Tales of Kenzera: Zau

I think Tales of Kenzera is a good game. A solid 8/10. I want to put that out there because I have no idea where the rest of this writeup is going, so I’m going to mention that early.

It’s also on sale for $8 until the 11th, which feels like a pretty decent deal if you’re looking for something to play through just to get back into the swing of things.

Why do I have no idea where the rest of this writeup is going? Well, because there are a billion different lenses I could take to look at Tales of Kenzera, but none of them feel like they have enough depth.

For example, the entire reason I bought this game wasn’t because I wanted a mid-range Metroidvania carried more by its combat than its exploration. I bought it because it was pissing of a bunch of racists, and won a few awards. So maybe there’s a culture war thing going on?

No. There really isn’t. There’re no “woke” themes or ideas. There’s just black people. Because the game is set in Africa, and is inspired by Bantu legends. Okay, so maybe there’s an interesting lens there. Can I look at how the game reflects the stories it’s based on?

Well, again, that’s kind of a “No”, because the “Bantu peoples” are made up of 400+ distinct groups, and 350 million people. It’s true that I once read Atlas Shrugged so that could I understand Bioshock better, but I don’t even know where I’d start in this case.

So maybe I’ll just try to talk about the gameplay, and be content with that.

Gameplay

Tales of Kenzera is a light Metroidvania. It’s also a fairly short game. Based on the in-game clock, I 100%’ed the game on challenging (second hardest difficulty) in about 8 hours.

As a Metroidvania, I give it mixed marks on the puzzle platforming. Extra exploration is useful for grabbing upgrades, but never necessary. More importantly, side areas with upgrades or paths are almost never actually locked off. Instead, they tend to be unlocked with whatever power you got in that zone. The platforming itself, even in the challenge zones, is also not particularly hard, and only ever frustrating.

So how about the combat? Well, the combat is great!

Okay, I have a few caveats. Let’s talk about it.

Tales of Kenzera’s core gimmick is the ability to switch between a fire and an ice mask. Fire is melee, ice is ranged. Fire gets heavy attacks with knockup and light attacks that chain, while ice gets a ranged attack and one that can deflect projectiles. For the first third of the game, that’s pretty much it.

Except then you get the grappling hook, which changes functionality based on the mask you’re wearing. Fire mask lets you pull yourself to enemies, ice lets you pull enemies to you. This was where everything clicked for me. All of a sudden I could just throw myself into the air at flying enemies, or pull ranged enemies over pits of spikes.

Then you get a charge blast: effectively, a third jump that can be angled, and suddenly combat is a kinetic, joyful brawl. It’s at this point, the game goes from good to great, as you pinball around, launching off enemies, smashing into them, and just generally having a good time.

It’s just a shame that this happens after it seems like most people have stopped playing.

Not all the combat is great. The bosses, while interesting as spectacles, feel quite wonky. The final boss is especially janky, but the first and third are just a ton of fun.

Grab Bag

The credits are a full on 15-ish minutes, of which 57 seconds are the actual dev team for the game. It feels weird. Also, they list the translators last at like 11 minutes, which feels like another kick in the balls for folks who did real work.

There’s a weird tone of EA-ification present as well. Things like too many trademark symbols that feel unnecessary, and tutorials that feel a bit much at times.

The final secret unlock is big head mode? For some reason? Not sure if it’s a cool throwback, or they ran out of time to give a better reward.

Overall

It might sound like I’m a bit harsh on the game, and I kind of am? But the thing is, even after finishing the game, I found myself going back to finish the rest of the optional challenges, and just 100% the whole thing. And for at least of a moment of that, it was because I wanted to fight more enemies. I wanted to play more!

I don’t think there’s a higher recommendation I can give than that.

Deltarune – Chapter 3 & 4

Toggle blocks contain spoilers. You have been warned.

I wrote about Deltarune back in 2022, but here we are in 2025 with 2 more chapters that I finished in about 10 hours straight last night.

It’s always hard to know what to say about Deltarune, and by some extension Undertale. As far as games go, I feel like you either enjoy things from a surface level, or go full Pepe Silvia. There is no in-between.

