Zapling Bygone Review (Xbox One)

STAFF REVIEW of Zapling Bygone (Xbox One)

Thursday, April 6, 2023.
by Adam Dileva

There’s been some memorable Metroidvania games over the years, and while there’s no shortage in the genre, it’s always welcome to have another if it’s done well. This is where Zapling Bygone comes in, a classic Metroidvania mechanically, but with a unique story about an alien hive-mind that defeats bosses for their skulls to gain their abilities, all with a cute retro pixel style aesthetic.

You are a part of the hive-mind, a small portion of a larger being, dropped on a mysterious planet as a pretty simple blob, searching for a new home. As you defeat a few small enemies and grow in size, you find your first skull, giving you a ‘body’ so to speak with a number of arms/tentacles. As you seek out these skulls you also gain their knowledge and consciousness, tapping into their memories as you reach specific areas.

As you piece together what happened on this planet and figuring out if it’s going to be a viable home, there’s not too much story aside from finding pieces of comic book pages scattered throughout, giving you small snippets of backstory lore, though only if you manage to collect them. There may be something more sinister on this seemingly desolate planet though, a secret buried that you uncover as you collect more skulls and information.

Being a Metroidvania, the setup is as you’d expect. You begin without any real abilities, eventually reaching areas that are inaccessible until you have some way to get passed or reached. This happens often, usually finding a ledge or something higher up you don’t know how to get to, or a large gap where your jump can’t get across. In most cases, if you’re able to continue progressing, that’s probably the way you want to go, as it most likely has a boss at the end that will give you a new upgrade once defeated (by wearing their skull), allowing you to unearth a new area to explore. This of course causes a lot of backtracking, a normal part of the genre, though there are a few warp points strewn about if you’re able to find them.

As you explore each area and biome that varies, you’ll have plenty of pathways to search for a number of hidden secrets and collectables. Each area has its own distinct style with a boss that guards it at the end. Given how short the runtime is, at just a handful of hours for an experienced player of the genre, I won’t spoil much of the surprises, but I enjoyed the first area the most, the Ratqueen Gardens. As you complete areas and gain new abilities, you’ll see on the map how interconnected the world is.

Controls are tight and responsive, as much of what you’ll be doing is platforming from area to area, and even in the moments where I had to move and hide from enemy fire, I never felt like I could blame the controls when I inevitably failed, even in the frustrating chase sequence later on. Being able to walk along the walls once you beat the first boss opens up a lot of the map to be explored, but that’s only one ability you’ll gain along the way.

As you get new skulls from bosses and new abilities, the map feels larger as you can explore it more. Even though it’s not a massive map, it does feel quite large and you can certainly expect a lot of backtracking as you figure out where to go next. Thankfully there’s a map you can reference, but it doesn’t let you zoom in as much as I’d like, so sometimes it was a guessing game of the pathway I intended to take versus what I actually did. I did end up lost every now and then, or finding a new pathway I couldn’t quite get to yet because I didn’t have a certain ability, like the dash. While there’s not really a set path you go to and from, it is designed in a way that is somewhat linear when you factor in the abilities needed to reach.

The later levels do get quite challenging, especially when you’re in near complete darkness or being chased. Thankfully you do have a way to heal yourself, able to refill one of your health bars after a set amount of time. Even so, you don’t have a large health pool, so you always do need to be cautious since you can only take a few hits before dying and restarting at your last checkpoint. These checkpoints can be found throughout each area, though you’ll need to spend a little of your earned currency from defeating enemies to unlock them. I never really found myself short to not be able to afford one, but if you skip too many enemies you may not be able to unlock it.

Each new ability is gained after you defeat one of the bosses and take their skull as your trophy reward. You not only gain abilities to walk on walls and dash, but can even swing around and shoot laser beams. A unique way they also distinguish themselves is that they each also have a different amount of slots for mutations.

Mutations are further ways to customize your Zapling to play how you want. Maybe you want to attack slower but hit harder, or vice versa, there’s plenty of these mutations to unlock that allows for a bit more freedom to how you play. Each of these mutations though are assigned a special shape (triangle, square, circle, etc for example) and you’ll need to make sure your skull you wear can equip that mutation shape. There’s also of course a limit to how many mutations you can equip, so you might need to use a skull you don’t necessarily want to, but because it has the mutation slots you want to use, you’ll have to.

The pixel aesthetic is done quite well, a retro feel but definitely smooth and modern as well. Each new skull does change how it appears on your Zapling, and every biome certainly has its own feel and look as well. Music suits the mood, rising and lowering when needed, especially during boss fights, though there isn’t a lot of varied sound effects throughout.

While not overly difficult until the later chase section and boss fights, there’s just the right amount of challenge. Your first playthrough will probably take around six hours or so, more if you want to find every secret. While it didn’t grip me as much as I expected, it certainly has charm to it and definitely worth the play if you’ve been craving a new Metroidvania to check out.

**Zapling Bygone was provided by the publisher and reviewed on an Xbox Series X**

Overall: 7.0 / 10
Gameplay: 7.0 / 10
Visuals: 7.0 / 10
Sound: 7.0 / 10

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