Zyconix (Amiga)

Many block dropping puzzlers try to keep their visuals clean and easy to read, meaning sometimes the character of the experience must instead come from the music that accompanies your matching. A calm pensive track or a frantic fast-paced one can change how the player perceives the experience, but Zyconix takes an unusual approach. Rather than having a clear theme that can help give the game a clear personality, every mode in this matching game features a track from a different genre, with it even having different music between its Amiga and DOS releases. It’s an interesting musical experiment to be sure, but it does end up leaving Zyconix as a puzzle game with a bit of a confused identity, something that no doubt lead to its box art grasping at straws by adding music notes to emphasize this unique aspect.

 

The gameplay of Zyconix sees colorful spinning tiles gradually dropping down into a well that is six blocks wide. To help guide the tiles where you want them to be, you need to move your cursor towards them and grab them, after which you’ll be able to maneuver them not just left and right but even pull them upwards if you need to. The moment you let go though the block will plummet, and while you can grab it again if you’re swift, its automatic downward movement will try to yank you down, meaning you can only do the smallest of last minute adjustments. Multiple tiles can be falling into the play field at once, technically making things a bit busier but also giving you a useful tool since you can select the colored tile you desire from the bunch for a good match. By default, a match in Zyconix requires at least three blocks of the same color to be arranged either horizontally or diagonally, the blocks disappearing after and earning you some points. If you desire a tougher experience you can change the minimum match amount to four, five, or even six blocks in a row, but over the course of a run, you’ll also see new colors enter the mix to make matches more difficult to make as well as this block dropping puzzler having the expected gradual increase in speed.

However, while making matches increases the speed level over time, it is a fairly slow climb, it likely taking some time for you to even register there has been an increase in speed. You can choose to start from a somewhat higher speed, the options going all the way up to level 10, but even that doesn’t feel like a large step up from the initial pace. This can lead to the earliest moments of the game feeling rather slow, it all too easy to make simple horizontal matches and not even worry about the possibility of the well getting so full no new piece can enter and you lose. This is likely done to accommodate the matching style though, as it will become gradually more difficult to make matches and if things moved too quickly, you’d likely lose far too early to really get a decent run going. The periodic introduction of new colors and having more tiles fall in at once feel like smart complications to make up for the slow speed of the falling tiles, especially since a growing stack of tiles can be rough to clear out as you either need to start identifying diagonal matches to chip at the lower layers or set up some fairly fancy combos. There is some satisfaction that comes from more elaborate matches because you need to work a bit to line things up right once the game gets going, but the play will reach a point things become almost unmanageable because so many tiles are falling in that it’s hard to ensure your matches line up right.

 

One odd but appreciated idea to spice up the block matching in Zyconix is the occasional appearance of power-ups and special pieces. A clear tile can fall in and serve as a wild card of sorts, matching with any adjacent set of blocks. One special block serves as a grinder of sorts, the player able to destroy pieces they don’t want for as long as the grinder lasts to make matching easier. One of the power-ups you might appreciate a fair bit at first is the one that launches a bouncing metal ball around the play area, breaking any blocks it manages to bounce off of as if it was the ball in Breakout. However, eliminating blocks this way earns no points, so it’s more a survival tool and one that isn’t as useful when you’ve got a mostly clear well and want to start setting up matches. A few other special powers like a spear that will destroy an entire column appear on occasion but not with enough frequency that they constantly shake up the play, often more a neat little surprise than something you can expect or plan around.

Zyconix’s music finally comes into play when you want to play something beyond the standard mode or its two player variation where your matches can send layers of grey blocks to the bottom of the opponent’s play field. The game’s main theme is an in-your-face track that proclaims the game’s name in a funky little number, but the music you’ll listen to when making matches ties directly to how the game will be played. Opening a curious menu with the faces of four characters in it, you’ll be able to select the alternate modes, although the menu doesn’t tell you what the modes are nor does it really hint at the music type very well. Louis with his saxophone at least looks like he’d be a jazz musician so his accompanying track isn’t much of a surprise, Louis being the guy you pick when you want to play regular Zyconix. Dazza, a fellow in a turned cap blowing on a whistle, is meant to represent rave music, his mode having multiple tiles already in the play field which can help skip past some of that all-too-easy early game matching you’d find in the standard mode by giving you a starting goal.

