I haven't played with Zig yet, but it does look like what I want C++ to be; something unapologetically low level but given some high-level constructs for safety and ergonomics. I haven't had a huge impetus to learn it because Rust has been happily occupying that space for me but it certainly can't hurt to play with Zig.

I should write an Ffmpeg codec with it or something this weekend to try it out.

I've been having fun trying out Zig recently; would recommend. FYI that they released a big batch of API changes in April (version 0.16.0) so be mindful of learning from old resources.