform an action before their attention returns).
Like
many of the games it emulates, there is no capacity to highlight
hotspots (remember when games were like that?) but your curser changes
colour when it moves across something you can interact with and a
written description pops up bottom of screen, so there is no need to
click on absolutely everything just in case. Click and hold to activate
the action window, where up to five actions might be available (look,
talk, take being the most common). Move the curser to your action of
choice and release the mouse, and the action will be performed. The same
arrangement works for rummaging in your backpack, which is opened by
clicking the icon top left. A map sits top right, showing Zniw in the
current location, and is more useful in some places than others.
The
puzzling is by and large inventory based, finding and using things to
achieve a range of different objectives. As always, there is the
occasional opaque moment, a bit of aimless wandering in the hope of
triggering a way forward and some slightly weird combinations of
objects, but it isn’t obtuse or unfair, and you can get clues from all
sorts of places. These include the “story so far” tab, which can point
you towards the next objective, and the so called encyclopedia, which is
full of useful information about all the things and places you come
across, and which can inspire an insight or three. Plus it’s a rather
good occasional read.
There
is a game within the game which involves collecting pebbles (for a very
good reason), which in turn will unlock a variety of extras, such as
concept art, a mini game and a musical menu. I can’t tell you what the
other six are as I didn’t find nearly enough pebbles. I can tell you
having a started a new game that you get pebbly hints in the “story so
far” for eating the edible things you might find. If only I had paid
more attention up-front!
There
is no spoken word but there is a lot of speaking and a lot of critters
to speak with. Many have distinct personalities, and can be quite
loquacious. Speech bubbles are used, as are pop-up head-shots of Zniw
and whoever she might be speaking with. Suitable sound effects and
musical pieces round things out.
What
else?
You
can only fit a certain number of things in your backpack (once you
construct one) and you can drop items should you need to. The map will
show where you left them, although given I only dropped one thing it
would appear to be a minor game aspect.
You
can tweak how certain game interactions occur (eg does an inventory item
stay on the curser if unsuccessful or go back into the inventory) and
choose to have certain shortcut buttons (e.g. the encyclopedia) appear on
the game screen. I liked that aspect, although I couldn’t get it to play
full screen however hard I tried (you have to do this through the Steam
tool). That wasn’t a big deal, as it filled at least three-quarters of
my wide screen monitor.
If you
are a regular reader of my reviews you will know these types of games
aren’t my preferred choice. Yet everything about Zniw, including the
obvious heart that went into it, ensured I had a very excellent time.
And
yes, I do like dinosaurs
😊
I played on:
OS: Windows 10, 64 Bit
Processor: Intel i7-9700K 3.7GHz
RAM: Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB DDR4 32GB
Video card: AMD Radeon RX 580 8192MB
GameBoomers Review Guidelines
January 2021
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