X-YZE
A downloadable game for Windows, macOS, and Linux
X-YZE (pronounced "excise") is a bump combat action game with a mysterious short story.
CLICK FOR CONTENT WARNINGS (a little spoilery)
psychological manipulation, anxiety, panic attacks, gender/body/identity dysphoria, depression, dissociation, mild body horror, suicidal ideationFEATURES
- Play as a creature!
- Bump combat
- Mostly linear servers (aka levels), each with unique types of daemons (aka non-boss enemies) / hazards / etc and a boss fight at the end
- Unlockable arcade mode (includes server and boss practice)
- 2-4hr playtime, depending on playstyle (less than 1hr is viable in arcade mode)
- ~3k words of a mysterious short story, delivered in small doses throughout and between servers
- Keyboard and gamepad support
- All original music, sound effects, and art
MECHANICS
- BUMP COMBAT - No attack button. Just walk into daemons to attack automatically.
- DASH - Just as useful for offense as for evasion.
(NOTE: Dash not unlocked at start of game)
- DIAGONAL MOVEMENT IS FASTER - Yes, I know how to normalize my vectors. No, I will not normalize my vectors.
- ATTACK GAUGE - Your attacks charge up the gauge and therefore increases your damage; but even 1 hit from a daemon resets it!
- DAEMON & SERVER VARIETY - The player mechanics have depth, but they are fairly simple. The spice comes from how those mechanics interact with the daemon and server design.
CONTROLS
KEYBOARD:
- Arrow keys / WASD: Move
- Z / Spacebar: Dash, Confirm, Advance text
- Esc: Pause, Skip text
GAMEPAD:
- D-pad / Left stick: Move
- Bottom / Left face buttons: Dash, Confirm, Advance text
- Start: Pause, Skip text
NOTE: Dash is not unlocked at the start of the game
BONUS STUFF
The game is free, but you can get some goodies if you pay certain amounts...
- SERVER & DAEMON GUIDE - 35-page PDF full of tips & blurbs about each server and daemon in the game. Includes exclusive illustrations by Alix of every daemon!
- CONCEPT ARTBOOK - 15-page PDF showcasing concept art from throughout development, plus some scrapped stuff. Includes commentary from Alix!
- LEVEL DESIGN NOTEBOOK SKETCHES - Folder of level design notebook sketches from as early as Feb, 2024 (1 month into development).
- GAME TRANSCRIPT - Simple PDF containing the full text of the game.
- All the sound effects I made for the game, plus some unused ones.
- 150 sound effects, 44.1k / 16-bit WAV format.
- Royalty-free, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
CREDITS
CHRIS LOGSDON: Game design, programming, music & SFX, writing, logo, most in-game art, most daemon character design, character design for 1 boss, Server & Daemon Guide
ALIX LYTTON: Player character design, most boss character design, dialogue portrait art, cover art, character design for 3 of the daemons, Concept Artbook, feedback + testing + proofreading
JACOB ALBANO: Some tools dev
PLAYTESTERS: Alix Lytton, azalea evergreen, John Thyer, Melos Han-Tani, NARFNra, Polly, Seth Prestwich, Sraëka Lillian, Thomas "jetstorm4" L.
SOUNDFONTS: stgiga; CliffyJiffy, Kaiden; jsw11jsw, VentusArranger; HandlebarOrionX; Joo
FONTS: EquipmentPro, yolk_6 by somepx; monogram by datagoblin; NotJamSciMono13, NotJamSlabSerif11 by Not Jam; m3x6, m5x7 by Daniel Linssen
INSPIRATIONS
I plan to write in more detail about all of this in the future, but here are some highlights...
- Bump combat: Ys I and II, Angeline Era, Sylvie RPG: 7 Elf Apocalypse
- Various mechanics: Many shmups of old
- Aesthetics: Mega Man Battle Network, Phantasy Star Online, Summer Wars, Digimon, PC-88 era HUDs
- Music: Too many to list here, but in general I tried to only listen to non-mainstream non-video-game music while composing the OST
- Touhou very much informed the pace I dole out story
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- [MINOR UPDATE] v1.02 (actually kinda big)4 days ago
- [DEV DIARY] Composing X-YZE9 days ago
- Mac M1 Compatibility13 days ago
- [MINOR UPDATE] v1.0116 days ago
Comments
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Really neat, unique game! The intimate narrative brought a few favorites to mind but overall I’ve still never played something quite like it. Partly because this was my first time experiencing bump combat so it was interesting learning a system that focuses so heavily on positioning. The music and the punchy sound design/feedback is great and it was fun seeing all the cute enemy sprites (I think Drillady is my fave ^^). I do feel there was quite a difficulty spike in the third server, though I appreciate the difficulty customization options. Still, I would say I enjoyed the first half more as I was enjoying the moderate challenge and figuring out the puzzle of each room, and I think if save points were just a bit more frequent and some of the late-game sections were a little less chaotic I would have stuck with the default difficulty throughout. That said, the bosses were the highlight of the game for me overall, especially the final one which was genuinely such an inventive design that was a blast to learn! Also all the bonus concept art stuff rocks!
Won in a little over two hours of playtime! Absolutely adored this chris, amazing work. Constantly cried out "holy shit that's some Game Design" at every new enemy/setpiece. The cathartic finale ruled but my number one favorite part might be the twist to the arbiter fight and how it ties into the rest of the level, really thrilling and well-done. Pitch-perfect music and sound design too. Excited to try out arcade mode and peruse more of the lovely bonus materials!!