In that sense, then, the points I made three years ago still stand. The music slaps, the writing is great, and the actual mechanics and gameplay have continued to evolve in interesting ways, pushing the mini-game and bullet hell formula even further than before, as has the out of combat traversal.

Absurdity and Sincerity

I’ve been struggling to put my finger on why I feel like other games that imitated Mother and Undertale haven’t quite succeeded. The premier example of this is Knuckle Sandwich, but Athenian Rhapsody runs into some of the same issues.

All of these games trade on absurdity and weirdness as defining aesthetic traits. This can be strange characters, stories, items, or whatever. But at the same time, they’re trying to be heartfelt, sincere, and meaningful. This is a difficult balance to strike. And often the other games fail because in order to do this sort of thing, you need to commit to the bit.

Chapter 3 of Undertale follows the story of a television consumed by fear that it will be thrown away because no one watches it anymore, uses it, or plays games on it. Fear that it’s old and unloved.

Its goal seems to be preventing the player from ever leaving or giving up: from escaping. But it’s a real, human fear given to an inanimate object. Now, in the big picture, it’s complicated why no one is watching the television anymore. But this chapter’s absolutely gonzo section of puzzles, games, and just general weirdness (including fighting a water cooler) is driven by this sincere emotional beat.

And again, we’re talking about a television here.

And I think this is why Deltarune works. Even when its characters aren’t human, their feelings are. The problem with absurdity is that so often it’s used to ignore consequences and responsibility. “LOL random” humor is at some level as disposable as a dream, as transient as a breeze. And that disposability is the opposite of meaning.

For an action to mean something, it must have a consequence. It must have weight. I think this is what Mother and Undertale understand, but that their imitators only grasp for brief moments.

All that said, the other comment I do have is that I think a friend of mine who decided to wait until the full game is out might have made the right choice. Apparently 50% of the game is currently available, and while it’s incredible, it’s also deeply unsatisfying to know I’m going to have to wait at least 6-8 months minimum for more story.

I’m also really hoping the chapter based design of the game doesn’t lead to the final project feeling disconnected and incomplete. Chapter 3 is a massive bit of tonal whiplash, at least in the moment. It’s not a bad thing, I just wouldn’t want 5 more chapters just doing that.

Anyway. Deltarune. Incredible game. Love it. Really hope it finishes development before 2030, the death of democracy, and/or the end of the world.

Some quick thoughts on AI in the workplace

Or
This is the sort of thing I would put on LinkedIn if I cared at all about LinkedIn

I got an email this morning informing me that I was only using 3 of the 4 AI tools that have been made available to my company at the expected rate, and I would need to begin using the fourth, and my mind immediately went to XKCD 2899.

The idea of tracking AI usage actually makes sense to me, but as a metric, not a target. Tracking it as a target implies to me a certain level of buy in, belief in the assumption that this stuff makes you more productive at your job. And I’m not actually convinced that’s true for me.

Information Sourcing and CYA

My primary issue with AI in a professional setting (please don’t confuse it with my personal opinion) is that it does very little that’s actually useful for me. I can think of one general use for the stuff that I use willingly, and it’s a internal RAG bot.

Why do I like this RAG bot? Simple, it lists all it’s sources, and it’s hooked up in such a way that it’s better at searching our documentation (internal and client facing) then any other tool. But I don’t automatically trust it’s summaries.

I’m working on an internal cross-team project at the moment with a fair number of my co-workers, and I was a bit surprised to see them treating information from this bot fairly credulously.

I like these people. I trust their judgement in their areas of expertise.

But I will walk barefeet across broken glass before I quote a price to customer in the seven fucking figure range for a feature because an AI told me it was accurate without double checking that shit first.

And I suppose this is why I don’t like workplace AI much. If it screws up, (and as of 2025, this stuff DOES screw up) its ass doesn’t get fired. Mine does.

And I do not trust a bunch of rushed to market, hype driven, LLM’s with my personal job security.

So going back to that opening point: I’ll use our AI tools. But for most of them, I’ll be using them because I’m required to, not because they solve a business problem or need I have.

