Blood Zero FAQ and Readme



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PART 1: STORY

It is a little known fact that a quarter of humans on earth do not have souls. When a person loses their will to live, their soul goes to what is called the bad universe, and their body lives on as an automaton in the world we all live in. 

There are billions of these soulless automatons walking on this Earth today.

You can identify them by the lack of life in their eyes.

When a soul is cast into the Bad Universe, the only way for it to return to its rightful body is to express such a will to live, it is judged right to live again by the higher powers. Until this is the case, the soul lives out several full lives there, spending a lifetime on the bad universe for every year its body does in the regular one.  

Of course, there are loopholes in this system...

Meet Blank and Beetle, friends caught in the bad universe for reasons they dont honestly remember. Society continues in the bad universe, and Mentor X, a group based on strict societal control, gained power in this world in a bloody revolution three hundred years ago. What starts as a trip into town turns into something very different...

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PART 2: GAMEPLAY

Blood Zero is a 2D shoot and slash game, much in the tradition of Legend of Zelda and Diablo. Where this game differs, is that you may control up to four characters alone, teaming with the CPU, or have a friend join and fight along side you.

OPTIONS: When the game starts, to configure the overall game and basic controls, click on Options with your cursor. From here, you may set graphical settings, configure your controls,  and tweak other gameplay options. The options are pretty self explanatory, so I wont go into detail.  Note that on some video cards, the 3D shadows effect may create unsightly black boxes under all the characters.

INTERACTING WITH THE WORLD: Using the attack key on something interactive will cause the active character to interact with it. To identify objects that can be interacted with (i.e. a cupboard containing an item vs one that does not), hit the menu key; this will put a dot over every interactive object.  Interaction includes talking to friendly characters, opening chests, pulling switches, reading signs, and saving at a telephone.

SAVING AND LOADING: In order to save in game, you must find a telephone. Walk up to the telephone and press Attack. Choose whether you want to save or not. If yes, press Attack on an empty or existing save file. If it is a new file, type in what you want the file to be called, and then press enter. If it is an existing save to overwrite, just press enter. Keep in mind if everyone in your party dies, you must load from your last save point, and will lose all money, items, moves, and experience you have accumulated since your last save.

THE INTERFACE: Note the red bars next to each characters name. This bar represents your life total. Life may be restored by killing a fairly rapid succession of enemies, thus your orange bar fills and your character goes Freak Out, and does increased damage as well. Other ways include drinking sodas, picking up red life drops from fallen enemies, and using special abilities. The blue bar in the top right is the Magic Meter. Some special abilities drain from the magic meter, while others take from the special weapon inventory at the top center. The images represent Crosses, Cells, and Bombs respectively. The magic meter restores itself over time, while all four amounts may be restored by enemy drops, or special items. 

Here is the fun part. That little red bar in the top left is the Massacre Meter. Fill it up by killing enough enemies in a short period of time, and a special effect triggers. These effects are at random (there's over a dozen types), and you will have to see what they do for yourself. Keep in mind, your character gains experience, and LEVEL UP! is seen along with a crash sound when your character has advanced a level. You will learn how to deal with leveling up later on. If a party member has fallen, they will be revived with 1 HP upon entering a new area. The game does not end until all of your currently selected party members have fallen.

ATTACKING: Pressing the Attack button makes your character use whatever weapon they have currently equipped, or just your bare hands. While characters do a swing combo by rapidly attacking with swung melee weapons, ranged weapons will act like melee weapons at close range.  Of course, all attacks are more powerful when running, even guns (the bullets come out faster--makes sense to me anyway). Pressing Special Attack unleashes a character specific move, depending on which special attack you have selected, and which character you are using. Some attacks use Magic, while others use Special Items. 

Remember that you can "kill" enemies twice: once their HP is reduced to zero they will fall; strike them again to gain more experience and shove them loose the mortal coil!  You can tell if enemies are truly "dead" and not "k.o.ed" if blood pools out of their bodies.

THE MENU: Pressing the Menu key brings up a rather complicated looking menu. It seems a little confusing at first, but after a while, you begin to see the genius of it. Pressing the menu key puts a dot over any usable part of the map. This is useful for finding locked doors, treasure chests, things like that. Pressing attack while holding down the menu key will bring the entire active party into the same space; this is good for when the one character you're controlling strays off a bit and gets surrounded by monsters.  Pressing up while holding down Menu lets you switch character focus, and take control of that character. Pressing down while holding menu lets you into the inventory screen, which is covered in the next section. Pressing left and right lets you toggle between Special Attacks for the character you are currently focused on.

when you have more than four party members to choose from, pressing Special Attack while holding down Menu will let you shift out the four you want fighting. This CANNOT be done if a party member has fallen. You must first exit the area and revive that member. (Members are revived whenever special events are triggered as well)

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PART 3: OTHER STUFF

WEAPONS AND INVENTORY: There are a variety of weapons to choose from in Blood Zero, some suiting different characters abilities more than others. All weapons can be modified in a number of ways, but all this is covered in-game. From the start, you do not have to worry about this fact. Some weapons have minimum stat requirements to use, like a certain axe requiring a high enough strength to wield. Your inventory again, is accessed by holding down Menu and pressing down. Any weapon named in red is currently not useable by your character. You see the statistics and weapon choices of the character you are currently focused. To swap out useable weapons and use items, move your cursor by releasing Menu, than pressing down to the selected item and press Attack. To exit the inventory, hold menu and press down.

EXPERIENCE: Congratulations, you gained a level! For each level you gain, each stat goes up by one (max health goes up by five), plus you get five Stat Points to assign to the character that leveled. Melee based fighters need more strength, Magic users need more intelligence, Gun users need more dexterity, and everyone needs a good balance of health and defense. Going down to the best attack option allows the computer to automatically distribute all available points to your maximum attack value, making you deal more damage. THIS IS BASED ON THE WEAPON EQUIPPED, dont expect to switch weapon types and do just as much damage. If you seem to be getting continuously pummeled, perhaps you should go back a bit, and kill a few more enemies for experience, or find a weapons salesman and upgrade a bit.

CHEATS AND ENDINGS: There are seven endings in all. When you complete Blood Zero, you will get an ending unique to the character that has the highest level. Each ending unlocks a new cheat; there are seven cheats total, ranging from useful to cracked out!

Have fun killing zombies!

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PART 4: Credits

All music, graphics  James (Jim) Eckhart
This readme, and DJ Atari  Aaron (DJ Atari) Oefinger

DJ would like to thank the ZSX mod community for showing what can be done with a great open source game, and Jim for letting me beta test. My monitor tan would like to thank the internet, for giving me something to do in the damn suburbs.

Jim would like to thank macaroni and cheese, which fueled this game, Aaron Oefinger, who wrote this Readme that I never would've done on my own, my beta people, the Clifton Park crew, the Burnt Hills/Schenectady crew, and the [dying?] VB gaming scene, without which I would have never started making these cracked out games.

 2002-2003 Totally Screwed Software
