One thing I am glad about in recent gaming trends is the rise of coop horror sorta riddle games. A special type of game Ive been looking for quite awhile. And with the release of phasmophobia we suddenly had the first of many games either being ghost hunting sort of riddle games or like Emissary Zero more the type of escape room riddle game. The Granny games teached me a good escape room game needs a monster, a good map layout and fun riddles. Emissary Zero does check all those things on the checkboard. Lets dive in a little more deeper.

We are tasked to retrieve the moon. Send by the mysterious manager that helps us in case we got stuck and provides additional informations about some things you may find on your way. Together with up to 3 friend your are the four unkown spacemen on a mission. The game has a narrative that follows you on your hunt for the missing moon. The story at first seems interesting. Unhinged from the usual known world logic you need to find a giant moon hidin somewhere within a building that resembles a school building. There is some lore, bits here and there, but at no point the game reaches the neccissarly depth to please the eagerness of the first hour. Everything throughout the entire playtime remains to shallow. The greates contribution of the story are the moments its used for symbolism. Some story beats create pretty decent pictures to admire. The end is one of them. Or whatever the cat does is another.
However truth speeking your are properly here to solve some riddles while being hunted by estranged creatures.
For a one man project Ive been surprised how big the map turned out to be. Big building one floor at frist turned into a couple of buildings, nightly rooftop hunts and parkinglots. And I forgot the lab, the basement and some industrial stuff aswell. The map is well balanced. The game is linear, however unlockable shortcuts in form of doors, staircases or elevators allow easy backtracking and traversal across the map. Only bogger here is that some enemies can use the shortcut aswell. This leads to previous save areas to occisionally visited by monsters. That is the only frustrating part of the game. I dont know how many time me and my friend died just because a monster decided to use the staircase. It kind became the deadliest spot on the map. As much as I like the idea that monster can leave the usual patrol area to pursue it became annoying everytime we reach a point where progress was slower as usual.
Since we allready put the monster out of the closet a few words dedicated to them. I dont wanna go into much detail you need to figure stuff out on your own. The monster design is great. Each monster feels different in not only looks but most importantly behaviour and being a threat. Heck some monster are build up pretty well for a later encounter. The AI is a bit lackluster and is not as fearsome as it should be.
So this leads us to riddles. The game various in riddles. It introduces one at a time and than starts combining or experimenting with them. Each riddle feels fresh enough so solving fun doesnt stale over the course of the playtime. Some later quests could use clearer wordings or tips. There will be a moment where the game branches from linear to 2-3 quest at the same time. Some quests kind appear out of nowwhere. None of the riddles are to hard, at may be that it takes a little longer than usual to figure some stuff out. But none of the riddles is to difficult.
This leaves us with performance close before the finale. Ive seen a couple of videos and ive read some other reviews. It seems i have been lucky. I had steady FPS and crashed at all. My friend and I encountered one bug where his game didnt noticed that he tabbed bag in and left him with half the controls. A simple restart of the save fixed that other than that we had nothing else. Others however had issues. The game seems to be in need of some polishing in order to improve the performance. Specially for high class hardware.
I had a tons of fun with Emissary Zero. Ive beat the game with a friend in two sessions and i did some achievements afterwards on my own. Its a game I definitaly going to replay everyonce in awhile. Althought the end lacks satisfaction for me I did enjoy the symbolismn. One thing I noticed when going for the secrets is there are some additional actions you can do that leads nowhere. While there is one that awards you with an achievement, another "questline" does not. Its seem like the dev forgot about it or its going to be finished at a later point in time. SInce the dev answered the questio of more content already with a clear no its the final prodcut. I doubt that this is going to happen.
I wanna leave behind this. The game is great. Its tons of fun in coop and put aside the perfomance is well balanced product that will entertain for 4-5h. I can only wish for a contiuation in form of a DLC or a sequel. Props the single dev pulling off a big project like this and until the next one.

This was a very fun and horrifying experience at times. In my opinion it's so much funner with more people. I really don't have any complaints about this game. I played with 2 other people and we had more than a few hilarious moments. I had a blast! I hope there is a sequel or something I was so sad when the game was over.

yes yes yes