The Black Cube series' Zly.ii: The Hacked Station remastered and soon to be re-released

• Announcements by Jack Allin
• Published:

Enhanced commercial remake of former game jam sci-fi puzzler coming soon to itch.io and Game Jolt

It's been a few years since we've had a new Black Cube sci-fi puzzler from indie French developer Simon Mesnard of Simon Says: Watch! Play!, unless you count last year's Zly.ii: The Hacked Station, a free entry in a game jam created to commemorate the franchise's ten-year anniversary. It's possible you missed it at the time, but soon you'll have a second chance as the game is being remastered with hi-res graphics in a new commercial re-release. 

You play an astronaut who has been invited to the Table of the TSP (Terran Space Pirates). The TSP is a revolutionary organization formed to oppose the power-hungry government and industry leaders who seek to deny the existence of other civilizations and their advanced technology, including the mysterious Black Cubes first discovered in 2057 in orbit around Terra. Your assignment is of a more personal nature, however, as your friend and fellow TSP member Tacstru Aglione has gone missing while in pursuit of just such a Black Cube, an "alien artefact with various powers." All that's known of her secret mission is that she had traveled to Tytaah, a moon in the Catyph planetary system, where she used the Kunci, a "kind of stargate" that allows teleportation to different worlds. Following in her footsteps, you emerge through the portal in an "old Anterran space station" with no way to return the way you came. It's now up to you to find your friend, hopefully retrieve the Black Cube she was seeking, and discover a way to get both of you home safely, which may not be easy as you feel a "hostile presence" watching your every move. 

While those who have played earlier Black Cube games (ASA: A Space Adventure, Catyph: The Kunci Experiment, Boinihi: The K'i Codex, Myha: Return to the Lost Island) will find common story elements that enrich the experience, no prior series familiarity is needed to jump straight into Zly.ii. As with most games in the series, this one is a first-person point-and-click adventure with fixed movement between panoramic nodes. A modest production created "as a way to thank the fans of the Black Cube series" and expected to take between 4-8 hours to complete, the remastered version is largely identical to the freeware original but with newly upgraded HD graphics and enhanced sound, along with various other technical and quality-of-life improvements rather than a large-scale, large-budget remake. So Riven, it is not, but fans of the series can expect more of Mesnard's thoughtful puzzles "in the continuation of the Black Cube classics, requiring you to explore, observe, understand and take notes with paper and pen," all wrapped up in a "a retro sci-fi vibe."

While no firm target release date has been announced just yet, Zly.ii: The Hacked Station is not far off, expected to launch sometime in late August or early September in English and French for Windows PC. If you'd like to try out the original freeware version in the meantime, you can download the game jam entry from itch.io or Game Jolt. And if you can't get enough sci-fi puzzling, there's a veritable library of Black Cube games awaiting, which you can learn more about through the series' official website.