Tales of Kenzera™: ZAU on Steam - User reviews, Price & Information
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Wield the dance of the shaman. Reclaim your father’s spirit. Brave the beautiful and treacherous land of Kenzera with the God of Death in Tales of Kenzera™: ZAU, a metroidvania-style adventure crafted by Surgent Studios.
Tales of Kenzera™: ZAU is a metroidvania, adventure and action-adventure game
developed by Surgent Studios
and published by Electronic Arts.
Released on April 23rd 2024 is available only on Windows
in 10 languages: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish - Spain, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Spanish - Latin America, Portuguese - Brazil and Swahili.
It has received 780 reviews of which 649 were positive and 131 were negative resulting in a rating of 7.9 out of 10. 😊
The game is currently priced at 7.99€ on Steam with a 60% discount.
The Steam community has classified Tales of Kenzera™: ZAU into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
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System requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: Windows 10
- Processor: Intel i7 7700 / AMD Ryzen 2600
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GTX 1060 6GB / AMD RX 580 8GB / Intel Arc A380
- DirectX: Version 12
- Network: Broadband Internet connection
- Storage: 30 GB available space
- Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
- Additional Notes: These specs allow for the game to be played in 1920x1080 at 60 FPS with graphics setting "Lowest"
User reviews & Ratings
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
It's not particularly bad, but other metroidvania games do it way better. Rating: 5/10 (neutral) Animation: OK Combat: Boring and somewhat non-sensical Platforming: simple and unappealing Story: Interesting Voice acting: Good Controls are wonky at many segments.
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It was difficult to decide if I would recommend this one. It's not a bad game, but I'd recommend many other metroidvanias (if we actually consider this one as such) before this one. I finally picked a thumb up to encourage the devs to improve in case they make a sequel. Cool stuff + Beautiful graphics and music. Not so cool stuff - The camera. I was actually surprised by its lack of polish. It pans and zooms in/out depending on where you are, and you don't have any extra control over it to compensate its lacks, so there's plenty of improvable situations: --> In general it's closer than needed in order to see the platform you want to go if you're going to make a long jump. Lots of leaps of faith (both horizontal and vertical). --> The character falls faster than the camera's speed, which makes the "leaps of faith" even worse. --> Enemies can decide to remain off-camera, and still shoot at you. - Some imprecisions with the controls, especially in regard to aiming abilities in combat. - One hit kill hazards. Wouldn't really be a big problem by their own, because you ofter respawn 5 seconds away from the point of death, but they can easily add frustration combined with the lacking camera or the escape sections. Which leads me to... - The escape sections. Or their execution rather. By design they're cool. They're cool in Ori and other games, but those don't have this camera. The constant jumps to the unknown (out of camera) and the omnipresent one hit kill stuff made these more frustrating than fun. Almost the same can be said about the "platforming challenge" sections. - The lack of exploration. Related to the "metroidvania" point, but it's not about the linearity of the game (which I decided to put in the "neutral" section), but how the map spoils you any decision you'd have made about what path to take. It goes this way: --> You enter a zone -> the whole zone's map unveils, except for the "secret" sections, which remain obvious. This means that: ---> If you ever wonder if a branching path is the main or the secondary one, you just open the map and you instantly know. ---> If part of the unveiled zone is not reachable yet, you'll need to remember it, as there are no markers. Neutral stuff * Well, the linearity of the game. I'd hardly consider this one a metroidvania, as you don't feel that the world expands as you unlock abilites. There's the main path and a number of branches (which, as said before, you can immediately detect in the map). If you have the ability to access the branch you go to the end of it, pick or do whatever there's there, and go back to the main path. If you don't have the ability, you come back later through a fast travel point (which to be fair are pretty well placed). No interconnections, and no real exploration or secret zones at all. Just some unlockable shortcuts. * Didn't care much about the story or characters, really. The fact that it's all inspired in african culture / mythology was a breath of fresh air though. * You start with double jump, dash and wall jump right away. This makes the platforming throughout all the game more repetitive than needed, I think. * Some unlockable abilities were cool and original, others were a tad too specific. Conclusion It wouldn't harm to create a new gaming tag called "metroidvania-lite", or something like that. It's not bad that a game is linear, but it can be so when you expected otherwise. Aside of that, it looks that this game put the biggest part of the effort on the visuals and audio, leaving the gameplay to feel a tad too generic, repetitive and unpolished. Let's hope they make an epic comeback with a sequel!
