Operation Zeta Reviews

It's pretty good

TL;DR: Operation Zeta is a fun little puzzle with a lot of promise. The developer is actively engaged with the player community discussing features and improvements to the game experience. Fans of roguelikes, physics engines, and space faring rats should give this charming title a try. Operation Zeta is a unique take on the roguelike genre. There are no bosses or deadly combat to end your run, but rather a strict time limit. Playing Operation Zeta throws the player in to a crisis. You are a sole survivor of a failed mission. The enemy is closing in on you. You have minutes to find the pieces of your ship and repair them to escape. Your ship parts are rarely just lying around having been gathered by locals who will need help before giving them back. Sometimes these quests are simple, bring me 5 stones a cat might say. Sometimes they are more complicated, requiring you to explore the map and find special items spread throughout. These items and denizens are spread across numerous planets that you must travel between to complete your goal. This is where things begin to get interesting. Like I stated above, Operation Zeta gives you minutes to explore the map, collect ship parts which means complete quests, return parts to your ship, and repair the whole thing. If that sounds like a lot, it is. The challenge of this game is not the combat, but the pressure of the time limit. Finding ways to save time as you explore become immensely rewarding. Take the Roki, a species of space faring rats. They are innately better at repairing ships than any other species. Since they have tools to repair faster, you can start building your foundation or repair kits as you complete the other tasks. If this sounds like they completely bypass the repair stage, they do. This doesn’t feel unfair though because their combat is slow and deadly. Each planet has gravity which causes shots to arc around the planet in some strange orbit. This mechanic makes fighting with most races relatively safe since you can get some range on enemies using the gravitational pull to curve your bullets. The Roki however, shoot projectiles that are too fast and escape the gravity of your planet. So every fight is a grueling game of cat and space rat. As an early access, indie title, Operation Zeta is a fun little puzzle to solve. There are areas for the game to grow for sure. I could discuss issues such as the lack of variety in quests or inability to leave a puzzle once you start it. However, by the time you are reading this they are likely to be addressed by the developer. Opening the main screen of Operation Zeta gives a countdown to the next update release. This is not to say that both issues I mentioned above will be resolved with the next update, but it shows that the developer is committed to making this game great. The studio hosts an active discord page that you can use to discuss the game and suggest features with the developer and other players. To wrap this up, I do recommend you give this title a try. The game is charming and quick. The community and developer are active and growing. Lastly, a successful run will take less than 15 minutes, but you will find yourself playing for a few hours before you get there.

I've been having a lot of fun!! I'm addicted to changing my strategy to get a lil further every time the game resets. At first, the timer kept running out on me (and I got flung into space when playing as the chubby human). But once I got used to the the gravity and general controls, I had fun bouncing around to the different planets and meeting all of the cute NPCs. I loved the variety of quests and characters. The game is super whimsical, but also challenging in a satisfying way. I can't wait to get into it more :)

This is the SFS Studios most polished and well loved game, and it shows. When it first came to early access I had bad motion sickness with it. I complained to the dev and they made an "reduce motion sickness" option in the options menu! The art is consistent and charming. The gameplay loop is simple and easy to access, controls take some getting used to. The dev regularly streams on Twitch and listens well to the fans.

I plan to come back and update this comment once I play more, but I spent the last ten minutes losing track of the goal and just enjoying jumping around and having fun with the gravity system. That alone will be worth the cost of the game, and I look forward to seeing where it goes from here. Also, the developer is known for being extremely active in the company Discord and being very accepting of any and all feedback and suggestions. I would highly recommend anyone who plays it to jump in, its a great community.

A unique and interesting game with a fun dev who streams his design process on Twitch and often pulls in the communities ideas.

This is a really interesting little game where you are tasked with finding parts in order to fix your broken ship. With many mini games and puzzles embedded in the game, it's obvious the devs put a lot of thought and love into the game. The artwork is tasteful and the music for the game is a personal favorite. For the price, this little game packs a lot into a small package

This is a fun one! It took me a few minutes to get use to the mechanics and figure out the game objective but once I did, it was pretty addictive. The game loop structure is nice because you want to keep trying one more time plus it's different each time so it's doesn't get repetitive. It also makes it easy to put down and pick back up casually. I like that there's a lot of extras because it's worth continuing just for the sake of unlocking characters and database entries. Music and graphics are cute as well. All around good game! Definitely worth a try!

A fun little roguelite game with a unique presentation and concept. Your ship has crash landed and you need to find its parts that are scattered about small planets that you hop to and from. You find random powerups laying around, enemies, and NPCs that you do little quests for to find the ship parts. My primary issue with the game is that it doesn't to a great job of explaining itself, but once you figure it out it's great fun. Addictive game loop and properly challenging. Cute pixel graphics, unique setting/characters, fun gameplay. Would recommend giving it a try!

TL;DR: Operation Zeta is a fun, quirky game with a lot of character and solid replay value borrowing aspects of roguelite genre with a variety of minigames. Pros: - Lots of character and love put into the game, I'm a big fan of the Flaxon Five characters in particular - Several types of characters to select from with different gameplay goals and playstyles - Gravity-based movement and combat is super satisfying after getting used to it - Persistent upgrades across multiple playthroughs adds good replay value for the price Cons: - Takes a run or two to really understand the game loop - Keybinds are a little awkward on keyboard - Minor UX issues that could be improved