Operation Backlog Completion 2026

Celebrating All Things Spooky: ZENO Daily Life

 Celebrating All Things Spooky, Reviews, Video Games  No Responses »  Tagged with: ,
Oct 092026
 

Last October, we talked about an intriguing horror adventure game called ZENO, and I mentioned that I might check out the side games.

So this October, I continued the ZENO journey with the sequel ZENO Daily Life.

Despite the title, it doesn’t have a slice-of-life focus or anything like that. Instead, the characters’ peaceful life quickly reaches a crisis when someone with new ideas about how to handle the ZENO virus puts his plan into action.

ZENO Daily Life is much shorter and simpler than the first game. You largely just interact with things in the environment to get items and move from place to place, with very little to figure out.

Well, except for navigating the map. My one complaint about ZENO Daily Life is that despite only having a few locations, it’s strangely confusing to find your way. The way areas connect isn’t intuitive, and at one point I got stuck only to find the entrance I needed in a place that didn’t look like an entrance at all.

Aside from that, I enjoyed this shorter ZENO experience. ZENO Daily Life isn’t as horror-focused as the first one (and even the cannibalism and murder take a backseat here), but it’s nice if you want to see more of these characters.

I know, that makes two “this isn’t quite horror” games in a row. We’ll pick up next week with some games more in the spirit of the month! In the meantime, what are your thoughts on ZENO Daily Life?

Celebrating All Things Spooky: ZENO

 Celebrating All Things Spooky, Video Games  10 Responses »  Tagged with: , ,
Oct 132025
 

Earlier this year, I learned about a short horror game called ZENO, so I decided to play it this October!

(I mistakenly thought it was an RPG because of the way it’s described, but it’s really more of a horror adventure game. It was just made with RPG Maker.)

Two young men wake up together in a mysterious facility, with no memory of who they are or how they got there. The door is locked and won’t open until they’ve been handcuffed to each other, after which point they leave and find files telling them who they are – and one of them is a genius psychiatrist while the other is a homicidal maniac.

They have to work together to get out by solving puzzles to unlock each new floor of the facility.

There are threats in the facility, as well, so from time to time you’ll be chased and need to run from screen to screen until you lose your pursuer.

While not excessively dark, the story deals with horror themes like murder and cannibalism. It has some interesting twists and quite a few endings. After I finished the game with the normal endings, I used a guide to get the true ending (although there are still several endings I didn’t seek out).

My one criticism of Zeno was going to be the English translation, since a lot of lines were awkward or used abbreviations (“sth” for “something” was a common one, but a character responding to a very serious revelation with “I C” made me laugh out loud), but after finishing it I learned that in the time since I downloaded it, a newly proofread version was made available. That’ll teach me not to download a game months ahead of time and not check the page again before playing it! I haven’t tried the proofread version, but it should be an improvement.

Anyway, ZENO is an enjoyable short horror game that I was already going to recommend playing despite the translation issues, so now I’m even more confident in my recommendation. It seems there are also some side games, so I may check those out sometime as well.