Guest BRIEF: Zone (1988)

      

Zone

France
Loriciels (developer and publisher)

Released 1988 for DOS

Rejected For: Insufficient character development.

     

Longtime CRPG Addict readers will remember my experience with Tera: La Cité des Crânes (1986), a very odd French title that seemed to draw themes from British science fiction of the 1960s and 1970s. After a false start during my first year of blogging, I revisited it in 2017 and eventually won, finding it an interesting experience, if sometimes a confusing one. 

    

Tera was credited to the pseudonyms "Ulysses" (in some contexts given as just "Ulysse") and "Lout." "Ulysses" has been identified as now-retired physicist François Gervais, professor emeritus at the University of Tours. (Thanks to Busca for originally alerting me to this.) "Lout" is likely graphic artist Yves Koskas, credited as such on Gervais's later titles in which the artwork is clearly by the same person.

By the time I won, readers had alerted me to a follow-up by Ulysses called Karma (1987). I tried it and couldn't really figure it out, but I admired the unusual Japanese-influenced art style. Then, this past May, our resident Wargaming Scribe alerted me that Ulysses was credited on several additional games: Zone (1988), Kristor (1988), and Starvega (1990). The latter two are both space-trading games. Zone begins the author's transition away from RPGs, featuring too few elements to meet my definitions, though it is still notably in the Tera style. The latter two both fit TWS's mission, and by the time he had played enough of Zone to realize that it didn't, he figured he might as well push through to the end. [Ed. I apparently made some mistakes here. Forget my commentary and just read the entry below.] He then offered his experience to us as a guest post--eight months ago. I needed to edit it for this blog's format, and at some point, I just forgot about it. I apologize that this took so long, man.

    

Below is The Wargaming Scribe's review of Zone. Watch his blog for upcoming coverage on Kristor and Starvega to complete our analysis of the oeuvre of these unconventional developers.

    

*****

    

The plot of Zone occupies less than half a page in the manual. After a Great Conflict, humankind has regrouped into small tribes which resorted to looting what's left of the past to survive between radioactive clouds and mutant creatures--including humans. And then, our MacGuffin: "A priest-doctor found a biological formula that could save humanity, but a powerful group of depraved individuals have taken the secret for themselves and killed the good man. That's where your story begins." Well, a search-but-too-late-to-rescue it is, then.

    
The game starts with character creation, and 3 stars to allocate between 6 "traits", although they read more like archetypes:

     

One of these things is not like the others.

       

• The brute,  "hit first and talk later."
• The negotiator, "whose preferred weapon is his charm."
• The handyman, "who can build an entire vehicle from junk."
• The biker, "must-have for fast recon and very efficient in combat."
• The tank driver, "who can transport a small group at a slow speed."
• The psy, "telepathic and mysterious mutant, overall non-violent . . . or is he ?"

        

The manual does not tell you the purpose of the various traits. I put 2 stars in "Negotiator"; I suppose that will be useful as the leader of my tribe. I put the last star in "Psy." I have no idea what it does at that point, but I like to think it will allow me to mind-read my team.

      

The buttons combine, with no logical order, game controls and settings like sound on/off.

    

The game jumps straight to my base of operation, which will not move during the game, and from which I have all sorts of management options. Of course, the first thing I do is check the rest of my tribe:

    

Some of the default names have been replaced by the names of commenters on my own blog.

    

I lead a tribe of 12 people, some of them in less than perfect health, as indicated by the arrows on the left: two arrows up is the maximum possible, two arrows down means critical condition. We have a bunch of sweet talkers and some people with psychic powers, but few people can do something useful with their hands except punching.

   
I also check our inventory; we have two motorcycles (attributed by the game by default to the two best bikers: Strange and BG) and one "tank" attributed to Gubison. We also have 58 days of food and 1650 liters of fuel, which the game translates as 22 days of tank or 68 days of motorcycle. If I want more, I need to explore the world map, find more fuel, and then carry it home; the only efficient way to do it is by using the tank which has a large transport capacity. I have only one of them at the moment, and no "spare parts" to build more, so I need to be careful.

