Zeux series

Zeux series
Author	Gregory Janson
Company	Software Visions
Release Date	1994-1995
Genre	Adventure
Download	No link available.

The Zeux series is a series of five games made by Gregory Janson, creator of MegaZeux.

The full list of games in the series is as follows:

• Labrynth of Zeux
• Zeux II: Caverns of Zeux
• Zeux III: Chronos Stasis
• Zeux IV: Forest of Ruin
• Zeux V: Catacombs of Zeux

Labrynth of Zeux, the first game in the series, was a DOS game that preceded MegaZeux itself. Its sequels were all created in MZX (hence the name of the GCS, MegaZeux).

Plot

Labrynth of Zeux

The playable character, Vince M. Louis, is a famous theologist who has uncovered and studied every mystical and religious item ever mentioned in legend, except one - the magical Silver Staff of Zeux. Going on rumors and legends alone, Vince enters the mystical Labrynth of Zeux in search of the artifact.

Zeux II: Caverns of Zeux

Caverns' intro recaps the ultimate result of Labrynth of Zeux, as Vince reaches the chamber where the Silver Staff of Zeux is held. He takes the staff and exits through a tunnel ahead. As Vince journeys through the tunnel, the staff suddenly shoots out several beams of light, caving in the passageway behind Vince and trapping him in the Caverns of Zeux. As Vince looks at his reflection in a nearby pool of water, he sees that he has been transformed into a dwarf, perhaps due to the enchantment of the area around him.

Stopping at the nearby dwarven village of Ruidia, Vince learns that he may be able to escape the caverns if he can create a bridge with the magical power of five Rainbow Gems and journey over a chasm that blocks his progress. Armed with the power of the Silver Staff, Vince manages to procure all five of the gems from the neighboring caverns, meanwhile defeating a demon that has been terrorizing Ruidia with its ability to create earthquakes.

Vince crosses the newly created rainbow bridge to find a large, solitary chamber in the caverns. It is in this chamber that he first encounters the spirit Echin, who informs him that, in order to open the portal that will allow an exit from the caverns, he must defeat seven guardians who claim different areas of the caverns as their home, the first of which was the demon Vince had slain earlier.

As Vince journeys deeper into the caverns to defeat the remaining six guardians, he comes across several strange artifacts, including spell books, pendants, and crystals which change his form. After having defeated the final guardian, Vince returns to Echin, only to find that he has been tricked, and defeating the seven guardians had actually unsealed the portal back to Echin's home dimension. Vince is transported to the dimension along with Echin, but his Silver Staff is left behind.

After maneuvering, defenseless, through these caverns, Vince finds Ryiden, a town full of skeletons, and meets a sorceror with the ability to channel the power of the aura crystals Vince obtained from the guardians and change him into any form that the crystals permit.

Now able to communicate with the skeletons in Ryiden, Vince learns that there are chambers that can teleport people between the dimensions of the caverns, and that Echin's chambers can only be opened with the power of seven pendants, of which Vince already has three in his possession.

Using his different forms and new spells to his advantage, Vince journeys to previously inaccessible areas of the caverns to gather the remaining four, and battles Echin to the death in his caverns. With his last breath, Echin reveals that the entire journey Vince just went through was all a complex holographic game, and Vince soon awakens in a prison cell, with no idea where exactly he is...

Distribution

Caverns of Zeux was packed in with every version of MegaZeux up to 2.51. The remaining three episodes originally came with the registered version of MZX, making the Zeux series one of the few MZX games to be released as shareware. In early 1998, the episodes were placed on Cheesypoof, yenrab's game archive, with Greg Janson's permission, and became freeware from that point on. This preceded MZX itself becoming open source by several months.

The first Zeux game, Labrynth of Zeux, did not become freeware until much later (around 2003).