Reviewed: November 8, 2002
Reviewed by: John Bowlin

Publisher
Xicat Interactive

Developer
Funatics Software

Released: November 12, 2002
Genre: Adventure
Players: 10
ESRB: Everyone

7
9
9
7
7.8

System Requirements

Zanzarah: The Hidden Portal is also a third person, immersive world game, and it does have some RPG elements but it's not really an RPG. It's not really an Action game either, nor is it pure Adventure. It's actually quite unique and that is a rare thing indeed in this gaming market.

In Zanzarah, you play a London-born teenage girl named Amy. Amy lived out her droll urban existence, but she knew she was destined for something greater. And then one day, a magical thing happened. Amy was reading a magazine, when she heard a strange noise in her parent's flat (apartment) downstairs. What could that be? She went down to investigate. Wait, that sounded like footsteps upstairs! Back up the stairs then. On to the attic. And here Amy discovers a strange looking chest. Where did this come from? Opening the chest and Amy finds a strange stone with a rune carved on it. Touching the rune...

Amy is transported with a flashing glow of magical energies to... a cave, in a strange world. Amy finds out that the world is Zanzarah, a world of magical folk, like elves, dwarves, goblins, pixies, dwarves, and especially... fairies. Yes that's right fairies. The fairies in Zanzarah actually come from a third world, but in Zanzarah they have a certain kind of power. Fairies can be captured and trained, and ultimately, made to fight in deathmatch arena combat! Hoozah! Collecting fairies and having them fight other fairies is the aspect of Zanzarah that sets it apart from pretty much every other game available on the PC.

The interface is quite intuitive in adventure mode. If you've played any action/adventure titles you'll adjust to this mode almost instantaneously. the only sort of strange quirk to it is that when you move the mouse left and right, Amy does not turn her body to follow the mouse, you have to turn her using your keyboard keys. This allows you to make Amy face whichever direction you want rather than always facing away from the camera, which is good for a nice pose in a screen shot but doesn't have much practical use in gameplay. This is pretty easy to deal with though, and I never had trouble moving Amy. The adventure mode isn't a "twitch" game and the action-puzzles in this mode don't require a lot of critical timing or aiming.

Zanzarah's other mode is fairy combat mode. That's right, I said fighting fairies. As in, small, flying, sparkling, cock-fighting fairies. You see, in Zanzarah, the elves and such do not lower themselves to fight their own battles. Instead, they capture and enslave these cute little flying magical creatures of varying skill and ability, and violently throw them into a magical arena to fight their opponent's fairies. The fairies have no choice but to defend themselves against the other fairies using the only way they know how - magic spells! And this is where it really gets fun.

Fairies grow in power as they are used as pit-fighters by the seemingly innocuous (and French speaking) elves. They gain levels. They gain in stats. They gain the ability to cast more powerful spells against their hapless brethren. The Fairies come in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, and types. You have little "Tinkerbell" forest fairies in skimpy dresses, the big muscular rock fairies, the fluid water fairies, the lofty air fairies, demonic chaos fairies, skeletal death fairies, ad infinitum. There are around 80 unique fairies in the game. Different types of fairies will have access to different sets of spells, and also certain fairy types are more or less effective against other fairies. Does this start to ring any bells here? Can you say Pokemon? Okay, so Zanzarah borrows heavily from the ever-popular collect-the-critter game. This isn't exactly a Pokemon clone either, so read on.

Fairy combat is where Zanzarah breaks out of the mold of other games billed as "action/adventure". Whenever you have to face a challenger (or a wild fairy), your fairies will go into a special arena. In this mode, you are in the first person view as the fairy. Only one fairy at a time can fight, but you can swap them almost instantly using the mouse wheel. The arenas look like ziggurats, or spiral towers, and so forth. There's quite a bit of variety in the arenas themselves, and different tactics are required for each.

You activate offensive spells by holding down the left mouse button until it charges up (with visual and audible clues to judge the power level), and when the opponent's fairy is in the crosshairs, you release the button to fire your spell. Defensive spells are passively activated automatically. You can switch between two different offensive/defensive spell pairs per fairy using a user customizable key or mouse button. My recommendation is to change this from the default "middle" mouse button to a keyboard key.

You'll also be using the right mouse button for flying around, each gives you a little upwards "burst" so you press it rapidly to fly up high or slowly to maintain current altitude. This flying mechanic was reminiscent of the classic arcade game Joust, only you're in first person. So you fly around, you shoot spells, and you try to not use up all your stamina (for flying), health, and mana (for spells) before you eliminate the opponent's fairies. You can even use first-person shooter tactics, like circle-strafing, using walls for cover, "jumping", zig-zagging, and so forth.