     
The world map is divided into 32 regions. Our home base is Mordua and the rest of the map is for now unexplored. A dedicated menu shows for each region the distance in days to walk from Mordua (a maximum of 28 days for Tagh), the tank moves roughly twice as fast and the motorcycles roughly 5 times faster.
    

The world map. The green area in the southeast is a radioactive cloud that slowly moves with the wind.

        

Time to explore to find fuel, spare parts and the body of that doctor-priest! 

    
I send some scouts on foot toward the closest regions, and the bikers a bit further away. I then skip time for a few days until I hear back from them. Some regions are empty, but my scouts found fuel in Cazan, spare parts in Moya and the base of the Blackrobes in Kintor. The Blackrobes are a friendly faction willing to train anyone in being a better Psy and I send Tanith to leverage the opportunity. It will take her 15 days to train and 9 days of walking there and back so she is out for a while.

     
My top priority is to build a spare tank, so Dayyalu, Meat and Karbon take Gubison's tank and ride to Moya to pick up the parts. Every time I am sending someone, their picture appears on the screen, but for the first time I also get a look at the "tank": 

Departure of Dayyalu + 3 others for Moya.

            

I have played enough wargames to recognize any armored vehicle. And I know this one: it is of course a Hasbro Triple-T!

           

In the game's defense, you can probably fit 4 people on a Triple-T.

       

Meanwhile, I also send most of the rest of the tribe to scout, only leaving Valero, Argyraspide and myself in the base. Of course, that's when a tribe called “the Skinheads” decides to attack!

    
Combats where my character is physically present are resolved with an arcade mini-game where I must rotate a turret to destroy one car and one flying bike--always the same pair. The mini-game is initially a bit tricky due to the combination of very slow rate of fire and input delay (your shot leaves the cannon around half a second after you press the key), but the difficulty of the mini-game never changes, so once you are trained, you can reliably ace it.

           

It is not fun in any shape or form, and I had to fight maybe 10 waves of two this time.

       

At this point I am not yet well-trained in turret combat, and I fail to intercept all attackers. This translates into damage to the "defenders"; Valero in particular is badly wounded, with two arrows down.

      
That's the only attack for now. Meanwhile, the Gubison-Dayyalu expedition comes back with enough spare parts to make more tanks, and I send them to collect fuel next. They bring more than 700 liters without exhausting the region.

     
As for the scouts, they find another friendly tribe (the Bulldozers, who can teach tank-driving) but also the home bases of two hostile gangs: the Skinheads whom we’ve already met and the Stinkers.
         

One of my scouts reports on the Skinheads' defenses.

        

I have enough spare parts for a new DIY tank, but it will take some time to get my novice handymen to do it--presumably the assembly manual is lost--so meanwhile I send Rambo to the Bulldozers to perfect his driving skill. Before tackling the gangs, I also decide to fill my stores with fuel and food by doing a round of all the regions with stuff to pick up. This time, I will personally lead the expedition. Personally being part of an expedition allows me to go from one region to another without having to return to base.

       

Loading 9 days of food and 480 liters of fuel while doing the round.

              

While I am outside the base, two things happen:

     

• First, I get a notification that the "strength" of my tribe declined. Every 15 days this event will trigger, draining some HP from my people.

• Worse, my base is attacked! Apparently I left my base with the keys to the defensive turrets, so the men and women I left behind have to get their hands dirty:

 

Combat is resolved automatically, no input from my side. It can last more than one minute.

      

Each character either receives an attack or attacks with what they are good with, which ranges from bare fists for Meat to mental attacks for Psy. There is even an hilarious moment where Dayyalu is said to be seducing the leader of the Skinheads in the middle of the combat while the game shows him using a shotgun. For the record, it failed:     

        

"The fastest way to a man's heart is through his sternum," quipped one of my commenters.

