Swarm, an ancient AI turned malevolent and spiteful is waging a war on all life. Having narrowly escaped complete destruction at the hands of organics he both hates and fears them. The AI grows massive, devouring entire planets to fuel and construct his unstoppable armies in an unending vendetta against organic life. Swarm’s armies of nanoform soldiers fair no better. The prototype Z series IQ nanite (ZIQ) is currently being put through countless experiments to improve the soldier’s neural network.

These torturous tests take the form of treacherous obstacle courses that ZIQ must complete. With nanoforms’ ability to endless reconstruct, death offers no respite. With more than 25 obstacles and hundreds of possible combinations he faces a difficult journey. But his ability to switch polarity at any time gives players the edge needed to succeed across seven themed procedurally-generated stages filled with traps such as pools of acid beneath sinking floors, pop-up walls that appear at the last second, and polarized obstacles that can only be survived by quickly swapping polarities.

Crafty players can collect charge cores to complete a sequence for extra points. If these sequences are chained together seven times ZIQ becomes Overcharged and can destroy those pesky polarity traps for additional points by opposing their polarity. Nabbing pickups at just the right time (ranging from good to perfect) affords even more points. Climb up the global leaderboard on the pile of nanites left behind with each excruciating death!

Indifferent to ZIQ’s suffering and deaths, Swarm is as generous with his insults as he is with fresh nanoforms. Voiced by YouTube’s Dash Star, Swarm is not content to simply torture ZIQ with an onslaught of deadly experiments. No no, he has to berate him the whole time, too! The better the player, the crueler Swarm becomes, increasing the difficulty of the stage. Fly through unforgiving stages in abstract sci-fi levels and watch as the dark synth music changes the environment, all while being incessantly heckled.

“ZIQ is our first game, and it’s for players like us who love score-chasing and difficult precise reaction-based gameplay,” said Josh Ryan, co-founder of Midnight Sea. “We’re looking forward to the mountain of dead nanites players will amass in order to pass us on the leaderboards.”

ZIQ will be available digitally in English on Steam starting Aug. 1, 2018 for $9.99 USD.