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Hello TL.net!
I'm CatZ, on behalf of the ZeroSpace team whom I've worked with full-time for the last 6~ years. This weekend is very special and important to our project, as we participate in Steam NextFest. This will be ZeroSpace's last free demo before Early Access release this July 20th. If you haven't yet had the chance to give the game a try, this weekend is the best window to do just that! In many ways, this is our very indie love letter to StarCraft and the classic RTS genre, a genre we all care about greatly.
To download the demo, just type ZeroSpace on your steam browser. Wishlists & Follows go a long way to help us also.
I realize that not everyone may be familiar with ZeroSpace yet. We are a new indie RTS game with the ambition to bring fresh elements and flavors to our favorite genre. As a team, we have deep roots in the RTS and in particular StarCraft communities.
So here's a mix of the content you can expect in this last free demo starting now and some of the people responsible for the product.
[Each mode also has Tutorials and learning tools available today!]
Our Campaign during this demo features the first 3 full missions, giving a taste of both the cinematic story and gameplay. Campaign has been shaped by; MindHawk, Orcawarrior, Synergy and their team - some of the most prominent SC2 campaign modders, who helped GiantGrantGames deliver popular new campaign experiences to SC2 players. Lorekeeper "Subsorian" is also richly involved.
ZeroSpace has also found strong collaborators in PiG and Grant himself, whose valuable consistent input has helped to shape the product from the early stages. We also recently partnered up on Art Direction with Aaron Kambeitz, Relic founder and former Homeworld Art Director and his team.
CO-OP features 3 commanders and 8 missions - as the player's efforts also contribute to winning the Galactic War, our MMO super-map layer.
Our CO-OP mode is developed by prominent SC2 CO-OP modder and systems designer Maguro and his team, incluiding prominent modder and mapmaker Superouman.
It's not just glory on the line.. players participating in the Galactic War over the weekend will get entered into a draw to win one of 3 custom ZeroSpace PCs!
Versus has 3 (4 by Early Access) Main factions and 5 Mercenary factions to choose from. Playing vs Ai of various skills is also a readily available feature. For Versus, I worked alongside Scarlett and our team to deliver a fun, competitive, relatively fast paced (yet mechanically accessible) experience, rich with strategic choices, depth, and high potential for player expression.
For those of you interested in watching current high level ZeroSpace gameplay; We will be hosting a $5000 tournament (for the top 8 players on the ladder) this Sunday, June 21st at 16:00 GMT (+00:00) casted by Wardi on his channel!
https://www.twitch.tv/wardiii
For additional details about the tournament or participating in the Galactic War contest:
Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/rmgEx5pp9h
Follow us on socials: @PlayZeroSpace
Thank you for your support and look forward to your thoughts on the game!
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Awesome, I want to give it another try, haven't played in a year or so. What will the new main faction be for Early Access?
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On June 19 2026 07:27 CicadaSC wrote:
Awesome, I want to give it another try, haven't played in a year or so. What will the new main faction be for Early Access?
Awesome, lmk what you think!
The New Main Faction is called the Xol, they are an Alien AI faction with some unique gameplay mechanics & twists to it.
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I've only played a couple hours but really enjoyed it! I'll play more when it hits EA.
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Glad to see something about this game.
Will this have any shape of SP other than the campaign (comp stomp)?
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Hell yeah CATZ, this is amazing, excited to play it again.
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Bosnia-Herzegovina16 Posts
On June 19 2026 07:32 ROOTCatZ wrote:Show nested quote +On June 19 2026 07:27 CicadaSC wrote:
Awesome, I want to give it another try, haven't played in a year or so. What will the new main faction be for Early Access? Awesome, lmk what you think! The New Main Faction is called the Xol, they are an Alien AI faction with some unique gameplay mechanics & twists to it.
Thanks for sharing the news. Good luck with the Early access.
Question:
Comparing to your original post about Xol, how much has game-play mechanic evolved since? Has the main concept of merging of units still present?
