DAILY CHALLENGE
ZANEI
Vector · Shoot 'em up · 12 levels · Extra game
A bodiless pilot against an invasion that only knows how to repeat itself.
WHAT IT IS
Year 2109. Twelve years ago the Shapes arrived: pure geometry that never spoke nor answered. Project ZANEI links a pilot's mind to unmanned ships: if the ship falls, the mind jumps to the next one. ZANEI is 残影, "the image left behind by what is gone". Twelve levels in three acts (the surface, orbit, inside the hive), seven weapons swapped on the fly, four power levels, bombs, twenty enemies and bosses that break apart piece by piece.
You play with one finger: drag to move the ship and tap FIRE for a burst, or hold it. The story comes over the radio while you play, in boxes that never pause the game, and it reacts to how you play: the tower only confirms a transfer if you lost a ship, and in level ten the pilot says how many she has really lost. Between levels, a line-drawn frame. Free and ad-free here; the app, with ads, is on its way to the stores.
HOW IT LOOKS AND SOUNDS
Everything is neon lines on black with a phosphor glow, drawn by the game every frame: ships, ruined buildings, the sea, the moon, the hive. The portraits and cutscenes are eighties-anime line drawings, generated with AI from our own descriptions and turned into vectors. The music is public-domain classical pieces transcribed to the chip and turned into techno: one piece per level, from Bach to Beethoven, Vivaldi, Chopin and Grieg.
INSPIRATIONS
ZANEI owes its pace to Sonic Wings (Video System, 1992): short levels, a weapon that never runs out and power you pick up and lose with the ship. The vector look comes from Atari's vector arcades, Battlezone and Tempest, and the raised camera over a grid floor from Space Harrier. The tone of the story, a war told by a pilot who no longer knows what she is, looks to Saikano and Ghost in the Shell. All the code, graphics, music and writing are original.
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