Zoldath

I’m gonna make more of these a day so this doesn’t take me literally 50 days.

This is one of the more important games in the canon of LX Systems, because it is the first appearance of Zoldath, a major setting for their games, the little red UFO that will become their trademark symbol down the way, and its pilot, named… Pilot. Neither the UFO nor Pilot are actually named here. Writing is credited to Gregory Milk, so we can assume he came up with Zoldath and this world, though I think it’s implied it’s also in the board game Smolski and Chun made years ago? Unsure. Anyways, what is Zoldath actually about?

Zoldath

The game starts with you landing on Zoldath in your UFO. You are not given any goals. You are not given any information. All you immediately know is there’s three spaces for… papers? And four different resources of some kind, and you’re being timed. You can’t do anything but run around and explore screens that shift and move like Zelda 1.

Zoldath is incredibly confusing on your first play, but as you actually learn what it’s about and how it works, you’ll find that it’s actually… really shallow, and uninteresting. So basically, you need three pieces of an intergalactic map that are hidden in this world. They can be hidden in a number of ways, and you’ll need different items to obtain them. Often times these items are just lying around, and there’s like 5 of them. Once you discover what every item does and how it can be used to open up the map for more exploring, it all falls into place. Like, using the transmogrifier to turn crystals into meat so they can explode and NOT kill you, or using the transmogrifier to turn yourself small and go through holes, or using the boots to go over acid, or using the boomerand to grab things across pits, or using meat to lure out enemies so you can sneak past them. Lots of options, but none of them are super interesting past that initial “Oh that’s what the game wants me to do” moment.

Zoldath

Each time the game starts, a world is generated. There are like 8 different alien species, and out of those, two are friendly. One needs a translator to talk to. They can give little fun lore tidbits, or trade you items for resources you can find lying around the map. One of the maps will ALWAYS be traded for, so you’ll need to find who trades for what, so you can get good amounts of what the map is traded for, cause they’ll want like 30 of them for it. Also, out of those aliens, a few are chosen to shoot bullets, and one is chosen to fucking EXPLODE when it dies, so you always gotta be careful until you know how every enemy acts.

There’s also a little dungeon, which has a map at the end. The third map piece is usually sitting somewhere in the world, either behind a big invincible enemy, or over a pit. And uh, that’s it. You get those three, blast off, and the game is over. Do it as fast as you can.

I find Zoldath kind of boring and unfun. It’s not BAD or HORRIBLE, I just never have any interest in playing it again. It’s kinda like a VERY mini Zelda, with less fun exploration and worse combat. This world, its characters, and even the ideas within it will be done much better down the way.

4/10

Zoldath