Game: ZaciSa: Defense of the Crayon Dimension!
Genre: Indie, Strategy
System: Steam (Windows and macOS)
Developer|Publisher: ZeNfA Productions
Controller Support: Yes
Price: UK £4.29 | US $4.99 | EU € 4.99
Release Date: 1st August 2023
Review code used with many thanks to ZeNfA Productions.
ZaCiSa: Defense of the Crayon Dimensions! is a 2023 retro arcade game developed and published by ZeNfA Productions.
Premise
ZaCiSa: Defense of the Crayon Dimensions! is a classic tower defence game released in 2014 for Wii U in North America. This month, the game was released on Steam for PC and Mac users.
In ZaCiSa, we must protect a particular territory in the Crayon Empire from waves of enemies. Success earns us money, “ZaCpoins,” which we use to buy and upgrade our defences.
Gameplay
As mentioned above, ZaCiSa is a classic tower defence game – on the screen, we have our base, in this case, a heart in a green circle, which we need to protect. We have several white dots on the screen- places where we can install our defences. We can buy them by clicking on the white dots or via the Shop menu on the upper side of the screen. The available defences are Base Turret, Sentry, Bomber, Thunderstorm, Elemental Spin, Tesla Coil, Helper, Drone, and Shield.
After buying a type of defence, you can update it or sell it at some point and build something else there. Updates include attack power, fire rate, rotation speed, rocket speed, and rocket homing. We can tinker at our installations in between waves or even during them.
On the topic of waves- we get as many as we can survive through. As the enemy grows stronger with each wave and starts successfully to get through our defences, our hearts will be lost if we don’t update them on time. On the other hand, each survived attack earns us money. On the left side of the screen, we can see how many waves remain, and on the right side- how healthy our heart is, in percentages.
In the Shop, you can also “buy” a Bank Loan. For the last option, we can choose between small, medium, and large loans, and while we pay off the loan, our score and earned ZaCoins are reduced.
Difficulty
ZaCiSa offers the player five game modes, each more complex than the last: cadet, captain, galactic hero, insanity, and endless. The endless mode features an unlimited amount of enemy waves. You won’t survive long if you don’t play smart and strategically, even on the cadet level.
At the very beginning, we have 6 locations we can choose from. The rest of the locations are opened after we earn a specific score on some starting areas. Since the game has a multiplayer mode, there also is Leaderboard, where you can see all the other player scores. By the way, you can also win a negative score (which I did), and there is even a Steam achievement for that.
Art Style and Side Notes
Since ZaCiSa is a retro arcade game, the soundtrack is chosen appropriately, it has several tracks that can be listened to separately.
ZaCiSa boasts hand-drawn backgrounds, drawn with crayons at that! Otherwise, it’s very retro-looking. The colorful turrets placed on the black background look strangely beautiful.
Another thing to note is the sense of humor the game occasionally displays; for example, we can take loans from The Bank of Gulatica.
ZaCiSa offers Local Co-op, allowing playing with multiple players and controlling the Drone/Railgun bots to give you an upper hand. There is also full controller support and Steam achievements.
Conclusion
Tower defence games aren’t my usual game genre, but ZaciSa: Defense of the Crayon Dimension! offered me an exciting glimpse into the topic. I don’t know if I will be back for more, but for real fans of this type of game, ZaCiSa might sink in some hours.
Final Verdict: I Like it. 