         

When the combat ends, I lose Valero and the rest of the defenders are wounded. This is not looking good.

    
I return to base. We have enough fuel and food for a long, long time. I also realized at that point that you cannot exhaust a region's natural resources. In other words, as long as you know one region has fuel, you effectively have infinite fuel. One of the key appeals of the game (resource management) is gone.

    
On the other hand, it looks like time does not heal anyone so the real rare resource is the health of my tribe! I need to find medicine or something similar, presumably in one of the enemy bases. Waiting will do me no good, so time to go on the offensive. I send the scouts scouting and then create a team with myself, Argyra to bring some psy power (whatever that means), Karbon to punch people in the face, Barbara for any potential talking that needs to happen and Gubison to carry all of us in his tank. Target: the Stinkers' base, according to my scouts the least defended of the enemy bases. After defeating them in boring arcade combat, I enter the base.

     

A door in the rampart. Do we risk it?

      

Finally, the game displays some CRPG credentials. 'Tis is good old dungeon-crawling!

    

First steps in the Stinkers' base.

   

Well "good" might be an overstatement. The Stinkers' base is a series of rooms with 1 to 4 doors each. Some rooms have chests that I can open, others one monster, never more. Combats in Zone don't offer a lot of options: I just pick one of my characters to attack, and that character may wound the monster. Whether he succeeds or not, the monster may also wound him or her. It looks like being a good psy or a good negotiator is useless, those characters still try to punch their targets. Characters with riding or tank driving skills on the other hand are shown using a firearm in their animation, but I am unsure whether it changes anything.
     
Some doors require bashing through, which may succeed or fail. I am not sure whether failing costs health points: in the second room I find a bazooka, which is surprisingly not used in combat but used by whoever I assign to bash a door. Sometimes that person blows themselves up and loses health, but I find out that my trucker Gubison is great with it, and almost no door resists him. He is now my point man, opening passages for the rest of us.
      
Apart from that, the dungeon is HARD! Karbon is the only character who can reliably hit monsters, but I have no way to heal him and he eventually has one then two arrows down in health. I also sustain party wipes after drinking from an unidentified flask that turned out to be poison. Twice, because I don't learn. Poison damages the entire team and kills the weakest characters! I reload the game.
    

Still, I finally find some purpose for my psy character: he can identify flasks.

         

Argyra yells "No!" after the game asks me whether I meant to drink an unidentified flask.

         

Argyra can also "meditate", displaying me a map of the rooms around me and the total number of enemies in those rooms. I don't find that useful because he does not tell me where the enemies or the chests are, and I can't play it like Minesweeper either because those "meditations" somehow wound him.
      
This talent is made redundant anyway by a map I find shortly thereafter while exploring the top-left of the hide-out. It also shows the "blocked" doors, white for the easy ones, red for the hard ones:

 

I made sure to bump my head against all sides of those squares in the top-left corner, but there are no secret rooms there.

         

I am intrigued by the small room a bit at the top left, enclosed between two red doors. I try to access it by the top and what do you know, the door cannot be bashed and I need to type a code. I then try the door at the bottom and find the same situation.
     
I carry on exploring a bit, and even drink a non-poisonous flask. Its effects are not immediately apparent. After some more exploration, I engage in one combat too many against a "gigantic mutant feline." Karbon is wounded twice even though he had already had two arrows down so it is not looking good for him.

With so many wild animals in their base, it's not a surprise that the enemy gang is called "The Stinkers."

            

I press the key to "retreat", and I find myself at the entrance of the base. Alas, it gives the monster one last attack, and Barbara is killed.

        

Adieu, Barbara. So much for your incredible "negotiating" skills.

        

We all hop in the Triple-T and head home. I have the feeling that the Stinkers' base was not the first one we were supposed to raid. I am worried that I am in a walking dead scenario given my only good fighter is on the brink of death, but then something happens: on every step of my return trip I am informed that my team is healing using "antibiotics". I don't remember plundering antibiotics, so it has to be the flask. I test a bit further: the healing effect only triggers when I travel (skipping time does not work), and weirdly affects everyone with me in the tank, even if they were not part of our little trip in the Stinkers' zoo.
     
