ZERO PROTOCOL Reviews

Good fun.

Great little retro horror fps.

very good horror game, worth the price

Cute little System Shock x Soma. The only complaint is that some of the scribbles on the walls are annoyingly ambigious to read.

Short and nice indie horror title. It's no masterpiece but it was a good experience. I had played the Steam Next Fest demo and my expectations were pretty much satisfied. The story was nice (there are 3 endings, 2 basic and 1 secret), kind of like what you'd find in a one-shot short science fiction novel, and the setting lends itself well to horror sci-fi. It's a bit on the easier side, but if it wanted to be harder the spider enemies should be reworked completely since they're too basic and 80% of their attacks feel cheap when they hit, but there are enough healing items to equalize them. I would have also either disabled the autosave function or made it so you have different slots for manual and automatic saves. There are enough save points already and if I want to mess up with the intent of reloading, but if I enter specific doors or pick up some items the autosaves overwrite the manual one, so I either deal with it or have to restart the chapter. After finishing the game a "Load X Chapter" function would have helped completists, since the secret ending path can be started only on the second to last level. I expected it to be more focused on the sanity mechanic that for once was well implemented. The first 2 levels were pretty tense, but once I got my hands on plenty of "stress suppressants" it became more of a horror flavoured fps than a survival horror. I got stuck twice in the last 2 levels, one time because I had somehow missed a memo that explained the puzzle, while the second time I couldn't find a small key tugged in a corner beyond a door. No big deal. I'm happy to report that there's no esoteric sh*t to pull off to solve the puzzles...however there's 1 sliding puzzle...and I HATE sliding puzzles.

I love the atmossphere and the story of this game. Very enjoyable, short cyberpunk / eldritch horror / system shock inspired game. There are multiple endings, all of which very different and interesting. Yeah, if you are looking for a short and sweet, more simple sci fi horror action game - this is definitely worth playing, especially for the price!

Pros: [list] [*]great atmosphere reminding me of System Shock [*]surprisingly good story and lore [*]pretty cool retro visual style [*]good survival gameplay [*]majority of the puzzles is fun [*]reasonable difficulty [*]the occasional jumpscares are not very scary, which is a good thing [/list] Cons: [list] [*]too many cheap ambushes, with enemies appearing out of a thin air [*]healing items are scarce in certain areas [*]those damn spiders are extremely annoying and unfun [*]all of the above forces me to abuse the save system, reloading every time the combat goes wrong [/list] So yes, this is a great survival horror game, only the combat could use some rebalancing and tweaks. Recommended!

6/10; [b]above average[/b] unpolished jank on genuine appreciation of the genre. ~5 hours for 1 playthrough (3 endings) I truly enjoyed Zero Protocols aesthetics and gameplay for what they are; it's not trying to oversell you on what it is. It's indie System Shock with references to other horror franchises. You shoot like its 1993, explore the underground lab with a flashlight (including some nice touches such as it being difficult to read notes if the light is off), solve some puzzles. All of which I was absolutely down for. And almost everything else is wasted. 85% of the plot is back-loaded at the end of the experience. The sanity mechanic was basically forgotten about starting with Ch.4. Too resource abundant to justify it being low. Too long to decrease it on purpose. Having it low really only optioned you into extra lore and unnecessary loot rooms. $12 is perfectly fair for this game.