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On June 20 2026 00:45 dugokontov wrote:Show nested quote +On June 19 2026 07:32 ROOTCatZ wrote:On June 19 2026 07:27 CicadaSC wrote:
Awesome, I want to give it another try, haven't played in a year or so. What will the new main faction be for Early Access? Awesome, lmk what you think! The New Main Faction is called the Xol, they are an Alien AI faction with some unique gameplay mechanics & twists to it. Thanks for sharing the news. Good luck with the Early access. Question: Comparing to your original post about Xol, how much has game-play mechanic evolved since? Has the main concept of merging of units still present?
Great question, quite a bit as we tested.
Yes, they will still merge as a core mechanic, and has some other interesting twists that will make the faction unique in the game.
The Merging system itself has changed, we originally wanted to do like A+B=D, A+C=E, B+C=F -> F+D=G and so on, where each combination of tiers of units would produce a new unit.
We ran into a few reasons to change it, from useability (it was too complex) to Gameplay, where the faction was FAR too flexible because jumping from one unit to the next would avoid counters easily.
Instead what we did is we divided the basic units into 3 columns and the merging is a bit more linear, so - X number of A T1 units -> Merge into T2 unit, and T3 units are also combinations of T1 units + key requirements.
This means that once you merge into a unit, you are locked into that unit, and that all the merges happen with the basic units, which avoids the chaos of trying to count too many different types of units to try to get the right combination.
So our current system retains the core merging mechanic which we think is awesome and unique as a production method, but is simpler in that it centers heavier on their core units as the "materials" - Merged units are often more specialized or "utility" based and have cool combos and synergies with the T1 units.
There's a lot of other fun designs in the faction, hope you'll enjoy it
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Is it permanent like Archons or can you split back into primary units?
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United Kingdom20343 Posts
Community has a problem with bigots unfortunately, all the way to the top (the lead admin is far-right and abuses the platform)
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On June 20 2026 04:44 maybenexttime wrote:
Is it permanent like Archons or can you split back into primary units?
They are unable to split by default, but you can gain access to splitting via a mutually exclusive 'talent' atm (you gain access to these as you level up). We're unsure if we'll keep it - on paper it's cool but in practice it feels like a little too much tinkering and the faction is already on the complex end
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On June 19 2026 20:19 KobraKay wrote:
Glad to see something about this game.
Will this have any shape of SP other than the campaign (comp stomp)?
Yeah, there's a wide variety of difficulties in CO-OP and Versus AI also
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On June 20 2026 07:13 Cyro wrote:
Community has a problem with bigots unfortunately, all the way to the top (the lead admin is far-right and abuses the platform)
care to explain?
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On June 20 2026 16:07 ROOTCatZ wrote:Show nested quote +On June 20 2026 04:44 maybenexttime wrote:
Is it permanent like Archons or can you split back into primary units? They are unable to split by default, but you can gain access to splitting via a mutually exclusive 'talent' atm (you gain access to these as you level up). We're unsure if we'll keep it - on paper it's cool but in practice it feels like a little too much tinkering and the faction is already on the complex end
Do you mean level up as in your account or within a single match?
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On June 20 2026 16:23 ROOTCatZ wrote:Show nested quote +On June 19 2026 20:19 KobraKay wrote:
Glad to see something about this game.
Will this have any shape of SP other than the campaign (comp stomp)? Yeah, there's a wide variety of difficulties in CO-OP and Versus AI also
Thank you  glad to read that. Now the kid can also get to play this if it is fun
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On June 20 2026 07:13 Cyro wrote:
Community has a problem with bigots unfortunately, all the way to the top (the lead admin is far-right and abuses the platform)
...? Wut
EDIT : Excited to try this out yeehawww
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On June 20 2026 18:08 KobraKay wrote:Show nested quote +On June 20 2026 16:23 ROOTCatZ wrote:On June 19 2026 20:19 KobraKay wrote:
Glad to see something about this game.
Will this have any shape of SP other than the campaign (comp stomp)? Yeah, there's a wide variety of difficulties in CO-OP and Versus AI also Thank you glad to read that. Now the kid can also get to play this if it is fun
Haha that's awesome!! Future Bonjwa
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I had a lot of fun playing the game and watching the Wardiii tournament. Good luck!
