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Zatikon

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Developer: Chronic Logic Publisher: Chronic Logic Genre: Strategy > Board Game Released: Feb 04, 2009 Players: 2 Website Download Purchase

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If you're a big fan of tile-based strategy games without any realtime twitchiness to get in the way, then you'll want to check out Zatikon from Gabe Jones and well known independent publisher, Chronic Logic. Zatikon features both single and multi-player turn based play where the ultimate goal is the destruction of your enemies.

Despite the gorgeous "homepage" of the game, the visuals are quite barren. The unit sprites of your army have barely any animation, not to mention the actual layout of the game itself; 3 differently sized panels spring open on your desktop upon launching the game. The left panel acts as a matchmaking system where you can chat with other players as well as challenge them to a game. The middle panel displays the game field itself, and the right one listing the players currently connected.

But to merely focus on the visuals misses the rest of the gem cleverly embedded in this game. The only goal of each level is to move one of your units into the main city of the opponents. However to achieve this goal, you have the option of playing Zatikon several different ways: battle head-to-head in a single player matchup against the computer AI, or you can also find a human opponent via the chat channel, and you can even generate a randomized army to battle with. Another option is that instead of playing head-to-head against another human, you can join the same team in a cooperative match against the AI.

The game's strategy begins before the match even starts. You have a pool of 1000 points to work with for constructing your team. Therefore, each unit in the game has an associated point value which indicates its effectiveness. The advantage of this type of ranking system is that it prevents an experienced player from creating a super-army, even if they have spent the time and money to unlock some of the higher units.

When it comes to the units themselves, there is a massive pool to work with of different types belonging to a specific class. According to the game documentation, the official class list of units are: archers, black mages, clergy, commanders, horsemen, nature, scouts, shapeshifters, siege, soldiers, structures, white mages, and wyrms. Within these classes are a further three to six unit types. Unlike what you would expect from other strategy games of this kind, these units within each class are different in many ways - not just with stronger / weaker attacks or hit points.

For the spreadsheet lovers out there, the Zatikon website provides a listing of the units along with their various attributes and special abilities. To succeed at all in this game, pretty much requires you to either have that document open on a second monitor, or in a printout beside you.


Graphics:


This one is not "pretty" by most standards. The unit sprites are quite basic and barely any are animated. At times it is difficult to distinguish which unit belongs to which army, and the actual physical layout of the game is a bit confusing.

Sound / Music:


The background music is actually quite good and pleasant to listen to. The unit and combat sound effects are what you would expect - swords clashing and armies sustaining casualties.

Gameplay:

Extremely fun. There is pretty much an endless combination of ways to both compose your armies as well as using them in the game.

Concept:

The various design approaches behind Zatikon all contribute towards making a fun online strategy game playable across multiple operating systems. In order to keep the games reasonably balanced and challenging, the 1000 point limitation does a great job of getting players new to the game a fighting chance against the hardcore.

Value:

While the game is exceptionally fun and enjoyable, with a high replay factor and the ability to challenge other players on line it does suffer somewhat in the visuals department. Even a minor investment in updating some of the unit graphics would go a long way towards the end-user experience.

Fun:

The ability to trash talk with your opponents, while you mix and match unit pieces to create your favorite army to crush them with, makes Zatikon an enjoyable experience. Even if your friends are offline, the ability to also test your army and strategies against a computer opponent is a great way to play the game.

Overall:

If you can get past the visuals, you're in for a treat with Zatikon. Although there is no ingame tutorial, the gameplay makes things fairly easy to pickup, but hard to put down; especially with some wins under your belt. The wide diversity of the units in the game also provide for interesting challenges in both army construction and developing strategies against. For strategy fans this game is a buy, and maybe Chronic Logic will get the message that it could make an even bigger splash with just a bit of TLC on the visuals.