Tales of Kenzera: Zau is a metroidvania born from a personal place. Created by actor and writer Abubakar Salim, the game draws from Bantu mythology to tell a story about grief, loss, and the bargains we make to avoid letting go. You play as Zau, a young shaman who strikes a deal with Kalunga, the God of Death, to bring his father back. The price: defeat three Great Spirits scattered across the land. It’s a quest structure that serves the genre well, giving you a clear set of objectives while the story underneath explores something far more nuanced than “beat the bosses.”
The game launched in April 2024 to a reception that was broadly positive but tempered by specific mechanical complaints. Players praised the setting, story, and visual design while noting that the combat and exploration didn’t always match the ambition of the narrative.
The Masks of Sun and Moon
The dual-mask system is the game’s signature mechanic, and it’s the best idea Kenzera brings to the metroidvania table. Zau can switch between the Mask of the Sun and the Mask of the Moon at any time, each offering a completely different combat style and traversal ability. The Sun mask favors aggressive, close-range melee attacks with fire-based damage. The Moon mask offers ranged ice projectiles and a more defensive, calculated approach. Switching between them mid-combo creates a rhythm that, when it clicks, feels fluid and rewarding.
The visual design is stunning. The world of Kenzera draws from East African landscapes and Bantu artistic traditions to create environments that look unlike anything else in the metroidvania genre. Lush forests, volcanic plains, and spirit realms are rendered with a color palette that’s vibrant without being garish. Character designs pull from mythology in ways that feel respectful and considered, and the Great Spirits you’re hunting are visually memorable bosses.
The story is the game’s emotional anchor. Salim has been open about creating the game as a way to process his own father’s death, and that sincerity comes through in the writing. Zau’s journey mirrors the stages of grief, with each Great Spirit representing a different aspect of loss and acceptance. The framing device, a story being read from a book, adds a layer of narrative distance that works surprisingly well. Cutscenes are well-directed, and the voice performances carry real weight.
Platforming has strong moments, particularly in the later areas where the dual-mask traversal abilities are fully unlocked. Chaining wall jumps, mask switches, and dashes through obstacle-heavy rooms creates sequences that feel satisfying to execute, and the game occasionally delivers platform challenges that stand alongside the genre’s better offerings.
The soundtrack blends traditional East African instrumentation with modern orchestral arrangements, creating an audio identity as distinctive as the visual one. Boss themes in particular hit hard, matching the scale of the encounters they accompany.
The Thorns in Kenzera’s Garden
Combat repetition is the most consistent criticism. While the dual-mask system is clever in concept, the enemy variety doesn’t keep up with it. You fight the same types of opponents throughout the game, and by the halfway point, encounters start to feel like obstacles between platforms rather than engaging challenges. The combat arenas themselves are often flat, open spaces that don’t encourage creative use of the mask system the way the platforming sections do.
Exploration rewards are disappointing. Metroidvanias live and die by what’s behind the hidden wall or at the end of the hard-to-reach platform. In Kenzera, the rewards for going off the beaten path are often currency or minor collectibles that don’t meaningfully change your abilities or approach. There’s little of the “I need to come back here later” pull that defines the best entries in the genre, and some players found themselves ignoring side paths entirely by the second half.
The map and navigation could be clearer. Several players reported getting turned around in areas that looked similar, and the map itself doesn’t always communicate which paths you’ve already explored. In a genre where backtracking is fundamental, this friction adds up.
Some technical issues marred the launch experience, including frame rate drops in specific areas and occasional bugs with the mask-switching mechanic. Patches have addressed many of these, but early players felt the impact.
The game runs about eight to ten hours, which is reasonable for the genre, but the pacing in the middle act loses some urgency. The emotional beats hit hardest at the beginning and end, with the middle stretch leaning more heavily on gameplay that isn’t strong enough to carry the narrative pause.
A Grief Worth Carrying
What separates Tales of Kenzera: Zau from the dozens of metroidvanias released each year is its emotional honesty. The genre is full of tight mechanics, hidden rooms, and power-ups, but rarely does a metroidvania ask you to sit with grief the way this one does. The mask system serves as both a gameplay mechanic and a metaphor: aggression and retreat, fire and ice, the push and pull of processing loss. Not every element of the game lives up to that ambition, but the ambition itself is worth recognizing.
This is also one of very few games set in a world drawn from Bantu mythology, and the care taken with that setting is evident. It’s not a surface-level aesthetic choice. The mythology informs the story structure, the character motivations, and the world design in ways that feel integrated rather than decorative.
Should You Play Tales of Kenzera: Zau?
Fans of Ori and the Blind Forest or Hollow Knight who are looking for something with a different cultural perspective and a stronger narrative emphasis will find a lot to appreciate. The dual-mask system, while underserved by the enemy design, offers enough mechanical interest to carry you through, and the story rewards your investment by the final act. Skip it if you’re primarily looking for tight combat, deep exploration incentives, or a metroidvania that challenges you mechanically at every turn. Kenzera’s strengths lie in what it says, not always in how it plays, and the players who love it tend to love it for the journey more than the destination.
The Verdict on Tales of Kenzera: Zau
Tales of Kenzera: Zau is a debut that reaches further than it grasps, but the reach itself is impressive. Its Bantu-inspired world is breathtaking, its story about grief is told with rare sincerity, and the dual-mask system shows real creative thinking. The combat repetition and underwhelming exploration keep it from competing with the top tier of the metroidvania genre, but as a first outing from Surgent Studios, it establishes a foundation worth building on. Zau’s journey is imperfect but meaningful, and sometimes that’s the more memorable kind.