Zyconix

Zyconix will take your evening hour and return it as a mosaic of obstructing blocks. Simple to dull graphics convince you right away that this won't be any visual experience—but that's not the point. It's about your head.

It's a logic arcade from 1992 created by a group of programmers now forgotten for DOS. You play by rules similar to Tetris and others: falling shapes you somehow stack down, make rows and clear them. The goal is as old as games themselves—the longer you survive, the more points. If you manage to reach a certain score, you move to the next level. Nothing is free, everything is broken into blocks.

Controls differ from dozens of similar games: arrows or WASD for movement, spacebar or Ctrl for rotation. You play without melody, just quiet clicking and buzzing that accelerates with difficulty. After a while you realize you're not watching graphics—you stop looking at anything and just feel the rhythm. It's like chewing gum you take on the bus—entertaining for a bit, then monotonous, then depressing.

Zyconix has no story, no chip, no personality. It's a machine for generating points that used to be called a game. In the nineties everyone with a PC and a taste for something mechanical played it—when it hadn't changed a zero eighty times, it was just right. It never tried going anywhere—it stayed what it became at the beginning. Aging would mean having something that could get worse.

Today you find Zyconix in old archives online—DOS emulation in your browser or on sites devoted to abandonware. Only someone who wants to fall into a short trance where simplicity equals content plays it. There's nothing bad about it, but nothing special either. It's like solitaire or spider solitaire—boredom forming from above that you take when you have nothing to do and then it holds your face to the monitor. If you want arcade with a brain, Zyconix is it. If you want an experience—look elsewhere.