ZENO Remake: Lore, Characters and Endings Explained | Review (Spoilers)

I played ZENO Remake, a psychological horror adventure game made with RPG Maker VX Ace.
It is a remake of ZENO, which won the silver prize in the escape-adventure category of the 12th Freem! Game Contest held in 2016–2017, or so I'm told (I haven't played the original version).
The original artwork and pixel art are crafted in fine detail, and the game pulls you deep into the world of ZENO from the opening scene to the very end.

My first playthrough took about 2 hours.
Completing everything, including the true ending and the other endings, took about 4 hours in total (including those first 2 hours).
Because the game contains blood, gore and depictions of cannibalism, it is recommended for players aged 15 and over.
The blood effects can be turned off at the start of the game, though.

Game Overview

ZENO is an adventure game in which you explore a facility, solve its puzzles and mechanisms, and try to escape.
The protagonists are two amnesiacs, Haru Tsugino and Aki Maeno, who wake up in a room of a mysterious facility.
To disable the mechanism in the first room, the two have no choice but to handcuff themselves to each other, and they set out to explore the facility together.

To escape, you need to investigate all sorts of places, solve puzzles and disable mechanisms.
Documents are scattered around the facility, and reading them gives you glimpses of the story's background and the truth behind it.
Some of them are tied to the ending conditions, so it pays to explore thoroughly.

As the story progresses, a pursuer who is after the protagonists' lives appears, and there are chase sequences.
The chases are not difficult, but if you dislike action elements or simply find those parts a nuisance, you can choose the difficulty at the start of the game.
It has no effect on the story, so pick whatever you prefer.

You can save whenever you like, as long as the menu can be opened.
I recommend saving often to avoid game overs.

The game also has multiple endings.
Seeing all of them without hints is probably difficult, so if you get stuck, refer to thewalkthrough page on the official site.
It also explains the puzzle solutions, so it should help whenever you can't find a way forward.

Main characters (no spoilers)

Haru Tsugino: One of the two amnesiacs who woke up in the facility. Handcuffed to Aki Maeno, he tries to escape the facility with him.
Aki Maeno: The other amnesiac. In contrast to Haru Tsugino, he comes across as rough and coarse.

These two are the protagonists. Several other important characters appear as well, but since they are spoilers, I cover them in the spoiler section below.

Review (no spoilers)

After reaching the normal ending on my first playthrough, I went on to enjoy the true route and the other endings.
Playing naturally landed me on the normal ending, so on the next run I followed a walkthrough to get into the true route.
You rarely have to restart from the very beginning to collect an ending, so I appreciated how easy it was to work through the routes.

The true route and the other routes go places you could never imagine from the normal ending, and my impression of the game changed completely once I had seen them.
The game itself is neither too short nor too long; the length felt just right.

Having two protagonists handcuffed together was a fun setup.
The stories have little in common, but it vaguely reminded me of the psychological thriller film Saw.
The menu screen artwork strongly symbolizes the two of them sharing one fate, and it stuck with me as the game's key visual.
Although it's a psychological horror adventure, the two of them act together most of the time, so it isn't all that frightening.
The banter that plays out every time they examine something is entertaining, and it left me smiling more often than not.

The puzzles are basically self-contained on each floor, which made the exploration pleasant to play.
Being forced to run back and forth between floors would have made it feel like a string of errands, and I was glad the game avoids that.

I set the pursuer setting to "1", but looking back after finishing the game, "0" would probably have been fine too.
I chose "1" for a bit of tension, but at times the annoyance of having my exploration interrupted slightly outweighed the thrill of being chased.

There are 16 save slots, but for collecting endings I would have liked a few more.
I also picked the wrong choice a couple of times by mashing the confirm button through the text, so a text-skip function or some safeguard against mispresses would have been welcome.

Overall, the original artwork, the pixel-art presentation and the music give the game a distinctive atmosphere of its own.
The ending branches are a little complex, but the game itself is not hard, so it's easy to just pick up and start.
I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoys buddy stories about two very different men, or the psychological horror genre in general.

Review (contains spoilers)

So many facts come to light that you would never guess from the normal ending, and it was fascinating.
Ushirono, who is nothing more than the pursuer in the normal-ending route, plays a very important role in the true route, and that changed how I saw him compared with my first playthrough.

The twist that Maeno and Tsugino were actually the other way around is simple, yet it caught me off guard.
The rough Aki Maeno and the gentle Haru Tsugino are written so that either could be either, and the twist makes full use of that.

The Ushirono route, which is positioned as a bonus, is substantial in length and very well made.
Even after Aki Maeno is revealed to be a doctor, it's fascinating how seamlessly he switches from a frank doctor to a thrill killer once ZENO takes hold of him.
Personally, I also liked the Aki Maeno who plants the bomb in the hall; he's a great character there.

So what exactly is ZENO, the disease at the heart of the story? The game never spells it out clearly.
If eating the person you love is the ultimate form of love, then ZENO may be a disease in which the "desire to be loved" that everyone carries grows until it can no longer be controlled.

As for how ZENO develops, the in-game documents describe it as "one day, out of nowhere, a foreign emotion entered me," and Ushirono's analysis reveals that it is triggered by a traumatic experience.
We know the incidents that triggered ZENO in Haru, Fuyu and Natsu, but what first triggered it in Aki?
Did Aki also go through a trauma comparable to the other three?
Unless I missed it, I don't think the game addresses this, and it left me curious.

(Added February 2021)
I had indeed missed it: Aki has his own traumatic experience as well.


Of all the endings, the E ending of the true route is my favorite.
"Everyone carries it in their heart — that impulse, that foreign thing, that could make them kill the one they love, or a friend."
"— That's why everyone needs someone who can stop them, someone who can make them realize it." These lines from the E ending express the theme of the game better than anything else.