Jun 5

ZIX - Flat2VR Studios

Our Story

When the world closed its doors in 2020, my brother and I suddenly found ourselves on opposite sides of Canada—two lifelong gamers and co-op addicts with no couch to share. Late-night voice chats kept the ritual alive, but every win felt muted through a headset mic. VR seemed like an obvious solution, so we each strapped on a headset and—boom—there we were, standing shoulder to shoulder inside the same world, feeling that impossible sense of presence that flat screens just can’t touch. It was magic… for a while. Once the wow faded, we craved the same depth that used to keep us up all night— the layered builds, the clutch saves— and we soon discovered it just didn’t exist yet.

We grew up on hand-me-down PCs balanced on shaky desks, losing entire weekends to the classics—RuneScape marathons, endless GTA: San Andreas mod nights, and epic length sessions of Risk of Rain 2 that ended only when sunrise leaked through the curtains. Those sessions taught us three things that never left:

First, presence means nothing without purpose; the best worlds beg you to poke, prod, and remake them.
Second, flow is fragile; the moment a HUD nags for attention, the magic snaps like a cheap cable.
And third, chaos is the purest playground; the stories we still retell are the ones no designer could have scripted.

A decade in the industry only sharpened those ideals. So when the lockdown ended our couch-co-op routine, we dusted off the tools we’d cut our teeth on and set out to build the VR game we'd been hunting for, but never quite found. One late-night prototype became two, then ten; each pass pulled us closer to a vision where momentum, gesture, and willful disorder could share the same space.

That vision crystallized into ZIX, a surreal VR roguelite where every run lets you nudge reality a little further off the rails

Chasing Chaos

Those late-night prototypes snowballed fast. My brother and I poured weekends into Blender scenes, duct-taped Unity builds, and way too many half-finished mechanics—hoping one would feel like the missing piece we’d looked for in other VR games.

We kept circling the same ingredients:

Replayability that never repeats: The rush of roguelikes where last-second combos flip defeat into highlight-reel victory.
Physics you can feel: That first bowstring hum in VR or a mid-air dash that clicks and makes your stomach drop—in the good way.
Shared experimentation: The “try this—okay, now try this” moments where friends break a rule and accidentally write a new one.

Surreal immersion: Worlds that feel like lucid dreams—colors bleeding, gravity misbehaving, architecture folding in on itself—amplified by the headset until you swear you can taste the atmosphere.

Every play-test reinforced a simple truth: depth doesn’t have to slow you down; it can pull you deeper. So we quit our safe studio jobs, registered Hidden IO, and bet the house on building a universe around momentum, improvisation, and glorious mess-making.

ZIX is our attempt to bottle those midnight marathons and uncork them inside a headset. You slip on the hardware and instantly become an Acolyte, serving a cosmic entity that delights in broken rules. Every run is quick, lethal, and singular: gesture-driven movement lives in your wrists, while world-shifting modifiers let you tilt gravity, splice biomes, and swap enemies until the rules feel hand-written—not by us, but by you (and whatever friends are sharing the chaos).

The point isn’t mastery so much as discovery—how strange can a universe get before it collapses, and can you ride that collapse long enough to claim victory?

What Comes Next

Over the coming months we’ll peel back the layers:

why our control scheme hides the HUD in your muscle memory
how three distinct realms bleed together like wet ink
how community feedback steers us as we sprint toward launch and beyond

Think of these posts as letters from behind the curtain—equal parts progress log and campfire story. If a dreamlike playground of momentum and mayhem sounds like your jam, stay close. We’re just getting started.

— Hidden IO

Jun 5

"Dragon Road" Update Announcement 20250606

DragonRoad - 龙道

In recent days, the Steam game exchange group of "Dragon Road" has welcomed a sharp brother. Before entering the game trial of "Dragon Road", he has put forward a series of opinions and suggestions in the group. Although the discourse series is very informative, the author thinks it is very informative and also shows that he has played many games in the gaming industry and has his own mature game experience. The author carefully copied and registered the key points of the proposed requirements, and analyzed the player's opinions while running in the morning, in order to better and more quickly improve the gameplay experience and entertaining plot of the game "Dragon Road"! The author took the time to improve the gameplay and experience of the game "Dragon Road". The updated content of the game is as follows:

1. Optimizing the Crossing of the Earth - Black Dragon Cave Scene, with the dialogue of the story, the light inside the Black Dragon Cave slowly changes from black to bright, and the protagonist slowly wakes up from a deep sleep on the ground to find a large black dragon nestled next to him. The huge dragon head and dragon horns are aimed at him, and the longan is staring at him. The two nostrils are panting heavily, emitting white smoke....;

2. Adding a dual handed sword martial arts action module, the attack system of the game "Dragon Road" now includes a close range attack system, a ranged attack system (mainly bow and arrow, detonator, spear throwing, dragon capture rope), and various magic spell systems; The close range attack system includes eight sets of martial arts including Red Fist, Dagger, One Hand Knife and One Hand Shield, Two Hand Long Blade Spear, One Hand One Sword Double Sword and Two Hand Heavy Sword, as well as countless random combinations of three consecutive moves.

3. Optimize the blocking module during enemy attacks, add animations to the original shield blocking, add long spear and two handed sword blocking functions, and support motion blocking;

4. Optimize the system for triggering backstab attacks when attacking enemies from the back. During backstab execution, dynamically adjust and lock the position of enemy monsters and players, and optimize the animation playback mechanism;

5. Optimize the rolling evasion BOSS mechanism, allowing the protagonist to roll and dodge when they are lost, supporting 8 directions of motion to roll and evade BOSS attacks;

6. Develop a player evasion mechanism for enemy attacks, based on traditional evasion, and develop evasion functions that support 8 directions to improve defense and evasion agility against powerful bosses;

7. Develop an enemy monster locking mechanism, where clicking on the mouse can lock the perspective of the enemy monster;

8. Optimize the animation technology processing of the protagonist's running movement, add the inertia and graceful characteristics of motion fluidity, and avoid excessive human-machine interaction;

9. Optimize the ground material, add grass, solve the problem of perfect fit between the feet and the ground, and cover up details such as excessive lifting of feet and legs;

10. Switch weapon props such as equipping and unloading weapons, and enable smooth equipment and unloading animation support;

11. Handling of other minor bugs reflected;

Jun 5

Hero’s Adventure × Wandering Sword Collab! Free DLC Breeze Remains Preview

Hero's Adventure: Road to Passion - Achilesheel

Hello, everyone!

In our latest patch notes, we mentioned that updates have slowed down a bit recently. These updates primarily consisted of minor quality-of-life features, such as fast-forward combat and adding waypoint markers. Rest assured, though, we’ve never stopped working on new content.

How to deliver fresh experiences is something we constantly ponder. Previously, we’ve experimented with art-style tweaks, mini-games, and standalone quest lines, aspects that are internal to the game. And initially, we already had some ideas for this update. But an off-hand chat at the start of 2025 sparked a new creative direction:

“Why don’t we do a collab this year?”

Just like that, Hero’s Adventure is teaming up with Wandering Sword for a two-way collaboration! On June 19, we’ll launch the first collaboration DLC, “Breeze Remains,” on PC (mobile version will arrive about a week later). Best of all, this DLC is completely free for everyone!

Wandering Sword’s Popular Characters Are Here

Shortly after the Heroes Meeting concluded, a new string of murders targeting wealthy merchants struck the city. Our protagonist, the champion of Heroes Meeting, is tasked by the Imperial Ombudsman to escort him to Daliang. Along the way, they run into two mysterious swordswomen, one dressed in red and another in green, who have followed to investigate the Ombudsman. A tense standoff turns out to be a misunderstanding, and in the ensuing chaos, the real culprit slips away. The three of them resolve to join forces and uncover the truth behind this crime…

Breeze and Its Echoes, