ZPF

This is a Genesis game wrapped in an emulator, and poorly. Nothing saves when you exit the game, not the high scores, option settings, nor the emulator settings for a frame or aspect ratio. There is a bug if you use original aspect ratio and ask for a tip/clue (whatever it's called, the only thing you can afford on default settings). The game will lock up and I had to do a hard reset. Art and music are great, gameplay not so much. I'm used to traversing through narrow bullets to find a path, but the pill-shaped bullets do not leave any room. No idea where my actual hit box is, but I end up making huge sweeping circles to avoid shots. The medals you earn show up on the screen and are honestly an annoyance, you don't pick them up. You you can't interact with them, they have no business being there. They will fly towards the bottom left corner to your medal count. Easy to confuse these with enemy shots. In a game this crowded with gorgeous art, enemies, bullets in different colors, I don't need things flying at me that don't have a purpose. The knight and the "Gold" ship seem to have the same exact pattern, not sure what the purpose is to three ships. But I don't get a lot of info on ship differences in the menu. Both seem to fire straight ahead. Power ups barely exist. With a game that has no built in continues, would be nice to have a bit more of a fighting chance. Melee doesn't clear enemy bullets, so what's the point of trying to get up close. Enemies will shoot as they explode, making it a painful lesson in all but an emergency weapon against bullet-sponge larger enemies that get too close. Also on Steam Deck, if you use no borders and original aspect ration there is some odd text in white in the lower right corner of the game, just a few characters, so I can't read it. A rewind feature, continues, remove medals on-screen, fix the options saving, and fix the broken hint option. Maybe I'd come back, too many games out for this quality to keep my attention.

What an unusual and cool thing that in the space of a week, two games that seem beamed straight from the prime Amiga days dropped on Steam in this and ChainStaff. My cupboard is suddenly full with early '90s styled psychedelic action games! ZPF technically came out as a Genesis/MD homebrew cartridge last year (still available), but it's nice to see the game get an affordable Steam release for those who don't want to spring $60 for the box, manual, and cart. However, if you do want that Genesis rom (which has been slightly altered here) to throw on a cheap handheld for toilet ZPFing, it's available in this game's install folder. It's a couple folders deep, look for the .bin. This is a fast, fun, eye-searing horizontal shmup with wall-to-wall old school coolness like mechs and floating eyeballs and lots of trippy body horror with the backdrop of some incredible chiptunes. It's also like someone turned the saturation knob up to 11, and while I like it, it wouldn't be the worst thing to be able to pick different or more muted color palates. But there are programs like ShaderGlass and ReShade and Magpie you can quickly throw over the screen and tinker to your heart's content. If I'm looking for games to compare it to, Lords of Thunder immediately comes to mind, the fantasy metal horizontal shmup from the Sega CD and Turbo CD. ZPF has six levels (plus some hidden stuff) and either no continues, or you can buy continues in the shop. Every destroyed enemy drops coins which auto-collect, no need to catch 'em, and that's what you can spend in the shop between levels. It adds a neat layer of strategy as you usually have to pick one or two items out of about a dozen. Full shot power, add 1 life, 2x coin collect, or how about the very expensive and usually out of reach 1x Continue? You can gamble that you'll be able to collect full shot power in the upcoming level, but it's pretty crucial to start a level with it, too. The 2x coin collect is always a smart and affordable choice, but of course don't buy it before the final level. Adding to the strategy is your choice between three ships which all play reasonably different from each other. Gladius is probably the safe bet to start with, weaker shot power but rapidly fires in a triangle formation, clearing the many enemies that come from above and below. Then once you get used to the enemy patterns you can try one of the other ships. Really could use public leaderboards and some of the achievements are currently broken, but this is still a solid, eye-watering, old school time for a slim $10.

This clearly has a ton of love put into the art design, music and, somewhat into the gameplay, and at 6 dollars(my local currency) I feel very bad refunding it, but the following negatives are just unjustifiable in shmup standards: -No savestates. -No online leaderboards(or local, they reset each time you play). -No scanline/crt filters of any kind. -One of the game's mechanics, the melee button, is awful to look at and use, it's severely undercooked. If the devs addressed at least two of these negatives I think this game would be easily twice worth the current price, because its a cool AF game to look at/listen to, but not to play for more than an hour or two in its current state. Go buy and play Super ZYX, an earlier game from the same dev, its much better.

It's just not there, yet. Needs more polish, especially in the menu. Save states, maybe?

ZPF absolutely rips. Feels like somebody unearthed a lost Genesis classic and polished it for modern day. Tight controls, killer pixel art, insane bosses, and that soundtrack goes way harder than it has any right to. If you love shmups, retro games (in general), or just good game design period, this is a no-brainer. Solid 8/10 fun time

Отличный shoot 'em up в стиле 16-битных хитов Sega Genesis! Игра вышла на картриджах, идеально подойдёт фанатам жанра динамичный геймплейи ретро-атмосфера. Посмотрите мой геймплей: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A53CltZa6Ps Почему стоит попробовать ZPF - это горизонтальный шмап от ZPF Team и Mega Cat Studios, вдохновлённый классикой вроде Thunder Force и Lords of Thunder. Три уникальных персонажа с разными стилями атаки, секреты и система скоринга добавляют реиграбельности. Для кого Идеально для любителей ретро-шутеров на Sega/Mega Drive - вышла физически на картриджах в 2025 году, теперь и на PC/Steam. Если вы фанат 16-битных аркад, это ваш must-play.

I bought this game because the art absolutely grabbed me and I'm not buying overpriced classic shmup collections. Holy fXck this is some of the best and raddest pixel art I've ever seen in my life. I only want to keep playing so that I may drink more of those glorious and saturated pixels into my eyeholes like fine psilocybin wine. It's like finding a record with badass art and the music actually lives up to it and then some. EDIT: I'm sorry i didn't glaze the music man the vibe would not be complete with the tunes.

ZPF que dire ? Le jeu serait très fun sans ses petits défauts. Car oui il y en a, les tirs ennemis ce confondent avec les couleurs du level design, c’est pas toujours très clair et punitif de ce fait. Le gameplay est fluide, mais parfois on a l’impression que le vaisseau s’écrase sur l’ennemi on ne sait pas trop pourquoi ?, l’absence d’un full screen total est un moins pour moi. Bref il mérite quelques corrections et améliorations, tel que un choix de difficulté plus adapté à tous joueurs pour être un bon petit shoot. En résumé je le conseille si il y a quelques ameliorations à l’avenir. (Pour le moment je préfère de loin Earthion même si il n’est sans défaut). ZPF what to say? The game would be very fun without its small flaws. Because yes there are, enemy shots are confused with the colors of the level design, it is not always very clear and punitive for this fact. The gameplay is fluid, but sometimes we have the impression that the ship crashes on the enemy we don't really know why?, the absence of a total full screen is a minus for me. In short, it deserves some corrections and improvements, such as a choice of difficulty more adapted to all players to be a good little shoot. In summary, I recommend it if there are some improvements in the future. (For the moment I much prefer Earthion even if it is flawless).

It's good Big problem tho is bullet and enemy visibility; most of the time it isn't a problem but I can imagine certain sections of the game being a complete guessing game if you have the "right" type of color blindness A local leaderboard would be great Game is recent and it was released physically on the Genesis so idk how possible it is or if that's something the devs even want to do but a "1.5" version could be great at some point, I'd like to see this game expanded or at least get more options But as it is, it's good, it's a Genesis game, and clearly not a game that did the bare minimum just to say "hey, it runs on the real stuff"

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