 

Shazza is a soul singer who I initially mistook for a take on Sylvester Stallone thanks to the game’s choice of representing the characters with caricatures, her mode involving a timer that regains time when you make a match. If that timer does get down to zero, you’ll lose, while Spry’s mode instead has a move countdown where grey blocks like the ones from multiplayer appear if you don’t get a match in time, all while a funk track accompanies the matching. Over on DOS we see everyone but Louis (now known as Jazz) swapped out. Classical, represented by a stern older lady, replaces Shazza and soul. A sour looking freckled woman is Dazza’s replacement with the mode called “Lift’s Game”, perhaps because it evokes the kind of music you’d hear in an elevator lift, while a more straightforward blues guitarist represents Spry’s style. The music sounds quite different between both versions, including the main theme and menu music with seemingly different composers between the two versions, DOS getting a more relaxed batch while Amiga’s feel a lot more experimental and energetic. Figuring out the mode screen is a bit of a bother, but the extra options for play can liven up a puzzler that can often feel a bit too straightforward even if they still often can’t help it find a truly effective pace for the action.

THE VERDICT: While its eclectic soundtrack didn’t really need to be tied so closely to the modes each music genre represents, it does give Zyconix something more memorable than its fairly plain color matching play. Matching horizontally and diagonally requires some thought and care and mistakes compound on themselves to add some difficulty, but the tile delivery is often slow enough that it’s not that hard to manage and the extra modes don’t change the base formula enough to find exciting new ways to play. There is still some simple joy to be found in trying to plan out more involved matches and the power-ups are neat if simple ways to break up the typical block dropping, but Zyconix doesn’t make much of a case for why it should be played over other color matching puzzlers.

 

And so, I give Zyconix for Amiga…

An OKAY rating. If you could make vertical matches in Zyconix, it would likely be too easy, but because you can’t make them, the design can’t be pushed too far or else you’d quickly find your matching space clogged with useless tiles. Having options like requiring more pieces for matching sounds like it could have been an effective way of adding in difficulty, but it feels like what holds back this block dropper from being truly addictive is the play speed. When you start having multiple colored tiles dropping in at once and need to place them properly to set up matches, it can’t be made too fast or matches would be too difficult to set up. Because it can’t get effectively frantic though, Zyconix can feel like it’s a little lackluster. Setting up chains of matches is still satisfying to see unfold and the extra modes can provide shakeups that force you into tougher decisions, but the gameplay still runs into the issue that too much pressure causes build-ups that are hard to recover from but too little means you aren’t really engaging the player enough. It’s a little hard to conceive of a way to keep the core matching format intact without straining it with changes, perhaps making it easier to influence lower parts of the stack could lead to more flexible play, but as is, Zyconix does provide some of the fun of trying to quickly arrange matches to survive but can’t rise above the simple joys since a minor imbalance can throw things out of whack. Maybe more impactful or elaborate power-ups might be the easier way to energize things,ones that could more easily impact lower rows in your stack so you can recover from the quicker drop pace that takes a little long to ease into the action.

 

Zyconix was undeniably a bit experimental with its soundtrack, but the experiment of its block matching style shows that as is, it’s not a format with much legs. Zyconix does take some clear inspiration from tile matcher Klax that had come out two years before it, Klax allowing the vertical matches that Zyconix forgoes, and perhaps eliminating them here was an effort to encourage the kind of more worthwhile and thoughtful matches that a puzzle game player usually relies on when they move from playing for mere survival to trying to earn high scores. The elements of Zyconix don’t quite harmonize in the end, but if you are looking for a puzzle that’s a bit outside the norm, it can still provide some interesting moments despite not having the kind of hook that would earn it some true fans.