Tales of Kenzera: Zau could be the new Metroidvania gold standard

That decision has some specific intent outside of simply giving players weapons with different ranges: “To me it’s this balance of life and death,” Surgent Studios founder Abubakar Salim told press in a roundtable discussion. He explains that each weapon represents the “balletic” dance that people can go through when experiencing grief, while using the sun and moon symbols that are important to Bantu culture. He describes the moon power as representing the idea of taking in and examining a space, whereas the sun is more of a furious chaos.

That thinking doesn’t just extend to combat — and that’s what makes Tales of Kenzera so promising. During the roundtable with the press, Salim teases some of the ways that the adventure subverts certain video game staples to reinforce its thematic points. No element of its design seems random or simply there because that’s what’s expected.

“One of the things I’m proud of is the reflections, which is a way of increasing the player’s health,” Salim explains. “Normally in a Metroidvania, you go to these things, you collect them, and you move on. What we wanted to explore was actually sitting under a Baobab tree and talking about how you feel as the only way Zau can increase his survivability. This play on actually talking about where you’re at emotionally, or not even talking at all.”

Rethinking the Metroidvania

It’s not long before I wander into the basic Metroidvania loop. The first big complication happens when the brash Zau tries to chase a child off a rope bridge. He quickly scampers across it, only to have it fall apart and send him sliding down a series of flowing rivers. The goal of the demo? Get back to the other side of the bridge. That simple task takes me through a winding series of 2D caverns filled with optional collectibles, like perk-granting trinkets and scattered bits of lore. In classic Metroid fashion, my demo culminates in me getting a special power-up: an arrow capable of freezing water, allowing me to wall jump up waterfalls to return to the surface.

“We’re really, truly using the Metroidvania elements to represent grief,” Salim says. “This idea of losing yourself. You’re getting thrown into this world you have no idea about and the longer you spend time in it, the more comfortable you get with it, even though it’s still dangerous. All the tools are there for you to use; it just takes you time to get used to it. That’s why we chose this platformer style; to me, it feels the closest to this idea of going through the journey of grief. Because it does catch you by surprise. You have no idea what you’re dealing with, and everyone’s grief is different, but you are kind of in control of it.”

It’s not that ideas like that are immediately apparent in my demo or radically change the game. I’m still doing some basic tasks that appear throughout the genre. One optional platforming challenge has me dodging spikes in a narrow river path, ducking under low-hanging rocks, and air-dashing over obstacles to reach a trinket at the end. I’m also amassing skill points as I go that let me unlock new combat techniques for my weapons, putting an emphasis on the same kind of power growth the genre is built on.

It’s the little details that stand out, though. In the roundtable discussion, I ask Salim if there were any ways that the team needed to subvert the Metroidvania formula to better tell the story. Salim launches into a level design breakdown, which makes it ever clearer that no decision has been made here without some sort of thematic intent.

“One of the things I wanted to try and avoid was making the game feel as ‘gamey’ as possible,” Salim tells Digital Trends. “For example, avoiding the idea of creating a fire biome and a water biome. I really led into the idea of: What feelings is each biome inspired by? The Highlands, which is the first big section you’ll explore in the full game, really comes from a place of anxiety and holding on. You’ve got all these floating platforms because there’s this storm brewing, and essentially, that tension causes this area to have a lot of jumping and leaps of faith.”

Details like that have me convinced that Surgent Studios has something special on its hands. Tales of Kenzera: Zau isn’t just your average indie genre game with a weighty theme grafted on top of it. It’s meticulously considering how game mechanics and interactivity communicate to players, even if those decisions won’t always be perceptible to the average player. And if the nuances are lost on some, at least they’re getting a tightly-made Metroidvania with some satisfyingly fluid combat. No matter which way you slice it, we could be looking at a defining genre classic in the making.

That decision has some specific intent outside of simply giving players weapons with different ranges: “To me it’s this balance of life and death,” Surgent Studios founder Abubakar Salim told press in a roundtable discussion. He explains that each weapon represents the “balletic” dance that people can go through when experiencing grief, while using the sun and moon symbols that are important to Bantu culture. He describes the moon power as representing the idea of taking in and examining a space, whereas the sun is more of a furious chaos.

That thinking doesn’t just extend to combat — and that’s what makes Tales of Kenzera so promising. During the roundtable with the press, Salim teases some of the ways that the adventure subverts certain video game staples to reinforce its thematic points. No element of its design seems random or simply there because that’s what’s expected.

“One of the things I’m proud of is the reflections, which is a way of increasing the player’s health,” Salim explains. “Normally in a Metroidvania, you go to these things, you collect them, and you move on. What we wanted to explore was actually sitting under a Baobab tree and talking about how you feel as the only way Zau can increase his survivability. This play on actually talking about where you’re at emotionally, or not even talking at all.”

Rethinking the Metroidvania

It’s not long before I wander into the basic Metroidvania loop. The first big complication happens when the brash Zau tries to chase a child off a rope bridge. He quickly scampers across it, only to have it fall apart and send him sliding down a series of flowing rivers. The goal of the demo? Get back to the other side of the bridge. That simple task takes me through a winding series of 2D caverns filled with optional collectibles, like perk-granting trinkets and scattered bits of lore. In classic Metroid fashion, my demo culminates in me getting a special power-up: an arrow capable of freezing water, allowing me to wall jump up waterfalls to return to the surface.

“We’re really, truly using the Metroidvania elements to represent grief,” Salim says. “This idea of losing yourself. You’re getting thrown into this world you have no idea about and the longer you spend time in it, the more comfortable you get with it, even though it’s still dangerous. All the tools are there for you to use; it just takes you time to get used to it. That’s why we chose this platformer style; to me, it feels the closest to this idea of going through the journey of grief. Because it does catch you by surprise. You have no idea what you’re dealing with, and everyone’s grief is different, but you are kind of in control of it.”

It’s not that ideas like that are immediately apparent in my demo or radically change the game. I’m still doing some basic tasks that appear throughout the genre. One optional platforming challenge has me dodging spikes in a narrow river path, ducking under low-hanging rocks, and air-dashing over obstacles to reach a trinket at the end. I’m also amassing skill points as I go that let me unlock new combat techniques for my weapons, putting an emphasis on the same kind of power growth the genre is built on.

It’s the little details that stand out, though. In the roundtable discussion, I ask Salim if there were any ways that the team needed to subvert the Metroidvania formula to better tell the story. Salim launches into a level design breakdown, which makes it ever clearer that no decision has been made here without some sort of thematic intent.

“One of the things I wanted to try and avoid was making the game feel as ‘gamey’ as possible,” Salim tells Digital Trends. “For example, avoiding the idea of creating a fire biome and a water biome. I really led into the idea of: What feelings is each biome inspired by? The Highlands, which is the first big section you’ll explore in the full game, really comes from a place of anxiety and holding on. You’ve got all these floating platforms because there’s this storm brewing, and essentially, that tension causes this area to have a lot of jumping and leaps of faith.”

Details like that have me convinced that Surgent Studios has something special on its hands. Tales of Kenzera: Zau isn’t just your average indie genre game with a weighty theme grafted on top of it. It’s meticulously considering how game mechanics and interactivity communicate to players, even if those decisions won’t always be perceptible to the average player. And if the nuances are lost on some, at least they’re getting a tightly-made Metroidvania with some satisfyingly fluid combat. No matter which way you slice it, we could be looking at a defining genre classic in the making.