This review contains spoilers

The Dark Crystal video game I’ve always wanted.

Fun fact about me if you drop an impossibly fictional alien world in front of me I will be so intrigued with it’s inner working and lore for like days, and then on top of that you also making it look so visually breathtaking and innovative then my brain just goes into hyperfixation mode and stays that way for a good while. This doesn't always work, Avatar is a world I find interesting but besides service level interest that’s about it, and other alien worlds like Transformers frustrate me since it feels like no matter what version I’m watching it’s always changing up it’s core lore to the point where I can’t get as invested as I should be (in the case of the Bay movies it recones it’s own lore like every movie). But in the case of something like Dark Crystal I am just so enraptured but literally every aspect of it’s world building and creatures I just wish I could explore it more; Clash Artifacts of Chaos scratches that feeling Dark Crystal gave me and then some.

I wasn't familiar with the Zeno Clash series before playing this game. Hell, the only reason I even decided to try this game out was because I saw a youtube ad at 5 am and thought it looked really cool. Now I really want to try out the rest because my god I love this world this game has. Everything from the absurdly ugly yet amazing look residents of Zenozoik, to the wild yet beautiful flora and landscape of the world just read like something you could only do in fiction. The lore and ways of the residents of Zenozoik has just intrigue the hell out of me. Where did the one law come from? Why is it the only law that everyone follows besides the Corwid? What is the world like outside of Zenozoik and who are these mysterious alien- like beings? What's the deal with the child's “curse”? Why can Pseudo’s soul leave his body and explore the world and re-enter his body? Are there straight up aliens in this world or is it some kind of shadowy elite group of people and the whole world of Zenozoik is just a dumping ground of people too wild and crazy for their new world order? I don’t have the answers to any of these questions and I genuinely love that so much. Having the world act more as a character really helps to make the world feel so alien and unknown, but the more you explore and learn not just from the character but the world itself through visual storytelling and meeting all the crazy characters of Zenozoik really starts to paint a picture of what this world is; Dark Crystal did the same thing with its dying land of Tra from the hands of the cruel and twisted Skeksis. I just love still finding new imaginative worlds to explore still in an era where everything feels rehashed and overdone.

The plot is overall pretty simple but made very engaging from the aforementioned creative world building and its fun cast of weirdos. Pseudo is a really fun main character, for as weird and emaciated he looks he is both familiar enough with the land with the land to have a good understanding of it but also jaded enough to where nothing really surprises him anymore, making a really fun deadpan main character who just follows in the motions of his lonely isolationist ways. This really helps with the child who he protects over the course of the game. The kid never really felt annoying or used for extra saccharine moments that other AAA games does with this sort of set-up; he just really bounces off of Pseudo’s cynical mindset so well and I actually get really attached with their bound by the end which is very impressive given how short this game is.

Before I go on about the gameplay I really need to make this short little part about how the game looks visually. For a lot of AA games they don’t really have the budget to go all out with graphics and when they do it normally looks really cheap and kinda bad. Here however they did something that I’ve been seeing more animated movies do; they gave the game a really pretty colored pencil drawn art style. Not only does this style look really pretty and even breathtaking at times; but in the options menu you have the option to mess around with the filter of the pencil drawn lines to space them out more or even to make them actively wavy, kinda like the outlines of Ed Edd and Eddy characters. Not only is this a really cool option that can make the areas look even more alive then it already did but you can also change it to black and white, and rather then it just being a basic filter that just makes the game look gray, it instead changes up the whole art style to resemble more of a manga look, resembling even some Berserk panels at times. I just think the use of the art style and even having the option to mess around with it is just so cool and I wish more games would attempt to try it.

The gameplay part of the game is where I honestly start to stumble a little. It’s not bad far from it it’s pretty fun at times, but if I were to call this game a souls like; which it technically calls itself then it’s quite possibly the easiest souls like game I’ve ever played and never really uses it’s souls like nature to really do anything with the formula outside of the most basic aspects of it. The way you explore the world is also kinda clunky. You are required to explore each part of the semi-open area map to find parts of a armor set to uses against the final boss but they don’t tell you that; the game just kinda expect you to know where to go at all times and it really doesn't help that half way through the game you need to go out of your way to an area to unlock a power just to be able to go to the last two areas, but the game never told me that so for a good 30 minutes I just fucked around trying to figure out what where I needed to go. Besides these faults thought the gameplay is still pretty solid, the combat is a little repetitive with enemies that felt very spongy, but as the game went along and I upgrade more and unlocked new combat stances and moves it started getting more engaging and by the end I didn’t really have that much of a problem


I haven't been this surprised with a game before in a LONG time. I may not have known about the Zeno Clash series before but I will 100% be checking out those games later on because my god I just can’t get enough of this world and it’s lore. This is without a doubt the biggest surprise of 2023 for me and I don’t think any other game will come along and really surprise me like this game did. Maybe I should listen to more YouTube targeted ads………………………naaa.

Reviewed on Apr 21, 2023


2 Comments


11 months ago

I've read some really negative reviews on this, glad I see more positive stuff that resonate with me. I'll keep this in mind when trying is

3 months ago

"The Dark Crystal video game I've always wanted" instantly sold, thank you.