Zexion is a side-scrolling metroidvania developed and published by Gallant Leaf and released on March 21, 2025.
When rumors of Zexion - a powerful energy source used to fuel terrible weapons thought destroyed - being found on a dangerous remote planet spread across the galaxy, the space warrior Natu sets off to join the many pirates and warlords seeking Zexion in the hopes that they may be able to save their homeworld from a deadly cosmic storm.
Zexion contains examples of:
- Action Survivor: The database calls out Phantom's entire species as being natural-born survivors, and Phantom demonstrates this by surviving Cypher-X72 without a weapon or protective protosuit long enough to get back to the Blades' ship.
- Advancing Wall of Doom: One of the phases in Deimos's third battle has it summon one of these to suffocate Natu, and the Vulknor area has two segments with rapidly-rising magma.
- All There in the Manual: The main menu includes a database that sheds light on the various enemies, factions, and equipment that Natu discovers on their journey.
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- An assist options menu allows struggling players to reduce damage taken, regenerate missiles/bombs over time, reveal the full map, or use save states.
- Suspend-save checkpoints are provided when entering boss battles or gauntlets, putting Natu back just before the start of the challenge when reloaded. The player can still load a previous save if they're too underpowered for the fight.
- The Assimilator: Deimos is an experimental weapon that can assimilate and manipulate machinery and organic beings. In all of its battles it tends to assimilate several things to weaponize against Natu (when it's not trying to seize control of Natu themselves), including stealing the Zexion capsule.
- Big Bad Ensemble: The Helskar Blades and Deimos serve as individual major threats.
- Boss Rush: A downplayed example in the Vulknor area, which pits Natu against upgraded versions of some early-game bosses and a unique prototype version of Colossus's head, as well as optional Elite versions of the Blade mini-bosses.
- Brutal Bonus Level: By acquiring two optional movement upgrades and learning bomb combos, Natu can visit Seventh Layer Hyperspace, an extremely difficult gauntlet that includes several new bosses and ends with a superboss encounter. Clearing this area is not required for completion, but awards 10 extra max bombs and a data disk that gives some backstory on Cypher-X72.
- Charged Attack: Natu's weapon will passively charge when not fired, with an optional upgrade adding a second level of charge. The X-Missile powerup allows Natu to charge up a missile while holding down the missile button, expending 5 missiles to fire a powerful shot depending on the currently active weapon. By pressing the bomb key with a X-Missile charge, Natu will instead use a bomb combo depending on the current weapon.
- Collapsing Lair: After taking the Zexion capsule, the core of the facility it's stored in becomes unstable, giving Natu three minutes to rush to the extraction point. Once they get there, the timer goes away while Deimos makes a last-ditch effort to finally kill Natu by using the Zexion against them.
- Death World: Cypher-X72 is absolutely teeming with aggressive wildlife and experimental weapons.
- Elite Mooks: The Helskar Blades get their own battle theme when Natu engages them, are particularly agile and tough to kill, and frequently drop Missile Expansions or Energy Tanks when destroyed.
- Enemy Mine: During the last two phases of the Final Boss, Phantom and Siege help Natu out with destroying Z-Deimos.
- Fantastic Nuke: The reason all known Zexion samples were destroyed is because of its use in devastating weapons - the intro screen shows a Zexion-powered warship vaporizing two armadas and shattering a planet with a Wave-Motion Gun.
- Featureless Protagonist: Natu is never seen outside of their protosuit, and even the suit's humanoid shape doesn't mean much considering Phantom is a starfish alien underneath theirs.
- Guide Dang It!: Zexion contains many hidden techniques, areas, secrets and enemy interactions, which should come as no surprise considering its main inspirations. Some are alluded to mechanically, some are mentioned in the database only, and others remain fully hidden until the player inevitably experiments (or reads this).