I spend the following days touring my most wounded people around and sending scouts. I am also ambushed once by Skinheads, but the game tells me that they are not numerous enough and they break before the combat even starts. Meanwhile, my scouts find two more friendly tribes (the Mecanos and the Babacools, I let you guess which skill they can train you in) and critically the base of another "enemy" tribe: the Killers. It is in Tagh and there are apparently 107 of them, but "not very aggressive". Tanith and Rambo also come back from their training.

Tanith dressed for a fantasy RPG.

        

The effect of the healing flask eventually wears out, but it worked well enough that my tribe is ready for another expedition. No one is below "one arrow up" in health, and Rambo can both drive us to an enemy base and add some significant punching power!

 

 

BG is somewhere scouting and not displayed here.

        

I take more than half of the tribe (Meat and Karbon for combat, Rambo to drive the tank and fight, BG because maybe having scouts in a dungeon is useful, Tanith to detect poison and of course myself) and we move toward the base of the Skinheads. After yet another long arcade combat, we get inside... and it looks exactly like the Stinkers base.

     
The content is a bit different though. We initially meet only one monster (killing it gives Rambo a third star in "punching"), but on the other hand, we encounter way too many "storages of radioactive products". Every time we enter a room with one, they wound everyone in the team, and there is no way to solve that problem with punching.

         

I can understand the giant pets, but who stores radioactive waste in a corridor?

      

Happily enough, I still have the bazooka from the Stinkers’ base, so I don't lose time trying to open the door to exit the radioactive rooms. Furthermore, I also find "dynamite", which... helps open doors. Not really necessary, but apparently some characters are better with the bazooka and other characters better with dynamite.

     
On the other hand, no map, so I have to use Tanith's psychic powers to orient myself:
          

We started in the bottom left corner and visited all the rooms with a dot.

        

It was a good call. A room to my left looks "special" given it is surrounded by four red doors. I bash the door. Inside, a magic mouth hologram gives me a code of plot progression:

 

A hologram lights up. A priest-doctor whispers: "In my laboratory of Hawk, the WOON formula will save you."

         

Hawk is the region where I found the Stinkers' base, so it has to be the room I could not open. I am eager to investigate, but first I need to make sure there is not another important room in this dungeon. I explore the dungeon, kill a few more monsters (they seem rarer than in the earlier dungeon), find a poison flask (properly identified by Tanith), then an unidentified flask (which turned out to be the same kind of "antibiotics" as I found earlier) and finally a map which shows that there is nothing more to see in this dungeon.

    
On the way to the exit I am attacked by a "hothead", easily killed by Rambo. Alas, the hothead managed to hit Rambo like a truck. He is now severely wounded. 

      

        

That's the last combat and I exit the base. No party wipe this time.

     
After another healing tour, I return to the Stinkers' base (and fight them again at the entrance in arcade combat), navigate through the corridors (and discover that monsters can occasionally respawn) and finally arrive in front of the door where the code needs to be typed and ..  nothing. Not the correct code. Frustrated, I explore the Stinkers' base, find more monsters, more hotheads and more flasks of all sorts. When I leave the Stinkers' base Meat has gained two more stars in "punching", for a total of 4 stars. He basically never misses, but he is still occasionally wounded. Unfortunately, the effect of the healing flask vanishes quickly this time so most of my fighters end up with mediocre health.
        

It is time to raid the Killers' base. After a long trip to Tagh, I eventually arrive at the Killers' base: a shipwrecked cargo ship. Surprisingly I don't have to fight the Killers, and I enter the ship without any opposition. This time, the look of the dungeon is different:
        

     

Alas, the few enemies are exactly the same as usual - big cats and other monsters. On the other hand, some doors required picklocking to be opened - probably using the "fixing" skill rather than the "punching" skill. I did not take any fixer, but the doors can also be blown up by the dynamite I found earlier on. Stealthy!

