Tales of Kenzera’s heart-wrenching story proved tougher than its platforming

Tales of Kenzera: Zau is possibly the hardest platformer I’ve ever played — not because the game itself is mechanically difficult, but because my own unwillingness to engage with its themes of grief and loss made it nearly impossible to play and write about.

Tales of Kenzera: Zau is a Metroidvania developed by Surgent Studios and directed by Abubakar Salim, a voice and screen actor turned game developer best known for his work as Bayek in Assassin’s Creed Origins and Father in Raised by Wolves. The game takes place in, well… Kenzera — a lush and richly detailed African fantasy world where shamans shepherd a land full of magic, spirits, and monsters. According to Kenzeran legend, if one is able to return three wayward and powerful spirits to Kalunga, the genteel and grandfatherly god of death, he will grant that person whatever they wish. Enter Zau, a young shaman who is determined to use that wish to return his father’s spirit from death.

Tales of Kenzera has cemented in my mind that platformers are my favorite kind of game. The controls are responsive, so it feels good to move about the world even if Zau’s movement abilities themselves aren’t the most unique. There’s a double jump and a dash but also a lasso that slingshots Zau to great heights, wings that let you ride air currents, and more. Despite these relatively basic powers, Kenzera makes very satisfying use of them. 

The game frequently engaged the “locked-in” feeling I experienced playing Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, challenging me to execute multiple abilities in sequence so I could get to where I needed to be without dying. There was a moment right after obtaining the wings where I needed to ride air currents through a spike-lined cavern. You can’t use your combat powers while gliding at the same time, and the path was often blocked by breakable barriers, requiring me to cancel my wing power, destroy the barrier, but re-engage my wing powers before falling into the insta-kill spikes. It was frustrating, requiring an obscene number of attempts, and I loved every bit of it. 

Conversely, Kenzera has unique combat powers, but combat itself can get rather one-note. Zau has access to two masks that change the nature of his attacks. The sun mask imbues him with the element of fire and gives him powerful melee attacks, while the moon mask is ice-based with ranged attacks. The most fun part of combat is figuring out how to make the two power sets work together. My favorite combo is popping an enemy into the air with my fire powers, then keeping them there, juggling them with a barrage of ice bullets. 

There’s not a lot of enemy variety in the game, however, with most combat encounters consisting of being locked in a room until you defeat successive waves of enemies. Kenzera tries to make up for that simplicity with difficulty. Monsters will often have red or blue health bars that can only be depleted with fire or ice attacks, respectively, which will regenerate over time if the enemy is not dispatched fast enough. In encounters with multiple enemies of multiple elements, it’s hard to focus on just one enemy to kill, allowing other enemies’ armor to regenerate, thus prolonging the fight. Though fights are trivial early on, as tougher enemies are introduced with practically unfair powers like the ability to drain your health at a distance, it can get out of hand.

But part of the game I struggled with the most was its story — it’s too real. Hearing Zau, voiced by Salim, struggle with his grief over his father, it was hard not to relate that to my own grief, and I gotta tell you — I really didn’t want to. I rejected the sympathetic memories that welled up whenever Zau spoke about his memories of his father. I just didn’t wanna go there, afraid of getting mired in all kinds of messy, painful feelings I didn’t have the time or the inclination to process. It made actually playing the game tougher as I got deeper into it because tamping down on those little wellsprings of sorrow made them bubble up at inopportune times. And it’s hard completing platforming puzzles when you can’t see because your glasses are splattered with salty water, y’know?

I didn’t want to get too maudlin writing about Tales of Kenzera: Zau. There were already so many good reviews talking about the grief that birthed the game and how it allowed players to process their own heartache that I didn’t want to retread those waters myself. But when I sat down to write this, thinking about what I felt about this game, what I liked and what I didn’t, the ways in which it left an impression on me, and how best to share those details, all that stubborn resistance finally failed me, and I started bawling. All the personal stories and feelings I rejected playing the game could no longer be denied, rushing back to me in a great wave. I won’t share those stories here. I realize that, in this moment, I am unlike Salim. I do not possess the profound graciousness, selflessness, and strength it takes to share such personal stories — gamified and dressed up as anecdotes of Zau and his father — with millions of people.

When my spell of sorrow passed, playing got easier. It felt like my resistance to just take a moment and deal with everything I tried to ignore was what kept me from doing my job. As Tales of Kenzera and its origins so beautifully hammer home, grief manifests in all kinds of unintended ways, as does healing from that grief. Sometimes, you have to make a game. Other times, you have to write about one.

Tales of Kenzera: Zau is available now on Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, and PC.