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The game (which means Life Is Not Beautiful) begins with intro that puts you into the action. After 15 years you have been dismissed from work. Your boss, to make matters worse, took your girl too - that's the last straw. In these moments, the protagonist decides to massacre boss (there used to be a girl who now lives with them in the villa) and at those occasions and rob him. And here come the first problems - get a gun, pick lock, get into the villa, and without attracting attention kill that bastard. This was supposed to be a 14-episode game series, out of which 7 were made. You usually play as a character who is low on life and finds himself in a terrible situation (your boss fires you and you have nowhere to go, you were put in jail for something you didn't do...) and violence is the only way to get out (killing your boss, having to cope with the people in prison...). As such, the main protagonist often murders several people to get to his goal, counting from 4 up to more than a hundred. The idea of the game series of 14 episodes was that each game represented a specific year (ZNK 1 is 2002, ZNK 2 is 1996, ZNK 3 is 1999...), taking place in a fictive city and you would see the same characters throughout and feel the consequences of your actions (for example, you see a spray painting in ZNK1 which you spray in ZNK 4, in ZNK 5 you are investigate murders you did in ZNK 2...). The original game was done in 2 days and as the series continues, they would get better graphics, puzzles, length, and later get sounds, music and voice acting. The game also had some good Czech humor and a nice little addition with "second endings"- at the end of each game after you finish it the "normal way", you would get instructions on how to get the second ending (for example click the broken window in the intro to get infinite money) - these were usually funny, trippy, weird or revealed something more about the characters. The last game (ZNK 14) was supposed to reveal a big secret and tie everything up but the series never got finished and noone found out what it was. |