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On June 22 2026 09:01 CicadaSC wrote:
Is the demo live?
until the 22nd
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On June 22 2026 09:10 Topin wrote:until the 22nd
Hell yeah. Going to show it to my Pa when I see him tonight
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My thoughts.
Graphics look impressive, constant fighting which seem interesting. Unit movement speed seems fast which is good and skillshot heavy which is good and generally lots of action and it rewards micro.
When I compare to stormgate - that game had way too many slow moving melee units. Too much healing. Too slow pace with too little to do doing larger skirmishes. Battle Aces full of a-move units. Zerospace looks like it actually rewards skill during battles which is essential. You can't have a competitive RTS with proper micro being very taxing on APM and mouse accuracy.
That said, I fear that players will get eventually get tired of constant headclashing. A proper competitive RTS needs:
* Harass
* Setup/planning before a skirmish/battle.
* Bases being partially defended while you secure an objective elsewhere.
It can't just be pure army vs army clashing all game long. Increasing unit production somewhat and adding strong positional units/static defenses would enable that
Something about the battles doesn't feel "right". Constant engagements without big enough moments.
I wouldn't mind abilities being even higher DPS and unit production increased. The combination of high unit production, strong defenders advantage and overpowered abilities is the easiest way to accomplish big exciting moments without the gameplay feeling too punishing.
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Yeah, the fast mobile army vs fast mobile army gameplay can get boring quickly, but at least it doesn't feel like the game is doomed from the start because of bad design choices.
Zerospace has a lot of things that should enable harass and positional play if they're carefully developed. I mean stuff like dedicated harassment units, slow artillery units, zoning spells, jet packs, air transports, spell casters, environment manipulation tools. If you support that with good map making and some balance patches, this could grow into a decent competitive RTS.
I'm not sure if trying to increase the DPS or APM requirements is the right way to go though. That's SC2's kingdom and I'd prefer if Zerospace tried to find its niche elsewhere.
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I have to say that I appreciate also Zerospace leaning into having campaign and co-op content right out of the gate, and the idea of a sort of evolving battle map is also very cool. I don't have the time or energy to learn a new competitive RTS, esp at a very incomplete stage, but there are enough cool "feel" things here that I plan on checking this out and at least playing around with it once it becomes available (unfortunately I've been traveling and couldn't do this demo).
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What will the pricing model be when this hits EA?
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On June 24 2026 05:39 Sent. wrote:
Yeah, the fast mobile army vs fast mobile army gameplay can get boring quickly, but at least it doesn't feel like the game is doomed from the start because of bad design choices.
Zerospace has a lot of things that should enable harass and positional play if they're carefully developed. I mean stuff like dedicated harassment units, slow artillery units, zoning spells, jet packs, air transports, spell casters, environment manipulation tools. If you support that with good map making and some balance patches, this could grow into a decent competitive RTS.
I'm not sure if trying to increase the DPS or APM requirements is the right way to go though. That's SC2's kingdom and I'd prefer if Zerospace tried to find its niche elsewhere.
I think everyone tends to fall into the trap of thinking they can find a nice compromise by not making the gameplay too APM-heavy in order to attract more casuals.
But it doens't work because it's the skillcap of RTS games It's like saying dribbling is too overpowered in basketball and too difficult for people who aren't good ballhandlers. If you change the rules to preventing dribbling you make the game a lot less interesting.
The only choise an RTS have is what type of clicks shoudl have happen. I think some clicks are fun and less so. IMO most clicks should be related to army movement and I think Zerospace does get that right. Hence also why it doesn't feel completely doomed atm. It feels like a couple of big patches away from something that could be pretty damn good. (although still very sceptical).
Game devs needs to stop trying to appeal to old boomer RTS players who complain about not having time to play and wants something easy. That market is limited in scope. Instead, figure out how to make a next-gen RTS that innovates and can attract a newer audience.
The whole notion that younger players don't want RTS games is false imo. What is proven they don't want is the old classical formula. You make something with truly awesome micro and battles and opportunities to express skill and it will attract an audience who never played an RTS game before.
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I only played the 3 campaign missions, can't say shit about the rest. I'll use the Sc2 names for units cause I honestly don't remember what they were called in Zerospace.
