The Z Axis Continuum

Review

This is always a bright light at the end of the tunnel, they say! This expression can be used in so many ways to make you persist in a situation you are currently in. In this case, there is a little fellow who wants to reach the bright light, but for this to happen, he most rotate his world constantly to reach doors, portals, and activation points on walls and ceilings to finally reach the light within the Z Axis Continuum!

The Z Axis Continuum is a 2D puzzle/platformer game developed and published by Lazerpants Studios, where you control a little fellow who needs to reach the bright light as fast as possible within each level.

The game consists of 30 stages to clear. While the first few levels are pretty much a short tutorial to get the feel of the game, it will become progressively harder as you move on.

All the levels are designed as symmetrical structures made of squares and rectangles, subtly backlit against a background of solid colour, producing an illusion of depth.  In the middle, you ‘ll find your character and a white light somewhere else within the structure. While you can control your character with the right and left arrow keys on your keyboard, or the stick on your gamepad, you can also rotate the world by 90 degrees with the z and c keys or the buttons on your gamepad.  View the level with the WASD keys, or zoom in and out with the home and end keys on your keyboard. This is particularly helpful when you reach larger levels later on.

Really quickly, levels will be filled with rectangles of various colours; the large rectangles will represent doors, while small ones of the same colour are activation points for opening doors. The white rectangles are portals and will transport your fellow from one place to another. It can become really tricky when you have several of them within a stage. Yes, your character can jump, but not so high as to reach the portal or the activation point located above him. So, it’s time for you to rotate the world by 180 degrees to access it – yippee - you’ve just activated a door, or you’ve been transported into another location within the level!  However, what if the activation point that opens the door where your fellow is trapped is located outside his confined area?  Well, it’s time to find out if there is a loose square or circle floating around as you rotate the world upside down. Rotate the world to move it towards the activation point to open the door.  But beware, as you rotate the level, your character might fall towards what was previously a wall or ceiling, and there may be spikes on them.  Mind you, sometimes dying might be part of the puzzle, but not always. There are more elements that will come in as you progress through the game, but I’ll let you discover them for yourself.

I must say that this game is very interesting to play and will give your brain a nice workout.

Nice graphics and the levels are well-structured.  It would have been nice to be able to save your progress.  I have not yet finished the game, and it is a bit annoying to have to restart and do it all over again until you reach the level you want.  Yes, you can try to do it faster, but there is no leaderboard, and therefore no incentive to do so.