Amy spends her time in Zanzarah exploring some fantastic scenery, helping out various citizens and proceeding on her quest to save Zanzarah from the evil Shadow Elves. Travel in Zanzarah is aided by magical runes that can teleport Amy to specific a few places where she has been before. The adventure mode has you talking to people, solving logic puzzles, performing RPG-like quests, shopping for new spells and items, and finding hidden areas. This seemed similar to games like say Gothic, only it was very linear in what you had to do. Additionally Amy has to solve several action-oriented puzzles, pick up coins, chase down pixies, finding hidden objects, and things that felt similar to 3D platform games like Rayman or Mario. Amy is also the Don King of Zanzarah as she manages her prize-fighter fairies, keeping them healthy for the next fight, rotating out ones that are wounded, keeping them trained, making sure they have the right spells assigned, and so forth.

The story of Zanzarah is interesting but fairly predictable. The world is very interesting and the adventure mode is highly immersive. You can literally wander around for hours and not get bored. There's a lot of things to do and see aside from the deathmatch fairy combat. The combat portion is about 60% of the game time and the adventure part makes up the rest. The story is fairly linear, and NPC interaction is strictly a way to move the story forward along its path and set up the quests and puzzles. You eventually have a lot of freedom to go wherever you want in the game world, and you don't have to solve everything in exactly the same order, but more or less you can only advance the plot along one branch -- there's not multiple endings.

In combat mode, the arenas are colorful and the backgrounds are very beautiful. The fairies themselves are very colorful and unusual looking, and of course, there's a lot of variety since there are over 80 different types of fairies. The spell effects are flashy and sparkle and generally very pretty to behold. The animation is fluid and believable. When you revisit London, you can see all of the different types of fairies that you've collected flying about in Amy's flat. In adventure mode the "front line" fairy that you have selected follows you around giving your game avatar a lot of variety even though Amy herself never even changes clothes. The citizens of Zanzarah are well animated and detailed, from the elves to the dwarves, pixies, and goblins.

Zanzarah has a lot of graphical setting you can change, and the system requirements aren't too high even for the gorgeous graphics it offers. I was able to run the game with "playable" performance at the highest resolution offered, at 1024x768, with the 32-bit color textures and all of the graphics settings set to max using my Athlon 850mhz and GeForce 2 mx 64 mb video card. You can turn off certain effects or tone down the detail if you have lower system specs or demand an extremely high frame rate. The settings are easy to get to from an options menu, except for resolution which can only be changed when you launch the game.

The landscapes of Zanzarah are absolutely gorgeous and full of variety. There are beautiful park-like forests, dark and mysterious forests, mountainous cliff-hanging paths, medieval cities and towns, swamps, caves, dungeons, towers, temples, lava fields, and more. All detailed in stunning 3D. Due to the excellent animations in the game, still screen shots look good, but they don't give you the whole effect of the graphical experience that Zanzarah offers. Overall, Zanzarah is a visual feast rarely offered in PC games other than the first-person shooter genre.

Then there is the music, which sounds like something out of a fairy tale movie, appropriately. Darker "scary" tunes for the deep forests, light fanciful melodies for the most hospitable environments. The combat music may get somewhat tiring at times, but it's fitting for the action. The melodic theme song from the main menu is a delight to listen to and the vocals are very well done. Game music is rarely more appropriate for the game content than Zanzarah's.

Then there is the voice acting. On the downside, all of the elves and dwarves speak a French-like dialect. For all I know it is French, I don't speak it. The inflections and tone of the voice actors are very good and they express emotion appropriately. Amy fortunately speaks English, and being a London girl and all, she has an English accent. She must have some kind of universal translator too, because all of the NPC dialogue is displayed in English for the player to read. Each NPC has their own style and personality that comes out in their voice and in the written translation, not to mention the animations of the characters. Sometimes Amy will encounter a talking book, and the narrator of these books has an excellent voice and speaks in English, which is good, because this makes the story not only understandable but it gives it a meaningful impact at critical moments.

Overall the sounds of Zanzarah add greatly to the game experience and are very well done. They fit in well with the gameplay and the story, and they help set the theme and mood of the game.

Zanzarah also offers a multiplayer deathmatch mode for up to 10 players via LAN or direct IP connection. I wasn't able to test this to see how it works before writing this review. Presumably this would allow you to pit your fairies against those of other players using the same first-person fairy combat mode that the single player game offers. Having human opponents could add a lot of replay value to this aspect of the game if that is a part of the game you enjoy. There doesn't seem to be any internet matchmaking service provided for the game at this time.

The game has so many different gameplay elements, however, that it requires a wide variety of skills to play it effectively. You need hand-eye coordination for the combat and action-puzzles, logic skills for the puzzles, and strategic planning skills for the fairy management aspects. Gamers who switch to several genres of games are most likely to enjoy Zanzarah, while gamers who shy away from combat games, or who hate puzzles, will most likely find something about Zanzarah that puts them off.

The excellent production values and the highly immersive game world will keep you coming back for more if you can handle the various gameplay elements. The game does have a shallow learning curve and teaches you how to play it as you go, so it should be a game that anyone can master if they are persistent. There's a fun game in Zanzarah, even if it is unfamiliar to almost everyone in some way.