HEAVY METAL
Zero- K is a free RTS featuring deformable terrain, enormous battles and more robots than you’ll know what to do with.
Reminiscent of strategy games like Supreme Commander and Total Annihilation, Zero-K is an entertaining RTS developed by a team of volunteers and released for free on Steam. It’s a passion project which has earned a dedicated following, and it’s not uncommon for fans of the game to become involved in its development. Anyone who wants to support the game can make a donation via Steam, which keeps it clear of free-to-play clutter. There are only the faintest flickers of story in Zero-K, but it’s a game whose action needs no justification beyond the fact that thousands of robots fighting for control of a map is really fun. The focus is squarely on the strategy, and it’s refreshing to play a game that does away with all the usual cinematic pomp in favor of pure play. There’s a campaign with around 70 missions that has you conquering a series of planets, but even here the narrative is slight to the point of nonexistence. The early campaign acts as a tutorial, drip-feeding you the game’s systems until it yanks the stabilizers away and leaves you to fend for yourself.
Zero-K is enjoyably fast-paced, and has you churning out robots and buildings at a blistering pace. Your commander, a hulking great mech, is the starting point for your army, able to build factories that produce an array of different robot units. Shield bot factories let you build hardy units such as the Rogue, a rocket-firing skirmisher, the Thug, a shielded assault bot, and the Outlaw, which unleashes an area-of-effect EMP blast. This factory can also create inexpensive throwaway units called Dirtbags designed specifically to get in the enemy’s way, leaving terraindeforming mounds of dirt in their wake when they’re inevitably destroyed.
Terrain deformation, incidentally, is one of Zero-K’s coolest features. Hammer an area with artillery fire, and tanks will struggle to move through the craters. Raise defensive laser turrets on pillars of rock to keep them out of reach of mechs looking to destroy them. Or sculpt a ramp to access a base on higher ground. The results of your reshaping of the terrain are ugly, but the strategic possibilities it opens up are immense. And because the game uses projectile physics, a chunk of earth can be raised to provide cover for vulnerable units in a pinch.
Build a Jump Plant and you can manufacture mechs with jumpjets, which can leap out of the way of enemy fire or navigate past playermade terrain. The Pyro is a fastmoving bipedal walker with a flamethrower and a jetpack that allows it to leap over obstacles. Skuttles are cheap bombers that can be cloaked and latched onto heavy units. And this is just a tiny taste of the 100-plus land, sea, and air units available. The variety of their movement styles, abilities, strengths, and weaknesses makes for a rich and versatile strategy game, and one it’ll take a while to get your head around.
BACK TO BASICS
Zero-K lacks the glossy production values of games like StarCraft and Homeworld, but there’s a charm to the lo-fi visuals, reminiscent of the early days of the 3D RTS. But when a battle escalates to the later stages it looks every bit as impressive as its peers. Watching the battlefield crawling with thousands of warring units is quite a sight, and you can seamlessly pull the camera up to a tactical overview, which makes managing all those units easier.
While you can enjoy playing the game solo against the AI, which does a good job of seeming cautiously human, never unfairly steamrolling you, Zero-K was designed as a multiplayer game first and foremost. Thus you’ll get the most out of it by playing online, and many of the frequent incremental game updates have unit balance in mind. This is an incredibly generous experience, with no gaudy, invasive shopfronts or in-game currencies stinking the whole thing up. It’s classy as hell, and I can see a lot of players donating through Steam to reward the developers for their tireless work on the game. Turn-based is the strategy du jour on PC, and so it’s heartening to see such a quality RTS released on Steam—especially given it doesn’t cost a penny.
The variety makes for a rich and versatile strategy game