- The very missiles that you start with are used for most breaks in the game. By firing a missile diagonally down against a wall, then wall-jumping, one can either propel Natu's jump in the opposite direction with a big momentum boost (if you jump after the explosion), or nullify his jump momentum, letting him scale the wall instead of bouncing away (by jumping roughly at the same time as the explosion). These moves can be chained together or done in succession.
- In a direct reference to Super Metroid, the X-Missile can be combined with bombs to perform some unique and incredibly powerful attacks.
- A more niche technique uses the missile blast to bounce on spiky floors without taking damage, or even scale spiky walls (with G-Diffuser) by effectively simulating wall-jumps without actual contact with the spikes. One can even jump higher vertically by blasting a missile downwards first, or ascend vertical shafts without even having the wall-jump (such as in randomizers) by spamming missiles instead.
- The Snake weapon can collect health and ammo for you, the Lance can sever tentacles, such as on a sea monster or fleshy walls, and both the Snake and Plasma's blasts nullify some projectiles.
- The Siege fight has three versions depending on whether you deal enough damage to Siege or the empire lackey he fights during the opening cutscene. The fight can skip a phase or power Siege up depending on what you do. The secret boss also has a very unique reaction for attempting pacifism, good luck!
- Various damage values are not inherently obvious. Some outliers include some small spiky enemies in R'talva which deal ridiculous contact damage, the sheer power of the pulse wave while at low health, and the incredible burst damage of Lance's charge attacks, taken up to eleven with Force Blaster's X-Bomb. Plasma is also very unique, with its large charge shot dealing lower damage on impact and higher damage over time, while a rapid-fired low-charge shot ends up far superior (if used accurately).
- Javelin missiles sound like a big damage upgrade. The real power comes in how fast they let you fire the missiles, and they let you charge missiles faster too.
- Hazy–Feel Turn: Possibly with Phantom and Siege. They both express open contempt for their employers' schemes and opt to break away, though their overall goal remains unclear and they're uncertain if they could convince the heroic Natu to join them.
- Heart Container: Picking up Energy Tanks adds an extra segment to the health bar, with Missile Containers/Boxes doing the same for missiles and Mega Bombs adding an extra bomb to Natu's stock.
- Helpful Mook: The Crystalloid enemies in Crysmoon will launch Natu opposite their aiming direction when hitting them with the Lance. They deliberately appear during the battle with Colossus so Natu can springboard off them, since Colossus can destroy Crystalloids with ease.
- Hover Skates: The G-Diffuser allows Natu to slowly float down when falling. Diligent usage can allow Natu to gain more height than their original apex through wall jumping.
- Humongous Mecha: A couple of the bosses are massive robots, particularly the Colossus in Crysmoon which takes up a screen and a half, and the screen-filling Skoldoggr tank that interrupts Deimos's second fight.
- Jump Jet Pack: The Jump Thrusters allow Natu to boost themselves in mid-air, and can also be used for makeshift gliding until they find the G-Diffuser.
- Lone Wolf Boss: The Infiltrator has seemingly no relation to the experiments of Cypher-X72 or the various Zexion seekers. They simply show up, steal a couple missile containers from the Blades, and fight Natu by circumstance.
- Macross Missile Massacre: Siege specializes in missiles, throwing them out like candy during their boss battle.
- Mêlée à Trois: The first two of Deimos's encounters have the Blades fighting against it with varying success, and the topside of Guardia (on the way to the Beta Key) has a brawl between the Blades and the K'tarel Empire, which spills into the intro of Siege's boss battle.
- Multiple Endings: Beating the game will provide a standard ending where Natu's people successfully dispel the cosmic storm, but achieving any one of six feats* unlocks an extended ending that hints at Natu's next adventure and expands on the Zexion 'verse.
- Noble Demon: After finally eradicating Deimos, Siege has Natu at their mercy, but chooses to spare them and let them leave with the Zexion (either out of respect for Natu, or prioritizing getting the injured Phantom off-planet). The extended ending also has Siege express disdain for the cabal the Blades were working for and more than willing to splinter off with Phantom.