Edit: I see there was already a version update that I missed that may have addressed the softlock and other issues. Downloading it now.
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I'm currently about 4.5 hours into the game and reached a level where everything is extremely dark and doesn't show well on my capture card. From there, I wasn't entirely sure what to do.
There also seems to be a soft bug where using the thumbstick to move on gamepad can occasionally cause the pause menu to bug out and not activate or fail to close when pressing the start button. This doesn't seem to happen with the dpad at all.
I also encountered a softlock where the switches seem to half-reset such that they're visible but non-interactable. When I went to take a clip of that, locks reactivated putting me in a softlock. https://www.twitch.tv/annmwhite/clip/SillyFantasticDunlinDxAbomb-CRpwsKnUa_e-FzD...
If it helps, I'm running the Linux build via Steam Deck.
Thanks for playing!
Yep, that softlock with the switches has been fixed with the 1.01 update.
As for the pause menu/thumbstick issue, I’m not sure… I had one person playtesting on Steam Deck, and they did have issues with the gamepad not being recognized, and that some gamepad inputs would pass through to the OS, such as the left face button opening the OS on-screen keyboard. We never entirely figured out the reason for this, and we hadn’t encountered the issue you’re describing. Some of their issues were fixed when they ran the game via Steam rather than via desktop. Which way are you running it?
Someone else, playing on Windows and with gamepad, seemed unable to pause at all. I’m wondering if this is all related…
Please do report back if you learn any more details!
I played the game entirely through the main Steam Big Picture gaming mode rather than desktop mode. I used Desktop mode exclusively for copying the files to the Steam Deck and adding it as a Non-Steam game.
It's possible to get the weird non-pausing behavior as early as the very first room of the game by rapidly rotating the stick and mashing start a lot. When this is happening, the pause sound can be heard, but the menu doesn't display / doesn't close.
https://www.twitch.tv/annmwhite/clip/SpineyAnnoyingCroissantNononoCat-JxJXU3ecbL...
Oh! Also there was an additional issue where during a longer session where I was switching across multiple gamepads, the stick input got bugged such that it acted as if the directions were being briefly/rapidly tapped.
https://www.twitch.tv/annmwhite/clip/TemperedPolishedTroutFeelsBadMan-JE_2pxr0v9...
(Not visible via the built in input display, but I'm holding the stick tilted.)
I think this is a Godot bug rather than an X-YZE bug because I've encountered the same behavior in Brotato, and likewise the only solution I have for it there is to close and relaunch the game.
Oh and when you say the dark level doesn’t show well on your capture card, are you referring to the contrast between background and level, or something else? Would you be able to show a screenshot?
The darkness thing might entirely a problem with my vision and my hardware setup. On my main monitor I could sorta see the layout of the ground if I stood up rather than sat down, but on my other monitors, it was almost entirely dark except the specifically lit areas and the ?snow?.
Steam Deck Background Recording: revelromp.com/x-yze/dark1.mp4
Capture Card Recording: revelromp.com/x-yze/dark2.mp4
A photo, which probably doesn't help much: two.png On the top, the path I came from going downwards is still kinda visible. On the monitor I was seeing the screen from, that was pretty much all black.
One of the viewers was able to see the snow, but said it looks solid: https://www.twitch.tv/annmwhite/clip/AnimatedAdventurousSwordMoreCowbell-St4bSII...
Basically, if the floor, spikes, switches, etc are meant to be visible, it's really really hard to see? Which I kinda assumed may have been the point.
Oh wow, yeah the way it looks in that capture card recording is way darker than intended. You're supposed to be able to just barely (but still reasonably) make out the silhouette of the level against the BG, but it looks like the BG shows up as basically just full black.
I'll figure something out to address that. Maybe a config menu setting that boosts the brightness of that BG specifically... maybe an outline around the level... will have to think about it.
Just uploaded an update (V 1.02) that should fix the pause weirdness with controller, plus adds a setting to boost the brightness of the PUR background. Many other things too, but hopefully the bugs you experienced are taken care of now. Thanks again for letting me know about them and tracking down some of the repro steps!
Coolbeans, thanks so much for working on addressing those issues and thanks again for making and sharing a game!
I cant seem to run this on Linux is there any way to open it?
I don’t have a Linux machine so I can’t directly test it myself. Can you provide more info on what’s happening?
The Linux binary is contained in an additional zip file inside the main zip file and you'll have to extract both to run the game. From there you can either run the shell script or the binary directly. You may have to manually mark those files as executable.
thank you! it now works.
Great work! Finished the game in roughly 3 hours total and had a good time with it. I've left much (maybe too much) more detailed feedback along with a rating of the game, but I also wanted to leave a public comment. The bonus material is nice as well, it's always fun to read about the processes behind a game's development.
Thank you! Nice to hear a bit about the bonus material c:
I am LOVING this game so far!! Got through three levels, and it has been fun! There's a lot of mystery that I just can't wait to make to end and figure out the full picture.
I'm very happy to hear this! Nice job on the 3 levels. Good luck with the remaining ones!
X-YZE's combat is so much fun & the story makes me cry!! Usually my wrist keeps me from playing games like this long-term, but the gameplay settings helped me find a way to adjust where I could complete the game comfortably!
I love this game with all my heart & I'm so grateful to be a part of bringing it to life 💖 Thank you for making X-ZYE!! Bumpy game forever!!!
<3 <3