Zahalia
- March 6, 2018
- LunarCore Games
Get on Steam"Zahalia is a top-down adventure game inspired by the 80's, where each screen is a room filled with secrets. Explore the overworld, discover hidden caves, and acquire new abilities to expand your reach. The Dark Wizard has stolen all the crystals, plunging Zahalia into darkness. To save the land, defeat the monsters he's summoned and reclaim the crystals. New swords, shields, and armor can be purchased, and secrets are hidden in most areas of the overworld."
PC
Windows
Reviews
- The game captures the appeal of classic games like the original Legend of Zelda, with findable secrets and logical puzzles.
- Despite its simplicity, the game is enjoyable and has a healthy variety of enemies to enhance combat.
- Recent patches have improved the game, making it more fun and addressing some previous issues.
- The game is plagued by numerous bugs, including unresponsive controls and game-breaking glitches that can corrupt save files.
- Visual quality is extremely low, with outdated graphics that fail to meet modern gaming standards.
- Lack of customizable controls and poor key mapping make the game frustrating, especially for differently-abled players.
- graphics4 mentions
- 0 % positive mentions
- 25 % neutral mentions
- 75 % negative mentions
The graphics are criticized for relying on outdated retro pixel art, which fails to enhance the visual experience despite resolution options that merely scale up the simplistic 2D assets. Overall, the lack of substantial graphical improvements leaves the visuals feeling lackluster and unrefined.
“A choice was made to use obsolete, decades-old retro pixel art as a substitute for contemporary PC graphics.”
“While there are options to change the resolution for the game, all this does is scale up the simplistic 2D art assets used to make the game, which makes little or no difference to the graphics quality.”
“Without any other substantial graphics tweaks, it's not possible for gamers to improve the lackluster 2D visuals.”
- stability3 mentions
- 0 % positive mentions
- 0 % neutral mentions
- 100 % negative mentions
The game's stability is heavily criticized, with users reporting it as extremely buggy and nearly unplayable, particularly in its initial release. However, some players note that recent updates have reduced the number of glitches significantly.
“It's a very buggy (to the point of being unplayable) 2D retro pixel top-down brawler slapped together with GameMaker Studio, so the developer chose pretty much every way one could fail at game development and ran into them headfirst.”
“The game is incredibly buggy.”
- story2 mentions
- 50 % positive mentions
- -50 % neutral mentions
- 100 % negative mentions
The story features a quest line focused on locating all the 'brothers', alongside additional quests aimed at collecting health and mana power-ups. Overall, the narrative appears to be driven by these collectible objectives rather than a deeply developed plot.
“A couple of other quest lines involve collecting all the health power-ups and another to gather all the mana power-ups.”
“One quest line is to find all the 'brothers'.”
“A couple of other quest lines appear to be to get all the health power-ups and another to get all the mana power-ups (or whatever they're called).”
- monetization1 mentions
- 0 % positive mentions
- 0 % neutral mentions
- 100 % negative mentions
Reviews indicate that Gamemaker Studio is often associated with the creation of low-effort, retro-style games that are perceived as cash grabs, suggesting a negative view of its monetization practices.
“Gamemaker Studio is most commonly used to make retro pixel shovelware and cash grabs.”
- gameplay1 mentions
- 100 % positive mentions
- -300 % neutral mentions
- 300 % negative mentions
The gameplay is praised for its nostalgic, old-school aesthetic and mechanics reminiscent of classic Zelda games, making it accessible and enjoyable, particularly for those seeking easy achievements.
“I looked forward to it because of its old-school look, game mechanics reminiscent of Zelda, and the easy achievements.”
“I was excited for the old-school look and Zelda-like mechanics, but the gameplay ended up being frustrating and repetitive.”
“The game promised easy achievements, but the gameplay felt tedious and uninspired.”
“While I appreciated the nostalgic design, the gameplay mechanics were clunky and detracted from the overall experience.”
