$4.99Zortch Old school, all guns
Escape an alien planet with nine weapons, a mean kick and a mysterious voice on your side.
Is Zortch worth it?
Zortch is worth it if…
- you grew up on late 90s shooters and want one that actually feels like it was made back then
- you like fast, combat-heavy FPS where the fun is strafing, jumping and finding the right gun for the mess
- you enjoy hunting keys and secrets in sprawling levels more than following a marker
- you want a shooter that runs on nearly anything, made with a custom engine built for low-spec machines
- you like your sci-fi horror served with a side of jokes
Screenshots
A bad holiday with good guns
Zortch Maxinum is a short order cook and professional slacker who books the cheapest holiday she can find. It turns out to be an alien scheme to capture humans and eat their brains, so now the plan is simple: escape the planet or become a light snack. A mysterious voice helps her along the way, and the rest is handled with an arsenal of nine guns plus a kick. That means a double barreled shotgun, a grenade launcher, TNT, tripmines, a plasma pistol and a living lightning gun that is exactly as bizarre as it sounds. Most weapons have alternate fires, like a machine gun that doubles as a sniper rifle. Combat is constant and fast, and the movement keeps up: you run, jump and jumpkick your way through 15 levels and 5 boss fights.
Enemies with ideas above their station
The aliens of Zortch come in over 30 varieties, and most of them are inventions of the giant green brainsuckers who run the place. There are spider mines, lizards with rocket launchers, raptors, and pudding-like amoeboids pretending to be humanoid guards. The amoeboids are the fun part: shoot one and it will not just stand there, it moonjumps high over your head to flank you from behind, so a cleared rooftop does not stay cleared. There is also a 20 foot tall flatworm cyborg bounty hunter, which is a sentence you do not get to read every day. The aliens want your brain. You get to be unreasonable about it.
Can you adjust the violence?
Can you adjust the violence?
Yes, and it goes beyond a gore toggle. A custom violence mode lets you change blood to confetti or ketchup, so the same brutal firefights can look like a birthday party or a barbecue gone wrong. The game is violent by default, with graphic combat against everything from spider mines to a giant flatworm cyborg, but the tone stays comedic throughout. If you want the full retro gore experience, leave it on. If you want to watch a 20 foot bounty hunter burst into confetti, that option exists too.
How hard is it, and can you play it casually?
There are 6 difficulty modes, from very easy to extreme, so you can pick your pace. On lower settings the game is a straightforward good time; on higher ones the enemy variety opens up, with tougher variants of the pudding men showing up that never appear on easy. The core loop stays the same either way: fast movement, lots of shooting, and enough health and ammo pickups that you are rarely starved. If a fight keeps killing you, the answer is usually to keep moving and switch guns, not to grind.
Will it run on an old or weak computer?
Almost certainly. Zortch runs on a custom engine built specifically to work well on low-spec machines, and it looks like a late 90s shooter on purpose, so the hardware demands are tiny by modern standards. The retro look is not a shortcut either: the soapy textures, swampy green lighting and low-key industrial ambience are a deliberate recreation of that era, and the movement has the momentum and feel the old classics had. If your machine struggles with everything new, this one is built for you.
How long is the game?
There are 15 levels plus 5 boss levels, and a first run is on the shorter side for a shooter, partly because the game moves fast and rarely wastes your time. But the levels sprawl, with keys to find and secrets to hunt, so a completionist pace takes much longer, and the difficulty modes give it replay value. If you take to the movement, there is plenty of room to get quicker and cleaner on a second run.
