Scurge: Hive was the strangest of ZAGE's final December releases.
In Zaboru's previous life, the game had always stood out to him because it felt almost like an isometric version of Metroid. The camera angle alone made it unusual for a handheld title, but what he remembered most clearly was how much the game rewarded understanding enemy weaknesses. Different creatures reacted differently to certain weapons and attack types, so simply finding one powerful gun and using it against everything was never the best approach.
That foundation was already interesting.
Zaboru simply decided it could become much more.
The isometric perspective remained untouched because he believed it was one of the strongest parts of the original game. On ZGBA, the angle worked surprisingly well. It allowed rooms to feel larger than the screen itself while also giving players enough visual information to judge enemy positions, environmental hazards, doors, platforms, and hidden routes.
Jenosa Arma remained the protagonist.
However, her combat options were dramatically expanded.
In the version Zaboru remembered, Jenosa relied almost entirely on blasters and ranged weaponry. This time, he wanted players to decide how they approached each expedition.
Blasters were still extremely important.
Standard energy pistols could be upgraded into faster-firing variants. Heavy plasma weapons traded speed for raw damage. Electrical blasters were effective against certain mechanical or shielded enemies. Cryogenic weapons could slow targets or temporarily control crowded rooms, while incendiary weapons were especially useful against biological creatures vulnerable to heat.
But Jenosa was no longer restricted to ranged combat.
For the first time, she had an entire melee weapon category.
The most straightforward option was the Laser Blade, a balanced weapon with good damage, reach, and relatively fast attack speed. Players who preferred something more aggressive could instead use the Laser Knife, which sacrificed range for extremely fast combinations and stronger critical attacks.
Heavier melee weapons also existed.
An energy hammer could stagger larger enemies and break defensive armour, while a plasma spear provided better reach and allowed Jenosa to attack through narrow spaces without moving too close to dangerous enemies. There were even stranger weapons hidden throughout the game, including experimental equipment recovered from abandoned research stations.
Zaboru did not want melee combat to simply become something players used when ammunition ran out.
It needed its own identity.
Certain enemies were easier to defeat from a distance, while others aggressively closed the gap and made melee combat far more effective. Some creatures possessed armour that could resist conventional blaster fire but could be broken using heavier melee attacks.
Others behaved in the opposite way.
Trying to fight them closely was almost suicidal.
As a result, switching weapons became a natural part of combat rather than an optional gimmick.
But the biggest change Zaboru introduced had nothing to do with weapons.
He completely redesigned the game's progression.
Instead of following one continuous, mostly natural adventure from beginning to end Metroidvania style, Scurge: Hive was now structured around repeated expeditions.
A run always began at Jenosa's base.
From there, the player chose equipment, prepared limited supplies, selected available upgrades, and entered the infected facilities.
Once the expedition began, the player gradually moved deeper into the Hive.
Rooms were reorganised between runs.
Enemy placements changed.
Certain paths could disappear completely while alternative routes opened elsewhere.
Resource locations shifted.
Some objectives appeared only occasionally.
Even certain elite enemies and optional encounters were not guaranteed to appear every time.
Nobody at ZAGE had a proper mainstream name for this style of game yet.
Even Zaboru avoided overcomplicating the terminology.
Internally, he simply described it as a game where the player repeatedly went on runs.
In his previous life, the industry would recognise this kind of structure as roguelike—or more accurately, as the genre evolved, something closer to a roguelite.
But in 2001, almost nobody cared about the label.
They only cared that it felt different.
During each run, Jenosa could discover temporary upgrades.
Some increased blaster damage.
Others improved melee attack speed, movement speed, defensive shielding, health regeneration, critical damage, elemental resistance, or ammunition efficiency.
More specialised upgrades could dramatically change how certain weapons behaved.
A Laser Blade might gain a wider energy arc.
Electrical shots could chain between nearby targets.
Cryogenic attacks might create a temporary freezing field after killing an enemy.
A heavy melee attack could produce a shockwave.
The player could sometimes build combinations powerful enough to completely alter how they approached the remainder of the run.
But those upgrades were temporary.
If Jenosa died, most of them disappeared.
That was the central risk.
Every expedition allowed the player to become increasingly powerful, but pushing deeper also made death more dangerous.
Zaboru deliberately wanted that tension.
The player might reach a point where they had already collected valuable resources and permanent upgrade materials.
They could return to base safely.
Or they could continue.
Maybe the next sector contained a rare weapon blueprint.
Maybe an elite enemy dropped an extremely valuable resource.
Maybe a hidden research room contained enough material to unlock another permanent upgrade.
Or maybe the player entered one room too many and lost almost everything collected during the expedition.
That decision became one of the core experiences of Scurge: Hive.
Continue.
Or retreat.
