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2018/08

Help Me Pronounce Zniw Adventure and Get Her Back to Wajapulka, Please

Today’s title is one for the family, along the lines of edutainment in fact, so expect none of Jeff Goldblum, goats or any of that Jurassic Park hubbub.

Which might be tough considering Zid & Zniw Chronicles: Zniw Adventure is as prehistoric as it gets. Plus, I’m not entirely sure how to pronounce all that yet.

Zniw’s young, feminine, yellow and in search of a present for Ma’s birthday when for some unspecified, unfortunate reason, she finds herself far from what happens to be home in Wajapulka.

As the list of hard to pronounce names continues to grow so do Zniw’s woes as she happens to lack any navigational prowess, has but a few travel brochures and many unruly forest inhabitants for aid, before stumbling onto a major crisis of sorts that comprises the main narrative.

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If you’re getting old Cartoon Network/edutainment Dora The Explorer type of visual flashbacks from the trailer, that’s the hand-drawn frame-by-frame animations forming Zniw Adventure’s 4:3 visuals. The animations themselves appear top-notch, and I’ve been more so impressed by the snippets of FMV-intro that Azure Mountain has been teasing lately.

Unlike Dora The Explorer however the dialogues and script, at least as previewed in the last playable demo, are far from childish. Fun and light-hearted in fact, as you’ll meet more than 20 prehistoric characters across the game’s forests, jungles and caves.

The interface is uncluttered verb-coin in nature; point n’ click over an object of interest, choose your mode of interaction, progress. The course of the game eventually lets you construct a backpack to hold items while you’ll also have to keep an eye on Zniw’s health, given how she’s prone to fainting if not fed between sprints.

Thankfully she’s vegetarian, which seems like a species thing that I’m not entirely familiar with; so Zniw Adventure also maintains an in-game encyclopedia that populates itself with the creatures, items and biomes one might encounter on her journeys.

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There are unlockable rewards to be had as well, in the form of concept art and even 8-bit dinosaur mini-games, to keep the adventure varied. All this now with a valid Steam page.

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