He Is Coming

There are two types of games that will make me break out a spreadsheet. The first is the sort where there’s so much information, and I’m so invested in the game that I need external storage space. My brain has a lot of things in it, and only so much of it can be ciphers and codes.

The second is a game where I have become so frustrated by continual failure and by design choices that I either do not understand, do not agree with, or some combination of both that I intend to dissect the game to the best of my ability.

He Is Coming is one of the second.

Long time readers may have picked up that my write-ups are a bit formulaic. In part one, I introduce my feelings about a game (done that!). In part 2, I give a general overview of a game, mention its genre, and set up for the rest of the write-up. That’s where we are now, but I actually disagree with He Is Coming on what type of game it is.

He Is Coming calls itself a roguelite RPG auto battler. I take issue with two of those three labels, but as for why, let’s talk about how the game works.

At the start of a new run, the player spawns into a gridded map that they can explore. The map has a fog of war effect, so exploring reveals more of the map.

There are a few special types of things on the map, but the main two are opening chests, and fighting monsters.

(Side note: I’m glossing over the map, and the day/night cycle, and few other things, because they’re not very relevant to my main pain point with the game. I will say that the map is almost entirely an input only sort of thing. E.g. items you pick up almost never affect it.)

Monster battles are auto-battles. There isn’t too much to say here, as the combat is straight forward, and takes place automatically with zero player input. There are four combat stats: health, attack, armor, and speed. Both players and monsters have these stats. Attack is how much damage you deal per strike, health is much damage you can take, armor is a temporary health bar that refills after battles, and speed is who gets to go first.

When you defeat a monster, you get one gold.

There is a bit more complexity to this and how it interacts with items, but I’m not going to touch on it for now, because it’s not as relevant as items.

Chests are the standard 3-pick-1 roguelite item acquisition thing. They tend to spawn next to a single monster, but you don’t need to defeat that monster to open a chest.

The Problem

While I haven’t covered all the game’s features or mechanics yet, I’ve laid out enough to generally describe the “problem” I have with He Is Coming, and it has to do with the bosses at the end of the run.

A run in He Is Coming lasts 3 days. At the end of each day, you fight a mini-boss. At the end of day 3, you fight the zone boss. These zone bosses are always the same boss, and have much, much higher health pools and more difficult gimmicks than the mid-bosses.

Let’s start with Leshen and the Woodland Abomination as an example.

These are the two forms of the final boss of zone 1. He has far more health than any of the mini-bosses, and he hits much, much, harder then any of them. The end result is that the only way to beat him is to aggressively go over the top, and somehow have a higher armor+life total and higher attack than he does.

Here’s a (incomplete) list of weapons available in the Forest Zone. For the purposes of this discussion, just look at the Effective Attack column.

Forest WeaponsBase AttackEffective AttackNotes
Boom Stick24
Brittlebark43
Elderwood12
Featherweight23
Heart Drinker12
Hidden Dagger23Weird One
Ironstone Greatsword45
Razorthorn14Weird One
Redwood Rod23
Spearshield12
Sword of Hero36Set Item
Woodcutter12No really, you cannot build around this.
Battle Axe23Lesh has no armor
Bejeweled112Bad idea
Bloodmoon Dagger28Must get wounded for cap
Bloodmoon Sickle56Take 1 each turn

And here is the problem: The vast majority of these weapons are under 7 attack in a best case scenario. To win this fight, it’s almost entirely necessary to go over the top. Most of the pool simply cannot do that, starting much, much lower than required.

In short, most of these items are strategic traps.

Roguelites as a genre tend to be about working with you have, trying to make the best decision at any given point in time.

But the end bosses in He Is Coming break that design philosophy. They are so powerful that they close out entire sets of items and strategy designs, as those strategies simply cannot beat them. So instead of making the “best” choice, or trying different builds, I found it necessary to aggressively pre-plan and force a build to defeat them.

Here’s another example of this: the second zone boss, Swampland Hydra.

As you can see, I have died to this guy a LOT.

This writeup is already pretty long, so I won’t mince words here: I died a lot to the Hydra, before finally discovering a weapon that lets you remove status effects on yourself.