    
I don't spend that much time in the shipwreck. After 9 steps I find a chest with a map inside. The map shows that just north of me there is one of those special rooms surrounded by red doors. I get inside it and find some "letters written in blood" on a wall. The game has a [L]ire ("Read") command just for that, and what do you know that's actually four letters forming the code "OXEA".
        

I backtrack and make sure to avoid any useless combat, exit the Killers' base and head home - no antibiotics this time. Immediately after arriving, I create a new expedition (with only Gubisson, Meat and myself) heading for the Stinkers' base. No one defends it - I think I mopped up the last Stinkers last time - but we are hit by another "your tribe is sick" event and just like that I am informed that Rambo died back in the base. Sad.

     
In the Stinkers' base, I beeline for the locked door and type the code. This time, it works, and I enter a special room: the laboratory.

      

       

The game immediately asks me whether I want to synthesize a vaccine. "Sure, why not !" and it asks me for a formula that the "automatic laboratory will synthesize": WOQN of course.

     
The game then tells me that "this vaccine will save my tribe" and, just like that, it is game over. I won!

       

"May the men now rebuild the world." It probably says that because Barbara died.

        

The game then shows me a high score screen and the list of my casualties:

     

       

That's it for the game, it ends abruptly without delivering on any of its promises.  It took me hours to finish, but there are very few steps to win:

     

1. Send scouts until you find the 3 enemy bases
2. Raid base A to find Code #A
3. Raid base B to find Code #B
4. Raid base C to find the Laboratory and win.

             

The manual claims the game can be finished in two hours by a player who knows what he is doing, and I believe it. Alas, it makes most of the features irrelevant. You don't need much fuel, you start with enough food, and you don't really need any skill except "punching" and "poison detection" ["psy" in the game]. "Negotiation" proved totally useless, and since you don't really need extra vehicles "Fixing" is possibly only used to lockpick doors in the shipwreck if you didn't find the dynamite.

        
Ultimately, Zone tries to be a jack-of-all-trades, but possibly due to lack of time, budget or patience it is adequate at none. It tries to be a survival management game, but resources are a non-issue. It pretends to be a strategy game, but hostile tribes don't do anything besides sending some groups to random locations. It pretends to be an RPG and it does have some character development, but the experience is unsatisfactory, with its dull combat, repetitive dungeons and general lack of equipment (with the exception of tanks and motorcycles, all items are "party" items). And the less said about the arcade part, the better.
      

The game has some weird features. I mentioned the healing flasks only heal when in a tank, but I could also have mentioned that there is a risk that your gang members grow dissatisfied with you and leave... but only if you let the day pass by waiting rather than by skipping. Amusingly, according to one of the reviews, the deserters only leave in pairs, as (heterosexual) couples; I tested and it looks like it is true indeed. That's the French touch for you.

        

"Carolyn fled with Dop Max . . . Rascals . . . May they hang!"

        .       
If I were giving a GIMLET, the game would end up at 10, with 0 in NPC interaction and quests, and no more than 2 in any other category, so I took a bullet for Chet. Surprisingly, the game garnered lavish reviews in French magazines, including a stunning 16/20 by Tilt, which manages to call the strategic layer of the game "fascinating", while Amstrad Magazine gives the game 4 stars out of 5. Meanwhile, Joystick states that the game will "ravish the aficionados of AD&D, Call of Cthulhu, Rogue, Dungeon Master, and Phantasie." The only mixed rating comes from Jeux & Stratégie which specializes in tabletop games; I feel it says a lot about the quality of the French computer gaming press.

        
Ulysses coded one last game after Zone: Starvega. Starvega is even more ambitious than Zone (trade! crew management! tactical space combat!) but that's still Ulysses alone with Yves Koskas working on the art, so I am not sure it plays much better than Zone. Still, if time allows and Chet is willing I might return for another weird French "RPG".