What makes Zwischenzug cool is that it was an experiment with unusual gameplay.
At first glance it will appear like a standard third-person shooter,
but there are some things that really make it stand out.
The big change is that combat is not about dealing damage, but rather
knocking your opponent out of the arena, like in Super Smash Brothers.
I tried putting the HUD near the avatar instead of at the screen edges.
I also let the player pick the level progression. Instead of forcing
the player through the levels in any particular order, he can choose
which teleporter to take and when he does it. The difficulty still
increases as you play though because the enemies that appear are based
on your score.
I learned a lot developing this game. Physics and collision response
were particularly interesting on the programming side of things.
I also learned that presentation really isn't trumped by gameplay,
because you have to draw players to try the game before they can get
hooked on the gameplay. I also found that maybe a game can be
too weird.
I created this game nearly alone. All the programming, all textures, all models except the knight, and all sound effects were created by me. Helpful folks on the Dark Basic web forum provided me with music and a knight model to use.