Short feedback: I'm positively surprised.
+ The campaign gripped me a lot more than the early missions from Stormgate f.e.. I'm kinda curious where the story goes.
+ The features are promising. I liked what I could see from the upgrade paths and the right decision wasn't immediately obvious most of the time
+ I thought the introduction of the units was nice and the characters and their dynamics are interesting. VA was decent imo.
+ I largely liked the level and quest design. The missions so far feel well thought out and the decisions and side quests aren't always easy.
What I didn't like:
- I feel like my army doesn't synergize in terms of micro. I like the idea to have a rooting unit in the hellbat for my blinkstalkers, but until I unlock the upgrade path where they add damage for blinking the hellbats tank at the front and the blinkstalkers just sit behind and shoot. So I kinda stop blinking unless the hellbats die and it becomes an a-move blob. Tbh both hellbats and mercs? feel like units that have specific purposes and are a bit bland as of yet in terms of micro potential, but maybe that changes through upgrades.
- The shoulder pads on the male characters are a bit comical. Especially compared to the skin tight definitely not ghost armor of the rich girl. I don't mind that the look is obviously inspired (and the pads are prolly there for top down readability), but the discrepancy is already kinda crazy in Sc2 where ghosts are super special spies while space marines are front line fighters in heavy armor. In zerospace my very rough understanding was that the comm and the rich girl went through the same academy, but the armors of the two were crazy far apart in terms of design.
- The meeting before mission 3 has both side characters arguing back and forth whether we should help or not and the game just doesn't let me decide. That felt weird because I get a lot of dialogue options, but not when I get a 30 seconds prelude broadcasting an upcoming decision.
Minor stuff:
- Maybe I'm dumb and blind and missed it, but the game could tell me stuff like that barracks heal units.
- F3 is not a good default button for anything
- I was desperately looking for a repair building option. Not sure if it exists, but if I couldn't find it.
- The building UI felt a little clunky to me, especially with recruitment options not being next to each others.
- I legit am surprised I just get a summary in the bottom of the number of units. Most RTS list them and shows me their individual health, Zerospace not so much, which I assume is intentional to foster micro that is more in the center of the screen, but it feels weird cause I'm so used to having it.
Bugs:
- Health bars in my games only showed once I clicked "always on". Every other option just hid them, even if my guys were wounded.
Overall I enjoyed the demo and will keep a closer eye on this than I would have if I didn't play it.
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It's not particularly intuitive, but production structures have little bots that will repair nearby units and structures with green laser beams.
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Overall the demo has pleasantly surprised me.
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Campaign demo made a pretty bad first impression. Runs terribly, looks bad, cliched writing and no new ideas/mechanics.
I know it's early access, but I was kind of hoping for more.
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I would like to discuss this very interesting kickstarter update post. Not sure if this thread or the main thread is better, but this one seems more on topic.
I'd like to joke and say that I really hate normies but it's not a joke. The reality is that probably ~90% of people who played the demo did not even try to play 1v1s.
Most of my games were 1v1s against AI and it totally makes sense to me why people weren't too eager to spam ranked 1v1s last week. It takes quite a bit of effort to learn the basics of the game to the point you can comfortably attempt to duel other players.
I (almost) get why people like to play coop RTS games regularly. I also get why a lot of people spent an hour or two in the campaign and forgot about the demo after that. Yet, it still saddens me that an amazing pvp project gets very limited attention from the "hardcore" 1v1 players.
To me, Stormgate was made for a playerbase that never existed. Battle Aces was something SC2 pros could play when waiting for their next match in the monday weekly. Other projects made no real effort to be the next competitive RTS. Zerospace remains the last hope but for some reason nobody cares and it feels bad to know the 1v1 game will likely never take off unless the campaign is a massive success.
