Power up your character with collectible upgrades for you weapons and armor as you explore Zarda, enhancing your combat and mobility capabilities.
N.U.T.Z. features a diverse world to explore, with each level feeling unique and varied. Certain areas of levels are only accessible by certain characters or with certain power ups, making for a diverse level replay experience.
Each enemy will have their own traits, and will adapt to how the player tries to defeat them and use new tactics in response.
Two of the main featured characters are Sil and Saya. Sil has a wide arsenal and enhanced mobility through wall jumping. Sil’s arsenal includes ranged weaponry, and has power armor that can be upgraded to increase her abilities. Saya is a melee based character that uses a sword and has the ability to dash short distances.
I sat down and played the free demo available on itch.io which you can try yourself! The game's background and environmental art is top notch, with great detail and extensive shadow work. All of the character models have joints that allows for a more fluid animation style and prevents awkwardness or stiffness. Being a demo for a game that is still in development, there are still some issues and bugs. The controls are a bit stiff feeling, which i believe is mostly resulting from how the jump feels and that to get a full height jump you'll need to hold down the space bar, which feels awkward during combat. I think it would be cool to implement something more like a fast fall when holding "s" in the air for when you may want a shorter jump. Mobility is a top priority to N.U.T.Z.'s fast paced experience, so we can expect this to be honed to perfect on release. The level design of the game felt good, and although my field of view was limited and I often couldn't see the next platform I was to jump to, I somehow managed to never be lost and was never punished by things I couldn't see. Enemy variety, despite it being just the start of the game, was varied enough to provide a different experience at every instance of combat.
I have high hopes for how this game will turn out. The design and mechanics seem to all be there, the gameplay just needs some fine-tuning. I encourage you to try the demo for yourself and come to your own conclusions!
