Clash: Artifacts of Chaos - Zeno Edition

Clash: Artifacts of Chaos is a third-person melee brawler from ACE Team, the Chilean studio responsible for Zeno Clash and Rock of Ages, two games that prove this team operates on a frequency most developers never tune into. Set in a world called Zenozoik, a place of biological architecture, mutant creatures, and a kind of primordial weirdness that feels genuinely hand-sculpted rather than procedurally assembled, this is a game that earns its strangeness. You play as Pseudo, a martial artist hermit dragged into conflict over a set of powerful artifacts. The story is minimal but atmospheric, delivered through environments and encounters more than dialogue. The combat is the spine of the experience and it has real texture to it. You cycle through fighting stances, each with distinct move sets, and weave blocks, parries, and counters into brawls that reward timing over button-mashing. There is also a dice-game minigame called The Game of Sticks that determines pre-fight buffs, which sounds like padding but actually adds a layer of tension and personality that fits the world perfectly. Enemies telegraph well enough that skilled players can chain clean counters, but new players will eat dirt regularly in the early hours. The pacing of that difficulty curve is honest, not punishing for its own sake. Visually, this is where ACE Team earns serious respect. Every zone in Zenozoik looks like concept art that refused to stay on paper. Mushroom forests, stone ruins, fleshy organic structures, all of it painted in a palette that sits somewhere between prehistoric and psychedelic. The original soundtrack included in this Zeno Edition is worth noting specifically: it carries that same alien quality, using instrumentation that feels sourced from a world that does not exist. If you play with headphones, the surround sound implementation makes the atmosphere land harder than screenshots suggest it will. The honest critique is that Clash is not a long game, and its mid-section loses some momentum. The world-building is front-loaded, and a few of the later zones lean on repetitive encounter design that would feel thin if the combat itself were not satisfying to return to. The camera can also be a friction point in tighter spaces, though accessibility options including camera comfort settings and playable-without-timed-input mode show that the team put real thought into who might be playing this. The Zeno Edition bundles the base game with a digital artbook and supporter pack, so if you were going to look at the concept art anyway, the bundle is the obvious entry point. This is an ACE Team game, which means it was made by people with a specific vision and the discipline to follow it into uncomfortable territory. Clash is not going to reach everyone. If your benchmark for action games is spectacle and scale, it will feel sparse. But if you have ever finished a game and felt like you briefly visited somewhere that exists nowhere else, ACE Team keeps building those places, and Clash is one of the more polished ones they have made.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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