Zarya and the Cursed Skull Demo

Witches are usually depicted as old women in weird clothes always cooking some kind of weird potion in a cauldron, but the subject can be refined for more mature audiences. Magic is a great plot device in fantasy movies and video games, and there’s no shortage of ideas in the genre. On the other hand, people might get bored of wise wizards or evil necromancers.

Zarya and the Cursed Skull is a third-person adventure game with quite a bit of action, in which you play the role of Zarya, a talented young witch facing a variety of dangers in her quest to rescue her friends and save the world. Don’t expect an awful lot of originality in the gameplay department, on the other hand, since the game is about as basic as it gets in the genre.

The story is nothing to write home about either, but at least it’s based on a series of books, so it has quite a few characters and interesting events. Hence, you play the role of a young girl by the name of Zarya, who also happens to possess magic abilities. Naturally, the world is invaded by nasty monsters, so Zarya must defeat them and rescue her friends at the same time.

The gameplay is very straightforward and disappointing in many aspects, given the fact that all you have to do is walk around the environments and defeat enemies. It’s tough to cast the spells in the right direction when there’s no crosshair or mouse controls, especially since you never really know which direction is Zarya facing most of the time, due to the awkward camera positioning.

Speaking of which, the graphics are not bad, but the level design is very disappointing most of the time, given the fact that everything looks the same, depending on the type of environment. It feels like you are exploring the same corridors and locations sometimes, which is not great in a game that should technically feel like an adventure. Lastly, the controls are not particularly snappy either, which only adds to your frustration.

Even if Zarya and the Cursed Skull has more than its share of flaws and mistakes, you can still have a good time with the game if you lower your expectations a little bit and concentrate on the story instead. However, it still needs a lot of work in the level design department, as well as a few gameplay fixes.