This led me to create a build that uses a status effect called Purity that heals and buffs on removal, and the aforementioned weapon to remove Purity and finally get a kill on this boss. Without using this strategy, the Hydra it builds up too many stacks of different types, and it simply felt impossible to win.

I cannot envision another build to do this. I’m sure it exists. But I’d have to look at every item in the pool, consider how to acquire them, pre-plan the build, and finally execute on it.

I don’t want to do that. I find roguelites fun when I can salvage a run from dumpster, or use knowledge to play around bad luck. But the bosses in He Is Coming just feel over tuned to the point that playing that way can never actually win.

One Other Possibility

I am open to the idea that I am just an idiot. That I have missed a critical portion of this game, or a core mechanic, or something that breaks this whole thing wide open. I know for a fact that I misunderstood how poison worked for almost 5 hours of playtime, leading to an incredibly frustrating loss.

But if I am, I don’t think I’m the only one.

Only about 40% of players have beat the first zone, with 8% beating the second. If I’m just stupid, I’m missing something, so are the vast majority of players.

I made the spreadsheet and those tables and the rest of this garbage because I wanted to see if I was missing something. I wanted to discover if I was misunderstanding a mechanic that would become clear if I just had a slightly bigger brain. A bit more external storage.

I don’t think I am.

Okay, but despite all of this, I actually really like the systems in He Is Coming

So, I’ve spent a lot of time so far discussing how He Is Coming forces a specific style of strategic play in order achieve victory, and how I don’t like that. Which is a bit unfortunate, because it means I’m not talking about the game’s interesting systems, or clever items.

My favorite set of items are probably the instruments, a set of items with the Symphony keyword, meaning that when one of them triggers, all the others trigger as well. It’s a fun idea, making it a bit of shame that they can’t do anything useful.

The backpack is also very neat.

Items trigger from left to right, and top to bottom, meaning it’s possible to set things up to resolve in clever ways. It’s another neat little system, though one I wish was a bit more meaningful to more builds.

Conclusion

I like most of the systems in He Is Coming, but right now I just can’t recommend it because of how it feels to play. It’s in early access, which means things might change, but it also means that they might not.

It’s not the worst thing I’ve ever played, but I’m left wishing it was something a bit different. In that sense, it actually reminds of Loop Hero, not just because both have the ye-olde CRT style, but because of the gap between the experience I was hoping for, and the experience I got is wider than I would have liked.

He is Coming is $15 on Steam. If you love the idea of a sort of puzzle roguelite, analyzing builds, and manipulating systems, you might love it. As for me, I’ve had my fill for the moment.

$5 is $5 Dollars

Or “Class Action Lawsuits are Weird”

Earlier today I got an email informing me that I was a member in a class action lawsuit against Gamestop. Technically this wasn’t the first email, but I pretty much ignored the other one.

The actual law being broken has something to do with the VPPA, surrounding disclosure of “video store rental records.” I won’t even pretend to understand it, or why it exists. But it’s a law that’s been around longer then I have, and it seems to have nothing but a technical relationship with the grounds Gamestop was sued on.

The longer I live, the more I find myself wondering if we don’t already live in a dystopia. Sure, it’s not a dystopia for me, but just because you’re closer to the top of the heap doesn’t mean the world isn’t broken.

I’m not exactly dissuaded when I get notices like this.

“Your rights have been violated by a mega-corporation without your knowledge. Please provide information validating your existence, and $5 will be deposited into your account. You may instead elect to receive a $10 voucher to the corporation that performed the violation.”

All it’s lacking to really cross the line into full on cyberpunk territory is an opening that starts with something like “Greetings Citizen!”, and some extra neon.

It’s very rare that I feel like I’m actually living in “the future.” The only real time it’s happened other than this was when I rode in a Tesla a few years back, and saw its self-driving functionality.

This felt like a step in the opposition direction. “Your rights were violated, have a soda” is a far less enjoyable universe than self-driving cars made by a man who seems to want to be a Bond villain.

Anyway, I filled out the survey. $5 is $5.