Back for round three

Clash: Artifacts Of Chaos devs tell us how they’re welcoming contenders new and old to Zenozoik

After nine years, Ace Team is returning to where it all began. Clash: Artifacts Of Chaos will debut this year and follows a fighter called Pseudo as he searches for the relics of the title. His journey begins in earnest when he vows to protect The Boy, a strange, frail creature who looks like a plume of black feathers with large yellow eyes. The pair journey across a place called Zenozoik, Ace Team’s established, surreal setting.

In 2009’s Zeno Clash, PC gamers were introduced to a world where their fists did the talking. You don’t need to have played that game or its sequel to enjoy Artifacts Of Chaos, which is why it won’t be called Zeno Clash 3, but it’s informed by everything that came before, including the team’s first foray into this setting, an unreleased prototype that is itself called Zenozoik. Using Jupiter, an iteration of Monolith’s LithTech Engine, Zenozoik took inspiration from a variety of sources, such as the punk fantasy art of adventure gamebooks like Steve Jackson’s Sorcery!, the architecture of Antoni Gaudí, and the painted hellscapes of Hieronymous Bosch. Zenozoik never saw the light of day beyond a few clips released online but it laid the foundations for Zeno Clash, a series that followed warrior Ghat as he explored the land and got to know its denizens through first-person fist fights.