This is the two hundred thirty-seventh entry in the Scratching That Itch series, wherein I randomly select and write about one of the 1741 games and game-related things included in the v. The Bundle raised $8,149,829.66 split evenly between the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and Community Bail Fund, but don’t worry if you missed it. There are plenty of ways you can help support the vital cause of racial justice; try here for a start. Lastly, as always, you may click on images to view larger versions.

Our two hundred thirty-seventh random selection from the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality is fighting back against fascism… in space! It’s Zone of Lacryma, by oop.hok, and its tagline in the bundle reads:

A story driven vertical shmup.

They’re not kidding about the “story driven” part.

But first, for context: the “shmup” part of the tagline is a fond abbreviation for the shoot ’em up genre, games about spaceships (or aircraft) shooting down enemies in scrolling stages, originating in arcade cabinets in the 1980s and 1990s. A few shoot ’em ups have come up in Scratching That Itch before; I refer readers to my post about the first, Zenodyne R, for a brief history of the genre. I’m not particularly well versed in shoot ’em ups, but some of them I’ve encountered in this series have won me over. Risk System, which tasks players with flying very close to enemy bullets in order to power up their super-weapon, was among my highlights from year two, and more recently, the visually resplendent Rym 9000 was my favorite pick from last year. I can now add Zone of Lacryma to their company, as I’ve had a great time with it.

A large part of that is due to the aforementioned story. This is usually an afterthought in shoot ’em ups, relayed via a few lines of dialogue, or snippets of background information accessed from a menu. The games themselves tend to be focused, score-chasing affairs, meant to be played and replayed as players hone their skills. Such does not mesh well with the linear stories told in typical action or role-playing games. Yet Zone of Lacryma adopts just such a story, interspersing cutscenes and playable intermissions — where players can explore their hangar ship and talk with others — between its shoot ’em up missions. I was surprised at how effective this is.

Zone of Lacryma takes place long after Earth has been used up by the ultra-rich. They planned an exodus in secret, taking only a small fraction of humanity who could afford the price of admission. Now they live on a space station called New Heaven. Players control a New Heaven citizen, who is proud to be a WorkCLASS7 pilot. She flies a WorkSHIP on various WorkTASKS, catching up on WorkSLEEP in the WorkHUB in between. Or, maybe she’ll just take another pill so she can stay awake and keep working. For New Heaven! Many of the WorkTASKS involve investigating the mysterious Hollows, who are — according to the New Heaven propaganda broadcasts — terrorists who want to destroy everything New Heaven stands for. And… well, yeah, they are. But as you ma have guessed, they’re quite justified, and our pilot soon sees her loyalty to New Heaven put to the test.

All of this is a biting satire of late-stage capitalism, and it’s well written and funny. The promise of new story scenes and conversations kept me motivated to complete Zone of Lacryma’s missions, which can get pretty difficult. There are eleven in total, but players aren’t expected to get through them in a single run as is often the case in shoot ’em ups. Players have a save slot that lets them resume from where they left off, and it seems the intended experience is to attempt each mission many times until emerging victorious and moving on to the next. It is possible to return to earlier missions to replay them, however, and there are still high score tables for those who like score-chasing in their shoot ’em ups.

Missions emphasize thoughtful play. Zone of Lacryma is not a blisteringly fast “bullet hell” variety shoot ’em up, nor is it one of the (many) shoot ’em ups in which there’s no reason to ever take one’s finger off of the “shoot” button. It’s slower paced, tasking players with careful management of the ship’s energy bar. This works a bit like the stamina bar from Dark Souls: firing the ship’s gun drains this bar, so continuous fire will soon see players unable to shoot. Worse, it compromises the ship’s defenses. Past a certain energy threshold, players can deploy a screen-clearing smart bomb, but more often it will deploy on its own when the ship takes a hit. If the ship’s energy is too low, there’s no auto-bomb. Instead, the ship’s shield will absorb the hit, but another hit after that will be fatal.