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On June 28 2026 06:49 Sent. wrote:I would like to discuss this very interesting kickstarter update post. Not sure if this thread or the main thread is better, but this one seems more on topic. I'd like to joke and say that I really hate normies but it's not a joke. The reality is that probably ~90% of people who played the demo did not even try to play 1v1s. Most of my games were 1v1s against AI and it totally makes sense to me why people weren't too eager to spam ranked 1v1s last week. It takes quite a bit of effort to learn the basics of the game to the point you can comfortably attempt to duel other players. I (almost) get why people like to play coop RTS games regularly. I also get why a lot of people spent an hour or two in the campaign and forgot about the demo after that. Yet, it still saddens me that an amazing pvp project gets very limited attention from the "hardcore" 1v1 players. To me, Stormgate was made for a playerbase that never existed. Battle Aces was something SC2 pros could play when waiting for their next match in the monday weekly. Other projects made no real effort to be the next competitive RTS. Zerospace remains the last hope but for some reason nobody cares and it feels bad to know the 1v1 game will likely never take off unless the campaign is a massive success.
one thing that i asked myself several times is..."are there really 1v1 hardcore players left?" I mean in relevant numbers?
i think you have bw players, you have sc2 players...aoe2 players and then random amounts of people that i would not call hardcore at all that play 1v1 here and there in a few games they like or even on the new fotm game and then move along.
Nevertheless, if what you said last happens, then that is good, games should be made to have fun and with that you get more people...you dont grow a competitive scene out of a bad game. PvP'ers will arise from the regular people that like the game and feel the desire/need/urge to test themselves against other people in the game. Otherwise you might end up like a lot of games these days, built for an audience that doesn't exist, just like you mentioned in the beginning of your post.
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Wouldn't a demo before early access attract more hardcore players than normal? So this skews into more 1vs1 than would be the case at release?
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To me, Stormgate was made for a playerbase that never existed. Battle Aces was something SC2 pros could play when waiting for their next match in the monday weekly. Other projects made no real effort to be the next competitive RTS. Zerospace remains the last hope but for some reason nobody cares and it feels bad to know the 1v1 game will likely never take off unless the campaign is a massive success.
My understanding is that campaign is very expensive to make and generally not cost-effective.
The whole notion of creating a campaign to eventually lure people into playing 1v1 - it's just not viable IMO. Too many different things to nail at once. As a startup you focus on one thing and nailing that one thing.
Battle Aces did the right thing in the sense that they had a clear vision and tried to go all in on that. The problem IMO was that David Kim had a misperception that a wider audience would be like a game with boring a-move units.
I think the only way we can revive RTS and create a proper next-gen RTS game is if devs have a clear vision, go all-in on it and keep iterating while continuously getting feedback - NOT FROM old RTS gamers - but from the desired wider target group. The game needs to be and look awesome with opportunities for big moments. If not you can't attract those players.
Some degree of learning barrier is okay as long as it's clear what benefit a player will get after spending time learning it. There has to be something about the game that is so awesome so everyone not familar with the genre can watch a highlights-video, be amazed and inspired.
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I played the demo and felt I didn't understand the game enough for 1v1.
I usually played 1v1 in every RTS but when playing ZeroSpace I still don't have a good feeling for Macro and hero and unit abilities.
Overall the game is very hard to read visually, with building spaces difficult to see if I can build there or not and how many units I actually have.
So I only played Campaign and Galactic War to get a better understanding.
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-e- phone posted a thought I wasn't able to finish.
General idea being - @Hider I think you need a campaign to piggyback 1v1 off of, in the same way that basketball tournaments need pickup games and schoolyard / driveway play. People need to experience the casual-competitive fun and learn the rules somewhere.
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I think where BattleAces was oversimplified ,ZeroSpace is overcomplicated.
Races combined with Mercs, units, upgrades. This is a lot. And getting stomped by something that you don't understand is no fun at all.
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yea old boomer sc2 fans totally killed frost giant
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Kind of excited here folks.
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ALLEYCAT BLUES51267 Posts
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For those who have played already: Is the campaign co-op for 2 players or more?
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On July 20 2026 21:04 Miragee wrote:
For those who have played already: Is the campaign co-op for 2 players or more?
No, it's played by a single player
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On July 20 2026 22:10 Zealgoon wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2026 21:04 Miragee wrote:
For those who have played already: Is the campaign co-op for 2 players or more? No, it's played by a single player
Oh  So co-op is a seperate mode, got it, bummer.
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