- Non-Malicious Monster: The general theme of the underwater Phobyss area are reactionary enemies that are only a threat if shot or approached. Taking the cake is a massive alien whale, described by the database as the largest creature on the planet. All it does is watch you and passively siphon in planktons, and you can dislodge an item from it harmlessly.
- Permanently Missable Content: Two of the secret items are missable. One from slaying the diver before he gets grappled by the boss. The other by visiting the entrance to Deimos' room from the lower left before it is beaten. If the diver gets grappled, or you slay Deimos first, the items are gone.
- Player-Guided Missile: The Snake weapon fires a bullet that can be manually controlled, used to solve a few puzzles and gather far-away energy and ammo pickups. The X-Missile shot creates a guided missile, and the Tunneler upgrade lets it break tough rocks like the Lance.
- Primary-Color Champion: By default, Natu's protosuit is blue, with the Magnus Armor upgrade turning their suit red. Collecting any one of the secret artifacts lets the player change Natu's suit palette at will.
- Recurring Boss: Deimos is fought four times throughout the game including as the Final Boss, and Phantom is fought in both the Alpha and Omega Key chambers. In all of their fights, they bring new tactics and tricks each time.
- Retraux: The game leans heavily into a Nintendo Entertainment System-influenced aesthetic (to the point where the game's music was designed with the NES soundchip in mind), but was developed with mostly contemporary tools.
- The Rival: Phantom is built up as one for Natu, being a suited infiltrator who makes up for their weak durability with agility. It's implied that there's a mutual respect between the two as Natu spares Phantom after their final duel, and Phantom helps Natu fend off Z-Deimos.
- Schmuck Bait: Phobyss features some peculiar health pickups... which can turn out to be the lures of giant anglerfish. The Snake weapon will foil them.
- Secondary-Color Nemesis: Phantom wears a green protosuit, and upgrades to a purple one after having to abandon the first one.
- Sequel Hook: The extended ending ends with a shadowy cabal planning to acquire Zexion-producing technology for their own reality-altering plans, while Phantom and Siege discuss recruiting Natu for some unknown mission of their own.
- Sequence Breaking: The game has quite a few reactions if the player does things out of sequence, and often has some narrative or other reward for them. For example, the player can kill the diver before triggering Krakomaw's intro get the Marine Jets a bit earlier, which also makes fighting Krakomaw much easier and rewards an easter egg pickup.
- Sequential Boss: Several of the game's bosses have two or more phases. Deimos is especially noteworthy as all of its battles have multiple phases - its first battle has seven phases to it, including a Victory Fakeout where it hijacks a save point.
- Shout-Out: The Magnus Armor changes Natu's palette to a red with purple accents reminiscent of Magneto's armor.
- Space Pirate: The Helskar Blades are a band of mercenary pirates.
- Spread Shot: The Force Blaster weapon fires three large bullets at an angle, which can later be upgraded to five with the Pentashot powerup.
- Superboss: Waiting at the end of Seventh Layer Hyperspace is Phobos, the predecessor to Deimos. It only has one phase, but soaks up missiles like no tomorrow and has an array of tricky attacks, in addition to a dangerous arena.
- Villains Want Mercy: After defeating them in Vulknor, Phantom surrenders the Omega Key (and Gamma Key, if they took it before Natu) and nonverbally begs for mercy. Natu allows them to leave. Phantom and Siege return the favor during the finale.
- Villainous Rescue: In Deimos's second encounter, it has Natu dead to rights in its grasp, only for a Helskar Blade operating a Skoldoggr tank to use a poison gas bomb to force Deimos to retreat... and then immediately starts fighting Natu.
- Wall Jump: The Wall Jump Boots allow Natu to kick off of walls to get to higher places.
- Worthy Opponent: In the extended ending, Phantom is quick to jump to the idea of allying with Natu, with Siege concurring with them.