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I wish I could give this game more of an unqualified recommendation, because all of the art surrounding the game is impeccable. The story is well-told, the visuals and soundtrack are beautiful, and all the vocal performances are fantastic. My big issue is with how this game plays. The combat feels good at first, but as more and more encounters pile on towards the latter half of the game and I start having to navigate enemies, traversal, and instant death traps all at once, the controls start to feel floaty, imprecise, and not altogether up to the task of sustaining even a game this short. Upgrades to each ability path feel insubstantial, the various traversal skills unlocked in each area feel too specialized to be exciting, and the last third of the game in particular is filled with combat rooms that lock until you fight two, three, four waves of enemies. These were perhaps my biggest annoyance by the end, as these kinds of combat rooms should be illegal on their own, but get all the more egregious when you're in a tiny arena and just manage to beat a wave of enemies, and then have a whole second and third wave spawn in when you think you're done. The repetition can get discouraging. That said, I'm going to recommend this game regardless because the art and world are fascinating and unique, and I do hope this developer gets another shot at a game in this universe, where hopefully they learn to be much more intentional about the combat they decide to include, or even just get rid of it altogether. No game this short should have this many trash mobs, but even beyond that, a world this interesting could be so much better explored through means other than combat. Put more of a focus on traversal, solving problems, meeting interesting characters, and let your game and universe grow into its full potential rather than flounder against the creative limits of exploration through violence.
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This game has a lot of flaws, but I still recommend it overall. Happy to see an African mythos game, and hope to see more. Also the SBI "controversy" is a nontroversy and just typical racism veiled with coded "antiwoke" language, unsurprisingly. Also keep the clown rewards coming, it's just a running tally of racists for me and it gives me points 🤷🏾♀️
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Great game with a great story. Had a lot of fun. Not too much back tracking for no reason like in some other metroidvanias. Solid game and would be a great start into the genre or someone to sit back and have a good time.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Tales of Kenzera™: ZAU is currently priced at 7.99€ on Steam.
Tales of Kenzera™: ZAU is currently available at a 60% discount. You can purchase it for 7.99€ on Steam.
Tales of Kenzera™: ZAU received 649 positive votes out of a total of 780 achieving a rating of 7.87.
😊
Tales of Kenzera™: ZAU was developed by Surgent Studios and published by Electronic Arts.
Tales of Kenzera™: ZAU is playable and fully supported on Windows.
Tales of Kenzera™: ZAU is not playable on MacOS.
Tales of Kenzera™: ZAU is not playable on Linux.
Tales of Kenzera™: ZAU is a single-player game.
Tales of Kenzera™: ZAU does not currently offer any DLC.
Tales of Kenzera™: ZAU does not support mods via Steam Workshop.
Tales of Kenzera™: ZAU does not support Steam Remote Play.
Tales of Kenzera™: ZAU is enabled for Steam Family Sharing. This means you can share the game with authorized users from your Steam Library, allowing them to play it on their own accounts. For more details on how the feature works, you can read the original Steam Family Sharing announcement or visit the Steam Family Sharing user guide and FAQ page.
You can find solutions or submit a support ticket by visiting the Steam Support page for Tales of Kenzera™: ZAU.
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The information presented on this page is sourced from reliable APIs to ensure accuracy and relevance. We utilize the Steam API to gather data on game details, including titles, descriptions, prices, and user reviews. This allows us to provide you with the most up-to-date information directly from the Steam platform.
Additionally, we incorporate data from the SteamSpy API, which offers insights into game sales and player statistics. This helps us present a comprehensive view of each game's popularity and performance within the gaming community.
Last Updates| Steam data | 21 January 2026 14:14 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 21 January 2026 08:08 |
| Steam price | 28 January 2026 20:51 |
| Steam reviews | 28 January 2026 13:49 |
If you'd like to dive deeper into the details about Tales of Kenzera™: ZAU, we invite you to check out a few dedicated websites that offer extensive information and insights. These platforms provide valuable data, analysis, and user-generated reports to enhance your understanding of the game and its performance.
- SteamDB - A comprehensive database of everything on Steam about Tales of Kenzera™: ZAU
- SteamCharts - Analysis of Tales of Kenzera™: ZAU concurrent players on Steam
- ProtonDB - Crowdsourced reports on Linux and Steam Deck Tales of Kenzera™: ZAU compatibility
Game modes
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Online players
2
Developer
Surgent Studios
Publisher
Electronic Arts
Release
23 Apr 2024
Platforms
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