Nearly a year ago, a fantastic precision-platformer called Bzzzt was released.
It reminded me a lot of playing Super Meat Boy, where the levels were short, you die a LOT, but when you figure it out, you feel like a gaming GOD! Just when you've mastered things, you get a new abilities, run into bosses and discover all sorts of new challenges. If just beating the levels isn't enough of a test, you can go for perfection by collecting every item in each level and speed-running to beat the clock, giving the game a lot of replay value.
Bzzzt has an overwhelmingly positive rating on Steam, and will be featured in their Czech and Slovak Games Week event! It's also available on GOG, and for Nintendo Switch (it's the perfect travel game!), and you can find a free demo version over at Itch.io.
Check out the trailer:
The game was developed completely independently by Karel Matejka, aka @ko-dll. He's been making games for a very long time, and was able to pull this all together without a publisher or marketing team.
Unfortunately, the game has really flown under most people's radar, as many self-published games tend to do. As a fan, I really thought that was a crime, so I reached out to @ko-dll myself to see if there was anything we could do at NG to help get more eyes on this title.
I thought it would be cool to unlock the power of our community, and get some fanart out into the world. What better way than to host an art contest? @ko-dll loved the idea, and offered to provide a bunch of steam keys as prizes. (He also joined the NG community and started sharing some of his epic pixel art, so be sure to check it out and give him a follow!)
So I talked to Tom about throwing in some supporter upgrades as well, and now it's official!
To Participate:
Create fan art in any style you like (just keep it family friendly), then upload it to the Art Portal. Be sure to tag it with Bzzzt-Contest so we can find it when it's time to pick the winners!
If you share any of your art on social media, be sure and tag @ko-dll (he has links to his socials on his userpage) so he can share them with all the other fans of the game as well!
Submissions must be published before the end of the day on November 8th (remember, NG is in Eastern Standard Time).
Characters:
@ko-dll, Tom and myself all come from a time where cover artists went hard on interpreting little pixel characters, so we're all excited to see how you apply your imaginations to these little guys.
ZX8000
The hero of the story, ZX is an advanced AI with a big personality who is tasked with thwarting the evil plans of the nefarious Badbert!
Doctor Emily & Professor Norbert
The brilliant scientific duo who created ZX8000 for classified purposes.
Badbert
An evil scientist and former colleague of Doctor Emily and Professor Norbert who is out for revenge after being fired from their top secret project.
And if you need more references, here's a bunch of other gifs:
Prizes:
1st Place: $100 + Steam Key + 1 Year Supporter Upgrade
2nd Place: $50 + Steam Key + 1 Year Supporter Upgrade
3rd Place: Steam Key + 1 Year Supporter Upgrade
4th Place: Steam Key
5th Place: Steam Key
If any super-fans out there want to expand the prize pool and have an extra $50/$100/whatever to spare, please shoot Tom a PM for further discussion.
