March 2026 Development Update

Welcome to the first in a series of monthly development updates from Zeroth. These are the highlights from March 2026.

Illusions & Spikes

In case Zeroth wasn’t difficult enough, now the ground is not always as solid as you thought. Illusionary blocks and spikes result in sudden drops and pointy endings.

Golem Safety Handbook

Inanimate objects + Googly eyes = Golems! What you thought was a barrel of loot turns out to be an angry barrel golem.

Watch the YouTube short to learn how to stay safe from golems,

Bolder with Boulders

There's nothing quite as enjoyable as squashing your enemies with a boulder. That said, you might want to watch out for falling boulder traps...

Watch the YouTube short to discover the benefits of boulders,

Item Detection

The new detection scroll reveals hidden items including those buried beneath graves. This takes away the guesswork when it comes to looting.

Elemental Weapon Effects

The knight above is wielding an epic voltaic sword which deals massive electricial damage. In Zeroth there are six elements - fire, cold, shock, acid, poison and psychic. Each weapon now has an epic elemental version with animated visual effects.

Honeycomb and Royal Jelly

Good news! Bee hives are no longer just a home for killer bees, now they might contain electric bees! Wait, that's much worse isn't it? But, it's worthwhile to break hives because they now drop delicious honeycomb and royal jelly which increases your ability scores.

Time Shift

You can't tell from this screenshot but time has stopped still. The wizard has all the time in the world to contemplate his next move. Swing his staff, cast force strike or maybe look in the inventory for a new wand? Zeroth is intended as real-time experience but also has time shifting settings so enemies only move when you move.

Art Performance

I wrote a devlog about our art pipeline and asked for help finding a new SVG library. This resulted in a replacement library that is around 15% faster. Original Devlog Post and Successful Update Post. Additonally, I successfully upgraded to .NET 10 resulting in performance increases across the entire game. Also, I made changes to vasrtly improve the saving/loading speed. Overall, a great month for performance improvements.

Thanks for reading and I will be back next month with the April update.

Only in Zeroth!

Callan, Contrary Games