Duality: ZF is a 2D shooter (shoot'em up / shmup) for the Xbox 360.  Release date: January 2009.

Video teaser:

Box Art:

Screenshots:

Yellow player dying.

Insane swarm of enemies.

Eight independently controlled fighters at once.  A 2D shooter first.

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Duality Innovation:

Duality: ZF introduces a few innovative duality features:

1. DUAL-SL, a weapon system with spread and laser features. It morphs from spread to laser and back via trigger controls.
2. DUAL PLAY allows you to control two players at once. Its an underground concept born in Japanese arcades by expert gamers. DUAL PLAY offers double the firepower. It suits newcomers in easy modes and allows experts to challenge extended expert modes.
3. DUAL-HL, a prototype weapon system in development; may not make launch date.

Firsts:

1. Duality: ZF is the first video game to support DUAL PLAY natively.*
2. Duality: ZF is the first 2D shooter (shoot'em up, shmup) video game to support eight independently controlled fighters simultaneously.

Gameplay:

Duality: ZF has high-action, intense, quick-reflex gameplay.

Simplicity:

Duality: ZF has simple gameplay. Move and shoot. No bombs that blow up everything on the screen. No powerups that power you down or switch weapons against your wishes. Move and shoot. That's it. Playing is about skill of missing enemy bullets with skill of shooting enemies down. There are no complex controls or weapons to master. Move and shoot.

Amazing Control:

When you die, it is your fault, not because of poor controls or a slow fighter. The Duality: ZF fighter you control is extremely agile and powerful. We challenge you with challenging stages, not with an inferior fighter with inferior controls.

Release Date (NEW):

January, 2009 in Xbox LIVE Community Games (XBLCG), available to all Xbox LIVE users in the New Xbox Experience (NXE).

Philosophy:

Duality: ZF is a 2D shooter made by 2D shooter fans. It is the 2D shooter that we have always wanted to play. It gives us great pleasure to realize this goal and (soon) share our dream with other 2D shooter fans around the world.

Soundtrack (NEW):

Duality: ZF features a beautiful Imphenzia soundtrack, strong in club, trance, goa, and dance music.  It is a perfect unity to our hyper action gameplay.  Imphenzia tracks have exceeded one million downloads.  The Duality: ZF Soundtrack will be made available for purchase and download on www.imphenzia.com upon release.

Duality: ZF features an Imphenzia Soundtrack.

FAQ Answers (NEW):

• The November 19th, 2008 launch date has not been met.  DUALITY: ZF is not finished.  The current launch date is set for January, 2009.
• DUAL PLAY lets you control both fighters with the left and right thumbsticks.  The d-Pad also controls the "left" fighter.
• DUAL PLAY is optional.  Use it only if you want.  Solo play is default.
• DUAL PLAY is for beginners and experts alike.  Beginners should dual play in the easy modes.  Our weakest beta tester, who never plays video games, beat stage one with dual play.
• DUAL PLAY is not difficult to grasp in gameplay.  All our beta testers managed it within a few game plays.  It turns out, most Xbox gamers are already used to controlling each thumb independently for independant purposes.
• DUALITY: ZF is not an expert-only bullet hell (danmaku, bullet curtain) shoot'em up.  Anyone can play it.  A four year old beat stage one in the easiest mode, including the intimidating end boss you see in the YouTube videos.
• DUALITY: ZF allows eight independently controlled fighters on the screen at once, a shoot'em up first.  This is possible via four players each using dual play.  The impact of eight times the firepower blew us away, and forced us to offer additional unlockable difficulty modes to challenge such extreme gameplay.
• DUALITY: ZF grows to match the skill of every player on the planet with unlimited unlockable difficulty modes.  These unlockable modes will be untainable by the average solo player, but are a bonus to elite players.  Elite players will have a "bullet hell" style experience, but this is out of the ordinary.  We are excited to see gameplay captures of these most elite players.
• DUALITY: ZF scoring system awards points proportional to the enemy strength and attack.  The same scoring formula used for all difficulty modes.  If the enemy is twice as hard to kill, you get twice the points.  The scoring system does not "care" about, or factor in, the difficulty mode, only how tough the enemies are.  It was important to make scores from all difficulty modes compatible, and we acheived this.
• DUALITY: ZF will sell for 200 Microsoft points.  We will meet the (difficult) 50MB size limit which is required to sell for so cheap.  It is interesting that we must put in more work to sell our game for less.  I hope our efforts are appreciated! :)
• Please understand the game is still in development.
• Thank you all for your interest.  We hope to offer one of the most exciting and fun shoot'em up experiences found anywhere, not just in Community Games and not just on the Xbox 360.

Trivia:

ZF is a military acronym for "Zone of Fire".  Duality: ZF was original called "Zone of Fire".

"An area into which a designated ground unit or fire support ship delivers, or is prepared to deliver, fire support. Fire may or may not be observed." - Zone of Fire (mil.)

Dual Play Background Notes:

*The port of the Raiden III arcade to the Playstation 2 (PS2) implemented DUAL PLAY before us. Technically, all simultaneous two player arcade games, like Raiden III, support DUAL PLAY. Anyone can play two players on any two player arcade game. DUAL PLAY is defined as one person playing two players on a multiplayer arcade game. In that sense, Raiden III did not *natively* support DUAL PLAY. (A fun fact is sometimes DUAL PLAY on an arcade game requires jamming the fire button down permanently.) One could also argue that all simultaneous two player console games support DUAL PLAY, too. However, it is difficult to use two console controllers at once, unlike two arcade controllers, as they do not have fixed bases. DUAL PLAY support in console games require implementing DUAL PLAY explicitly on one controller, as found in Duality: ZF. So, in console games, this explicit implementation of DUAL PLAY where one controller acts as two controllers is what is considered to be DUAL PLAY support. Duality: ZF is the first game to promote and attempt to popularize DUAL PLAY, and even attempt to standardize or coin or define it as "DUAL PLAY". Duality: ZF is also the first game to support DUAL PLAY for multiple players. There is no other game where you can DUAL PLAY with two or more players; Duality: ZF supports four DUAL PLAY players simultaneously, for an incredible eight independently controlled fighters on screen at once. Duality: ZF recognizes there is only one player, and thus one score, for each group of dual fighters. Taking all of this into account, Duality: ZF is the first game designed to truly support DUAL PLAY. It is much more than an implementation hack, like the PS2 Raiden III arcade port, like emulator hacks to allow one controller to feed input to two virtual controllers, or physical controller hacks which do the same thing. (Another fun fact is we did a controller hack on our Nintendo Entertainment System [NES] to control both players in Super-C [Super Contra] off one controller, back in 2001. The hack would work for any NES game, not just Super-C, of course.)

Contact Us:

Feel welcome to contact us and post in our forums.

External Links:

• Duality: ZF on Xbox Forums (xbox.com) (NEW)
• Xona Games (YouTube)
• Xona Games (Facebook)
• Xbox LIVE Community Games (xbox.com) (NEW)
• Xbox LIVE Community Games Forums (xbox.com) (NEW)
• Imphenzia  (produced Duality: ZF soundtrack) (NEW)