However, Zaboru did not want failure to feel completely meaningless.
That was why permanent progression existed.
During runs, players could gather research data, energy cores, biological samples, weapon components, and other resources. Certain materials were lost upon death, but others could be secured permanently depending on how far the player progressed and what facilities they discovered.
Back at the base, these resources could be spent on permanent improvements.
Jenosa could increase her maximum health.
Improve starting armour.
Unlock better weapon availability.
Increase inventory capacity.
Upgrade base facilities.
Improve the quality of equipment that could appear during future expeditions.
Certain weapon blueprints permanently expanded what could be discovered in later runs.
This created a steady feeling of progression even when the player failed.
The first run might end painfully.
The second became slightly easier.
After several expeditions, Jenosa entered the Hive stronger, better equipped, and with far more options than before.
The player improved at the same time.
They learned enemy weaknesses.
They learned which rooms were dangerous.
They learned which weapons worked well together.
They learned when to retreat.
And perhaps most importantly, they learned when greed was about to get them killed.
Zaboru especially liked that part.
Still, because this was the first game of this type ZAGE had ever attempted, he deliberately restrained himself.
He knew what the genre could eventually become.
Massive pools of random items.
Hundreds of synergies.
Procedurally generated maps with enormous variation.
Character classes.
Dozens of weapons.
Wildly transformative upgrades.
Unlockable difficulty modifiers.
Hidden bosses.
Meta-progression trees that could last dozens or hundreds of hours.
Zaboru could have introduced many of those ideas immediately.
He chose not to.
This was new and 2001.
Players first needed to understand the basic structure.
Go out.
Explore.
Fight.
Become stronger during the run.
Collect resources.
Decide whether to continue or retreat.
Die.
Return.
Upgrade.
Try again.
That alone was already unfamiliar enough.
So Scurge: Hive remained relatively controlled.
Its randomisation was noticeable but not completely unpredictable. The game still contained handcrafted rooms and carefully designed combat encounters. Instead of generating every environment from nothing, the system rearranged and connected prepared sectors in different combinations.
That gave each expedition variety without sacrificing level quality.
Bosses were also handled carefully.
Major story bosses still occupied specific progression points so the narrative remained coherent, but optional elite creatures and minibosses could appear during different runs.
Defeating them usually provided powerful temporary buffs or rare permanent resources.
Zaboru wanted players to feel nervous whenever they found one.
Sometimes avoiding the encounter entirely was smarter.
The infection system from the original concept also became much more important.
Jenosa was continuously fighting against the Scurge infection inside her body.
The longer she remained away from stabilisation areas, the greater the infection became.
At lower levels, the effect was manageable.
At higher levels, problems began appearing.
Healing became less effective.
Certain enemy attacks became more dangerous.
Visual distortions could briefly appear.
Eventually, the infection itself could become lethal.
This prevented players from simply moving through every area as slowly as possible.
Even careful players needed to maintain momentum.
The result created another layer of pressure.
A player might enter a room while already carrying valuable resources, low on health, and with infection rapidly increasing.
They could see another unopened chamber nearby.
Maybe there was something incredible inside.
Maybe there was nothing.
That temptation was exactly what Zaboru wanted.
He laughed during development whenever testers complained about dying because they had become greedy.
"That's your fault," he would tell them. "You could've gone back."
The game never forced players to take every risk.
It simply made the rewards tempting enough that many would do it anyway.
Even the base itself gradually expanded.
At the beginning, it was little more than Jenosa's preparation area.
But as players recovered research and technology from the Hive, additional facilities became available.
Weapon development.
Armour research.
Medical stabilisation.
Mission archives.
Equipment testing.
Storage improvements.
The base never became enormous, but it gave the player a visible sense that their repeated expeditions were achieving something beyond simply increasing numbers.
Jenosa's story was also adjusted around this structure.
Rather than moving through the infection once in a single uninterrupted journey, she repeatedly entered dangerous contaminated zones, recovered information, returned to base, and slowly discovered what had happened.
That actually improved the pacing.
Each expedition revealed another piece of the mystery.
Research logs.
Abandoned equipment.
Fragments of communication.
Destroyed facilities.
Evidence about the Hive itself.
Zaboru deliberately kept much of the storytelling environment and he overhauled overall stories..
Players could ignore many of the details and focus entirely on combat, but anyone interested in the mystery could gradually reconstruct what had happened through abandoned laboratories, corrupted terminals, destroyed equipment, research logs, and the remains of previous expeditions.
More importantly, Zaboru found a way to make repeated death fit naturally into the story itself.
Jenosa was not operating alone.
She belonged to a large interplanetary Bounty Hunter Association, an organisation wealthy and technologically advanced enough to possess something almost unheard of even within the game's science-fiction setting.
Supreme Technology.
