ZikSquare

Genre: Auto-Runner / Music Creation Tool

Players: 1

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Review:

ZikSquare is a game that combines the Auto-Runner and Music-Rhythm genres, with the tracks players create and work their way through playing music based on how they’re designed.

The presentation here is pretty simple and unimpressive, with boring-looking untextured blocks against a flat, uninteresting backdrop. At the very least the game’s synthesizer sounds pretty good, although of course the quality of the music it’ll produce will largely be up to you.

On that note, this game’s music creation tool set is pretty impressive in the amount of depth that it offers… and completely disappointing when it comes to how it controls and how accessible it is. If you’re not a sound engineer, creating music using this game’s editing tools will seem like a daunting task – even more so if you want to try and make the music in a way that ensures it’s actually a playable level. This is made worse with a lack of a decent tutorial for how to use the music creator, slow and unwieldy controls, and a complete lack of touchscreen support (which this game desperately needed).

As for the Auto-Runner part of the game… this isn’t bad, and the multi-track element gives this part of the game added depth that a lot of games in this genre don’t have. Unfortunately, with only 15 built-in tracks, and no ability to share or download tracks from other users, players wanting any decent amount of content will be forced to learn the music creation tools, even if they’re only interested in the Auto-Runner elements of the game.

Finally, I feel I need to mention one other thing that I found disappointing here – this game completely misses the opportunity to fully integrate the music into the gameplay, since the tracks you jump on when playing a level don’t have much of an effect on the music that plays. It would have been amazing if this game worked sorta’ like the classic Harmonix games Frequency and Amplitude, where you play notes on a track to get that track playing, and skip around from track to track so it’s almost like you’re making the song as you go… but no, the experience of playing levels in this game doesn’t really interact with the music at all.

Don’t get me wrong, I really like what ZikSquare is trying to do here. Combining a Music Creator and an Auto-Runner is a clever idea, and I like how extensive the music creation tools are here… but the interface for music creation is terrible, the game’s presentation leaves a lot to be desired, and the lack of pre-made tracks as well as the inability to share tracks with other players means that the Auto-Runner part of the game is starved for content. This is a great concept that’s unfortunately poorly-executed.

tl;dr – ZikSquare is a Music Creation Tool that allows you to play the tracks you create in an Auto-Runner-style game. It’s a clever idea, but the music creator isn’t very user-friendly and has frustrating controls, and the game only includes 15 pre-made tracks, and has no ability to share tracks with other players, leaving the Auto-Runner starving for content. Good concept, poor execution.

Grade: C-

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