I hope everyone is having a great final week of 2023! There's a lot of news about Aground Zero, so lets get to it!

Early Access

First, we decided to do an Early Access launch for Aground Zero. We've been considering this for a while, and given how well Early Access went for the original Aground, we decided to do it again! The Early Access launch will start with all the questlines up to the Surface, including most of the planned content on the Surface! However, there will still be more to come, including an ending, Spaceships (yes, we're adding those), and potentially other features based on player feedback - like a magic path. Our Early Access launch will be in January 2024 (we'll be announcing the exact date soon, along with a new trailer), and you can check out the Early Access section of our storepage for more details about our plans for Early Access.

Demo Update 0.2.0

While a lot of our work has been on the Subways, Surface, and post-demo content, we've also been making a lot of improvements that affect the demo, so I decided to update it! Consider this a holiday present from me! Changelog

• Performance optimizations
• Edited character textures
• Improved NPC pathfinding - they can now use teleportals (but will not change the destination of them).
• NPCs will now fire laser guns if they have them in their inventory to shoot enemies
• Bunkers will now request food from storehouses
• PAI can perform an emergency teleport to the starting location if you get stuck
• Updated logo
• Repaired cryopods now let you advance time when sealed inside.
• Bugfixes/minor improvements.

Perhaps the biggest change is the performance optimizations, which will keep the game from grinding to a halt on the biggest bases.

Update Videos

I've been posting a new progress video for Aground Zero every Tuesday, and will continue to do that between now and our Early Access launch (and possibly throughout Early Access). While I have been adding them to the videos section of our community hub on Steam, it's quite possible you missed them, so here they are: [previewyoutube=v8bDROOh8Bw;full]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8bDROOh8Bw[/previewyoutube] [previewyoutube=2h-1GRlYNQA;full]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h-1GRlYNQA[/previewyoutube] [previewyoutube=LjG407Dhloo;full]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjG407Dhloo[/previewyoutube] [previewyoutube=iBtNfYz3JZM;full]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBtNfYz3JZM[/previewyoutube] [previewyoutube=9l6FPqpYeCw;full]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9l6FPqpYeCw[/previewyoutube] I hope you're looking forward to more updates, and if you want to be notified when a new video is added, you can subscribe to us on Youtube, or grab the AgroundUpdates role on our Discord server! I hope you're all excited - 2024 is going to be a very Aground Zero filled year!