So, players are going to want to refill that energy bar, which is where things get really interesting. The basic recharge rate is agonizingly slow, so players will quickly learn to use boost instead. Boosting makes the energy bar refill rapidly, but it also increases the ship’s speed, which means the stages scroll by faster and there’s less time to react to incoming threats. Recovering from a mistake therefore requires taking bigger risks. Let’s say I’m carefully weaving through an asteroid field, but collide with an errant rock. Since I’ve been blasting some of the other rocks, my energy is too low for the auto-bomb defense, so the rock takes out my shield. To get it back, I need to turn on my boost, and hope I can dodge the incoming rocks at high speed, until I’ve built up enough energy to reactivate my shield again (which I have to do manually, with its own dedicated key). That will drain my energy bar again, though, so I might want to keep the boost going so I have some juice left for my guns. Or, ideally, to get that auto-bomb online.

I love the tension this creates. Failure is never instant, like it can be in so many other shoot ’em ups. It’s always a sequence of mistakes, each increasing the challenge. With enough skill, recovery is still possible, and pulling it off feels great.

The missions in Zone of Lacryma are nicely varied, and do a great job teaching players the nuances of the energy system. An early mission tasked me with chasing down another ship, and I soon realized that if I didn’t turn on my boost it would get away. That taught me that sometimes it’s advantageous to keep the boost on for extended periods of time. And that if I did so, I could keep shooting indiscriminately, because the energy gain from boost outweighed the drain from my guns. Later, I flew through mechanical corridors where I needed to keep my speed in check, firing sparingly at foes and keeping my combo up — obtained by successive kills — to super-charge my cannons for higher damage. At one point I unlocked an alternate weapon that does a short-range slash in an arc in front of the ship, and can destroy incoming bullets. Initially, I only used this in specific moments when enemy turrets put up a wall of bullets in front of me, but later missions saw the slash weapon take over from the cannons as my primary weapon, used defensively to clear out a safe path.

Unlike many vertically-scrolling shoot ’em ups, Zone of Lacryma doesn’t shy away from a widescreen aspect ratio. Its stages are wide, offering multiple paths tailored to different styles. Those who like to boost a lot might choose larger paths with more enemies to destroy, while more cautious players might stick to narrower passages that require careful flying. The big bosses at the end of missions, however, necessitate a mixture of strategies to defeat. Some are much easier when boosting, since players can fire continuously and will outrun many of the boss’ attacks. Others bring in environmental hazards, forcing players to drop their speed and weave carefully through tight areas before they can resume the fight. One particularly memorable boss has a shield that rendered it nearly invulnerable to my own attacks, so I had to goad enemy turrets — which I’d been dodging throughout the mission leading up the boss — into shooting it for me.

Dying at a boss is frustrating, however, because it means replaying the entire mission. Often, I’d practised the mission enough to get through every time, but then die to the boss and have to repeat it all again anyway. There are some other nuisances as well: switching between cannons and the slash weapon has poor feedback, with only a very quiet sound effect and a small icon near the energy bar to indicate what’s currently equipped. I would have preferred a visual indicator on my ship itself; I died more than once because I was looking over at the energy bar and lost sight of where I was flying. The audio mixing is odd in general, actually, with some sounds very quiet and others surprisingly loud. The music is excellent, however.

I also like Zone of Lacryma’s pixel art style. It’s easy to parse, and the red-gold-green color scheme gives it a distinctive look. The color choices called to mind Aerannis, which popped up at the beginning of this year of Scratching That Itch, or Xenogunner, which was one of my highlights from year two. All of these titles stand out from the typical pixel art game palletes, and in Zone of Lacryma the dominant colors shift during play, with red-gold epitomizing New Heaven and its expansionist regime, and the blue-green tones representing the untouched parts of space beyond their grasp. There’s also some slick parallax scrolling during missions that looks lovely, while enemies and obstacles pop in an immensely satisfying way when blasted. It looks great in motion.

Zone of Lacryma is an easy recommendation, even for players who aren’t that excited by most shoot ’em ups. Its slower pacing and one-mission-at-a-time flow allow for a satisfying sense of progress, and digging into its systems and employing different strategies in its varied missions is rewarding. It’s also surprisingly lengthy, offering a full narrative arc through its many story scenes. Definitely check it out. If you missed it in the bundle, Zone of Lacryma is sold for a minimum price of $8.99.

That’s 237 down, and only 1504 to go!