Among its most valuable capabilities was an advanced cloning system.
The Association could create replacement bodies for registered bounty hunters, effectively producing an enormous number of genetically identical clones when necessary. However, the technology had an important limitation: each registered bounty hunter identity could only maintain one active consciousness at a time.
There could be countless Jenosa bodies stored or prepared within the system, but only one Jenosa could truly exist as Jenosa at any given moment.
Her personality, memories, combat experience, mission records, and psychological profile were continuously synchronised with the Association's systems whenever possible.
That meant death during an expedition did not necessarily mean the end.
If Jenosa was killed inside the Hive, the Association could activate another clone body back at the base and restore her consciousness using the latest successfully transmitted memory data.
For Jenosa, it was effectively resurrection.
She would open her eyes inside another body while still remembering previous missions, discovered information, enemies she had fought, mistakes she had made, and even the circumstances surrounding many of her deaths.
The process was not perfect.
Equipment carried during the failed expedition could be lost.
Temporary modifications obtained inside the Hive disappeared with the destroyed body.
Resources that had not yet been transmitted or physically recovered were usually gone as well.
And if Jenosa ventured too far into areas where communication with the Association became unstable, portions of her most recent memories could occasionally become fragmented.
But her accumulated knowledge remained.
Her mission remained.
And Jenosa herself continued.
Zaboru loved how naturally the system supported the gameplay loop.
Instead of the player dying and inexplicably appearing back at the beginning as though nothing had happened, every failed run became canon.
That Jenosa had really entered the Hive.
She had really fought those creatures.
She had really discovered those rooms.
And she had really died.
The Jenosa standing inside the base afterward was technically a new body, but from her own perspective, she remained the same woman.
That distinction gradually became part of the game's darker science-fiction atmosphere as well.
How many Jenosas had already died?
At what point did a replacement body stop being merely a replacement?
If every memory, personality trait, fear, ambition, and experience survived the transfer, was the revived Jenosa still the original person?
The game never forced players to answer those questions.
They simply existed beneath the surface.
Some members of the Bounty Hunter Association treated Supreme Technology as nothing more than an incredibly advanced insurance system.
Others clearly found it disturbing.
Jenosa herself largely avoided thinking about it during missions. She had a job to finish, and every new body gave her another opportunity to complete it.
That also meant failure did not completely reset the narrative.
Even if Jenosa died during an expedition, information she had successfully transmitted remained stored at the base. New mission reports became available, recovered research remained catalogued, and the newly awakened Jenosa clone retained everything that had already been properly synchronised.
The player might lose resources.
They might lose weapons.
They might lose an exceptionally powerful temporary build.
But they did not lose knowledge.
Zaboru particularly liked that distinction.
Knowledge became its own form of permanent progression.
Every death taught the player something.
Every death also taught Jenosa something.
The gameplay loop and the story were therefore supporting each other instead of existing separately.
By the time Team FUMA finished restructuring the project, Scurge: Hive barely resembled the much more straightforward isometric action-adventure Zaboru remembered from his previous life.
Yet the original identity remained intact.
Isometric exploration.
Enemy weaknesses.
Science-fiction horror.
Jenosa.
The infection.
Blasters.
Around those foundations now existed something considerably stranger.
Repeated expeditions.
Changing environments.
Temporary upgrades.
Permanent research.
Weapon experimentation.
Risk and retreat.
And death itself becoming an accepted part of progression.
A player could create an incredible build during one expedition, combining a Laser Blade with attack-speed enhancements, electrical damage, defensive barriers, and several rare modifications.
Then one mistake could destroy everything.
The next Jenosa would wake up back at the Association base.
Same personality.
Same memories.
Different body.
And another chance.
Zaboru knew the system was still primitive compared with what this style of game could eventually become.
The procedural generation was deliberately restrained. Many rooms were still handcrafted and rearranged rather than created completely at random. The number of upgrade combinations remained manageable. The permanent progression systems were understandable enough that players could learn them without needing dozens of hours.
He could have gone much further.
He deliberately did not.
This was the first time ZAGE had released anything built so heavily around repeated runs, death, and restarting.
Players needed to learn the rhythm first.
Enter the Hive.
Fight.
Explore.
Find upgrades.
Become stronger.
Push deeper.
Decide whether the reward was worth the danger.
Die because you became too greedy.
Wake up as another Jenosa.
Upgrade.
And go back.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Zaboru had expected the concept to be divisive.
Some players would probably hate losing temporary progress.
Others might find repeated areas frustrating.
Even several Team FUMA developers had initially wondered whether ordinary players would accept a game where dying repeatedly was not simply a punishment but one of the intended mechanics.
Then the game released.
And something unexpected happened.
Players understood it almost immediately.
More than that—
they became addicted to it.
To be continue
AN : Cover
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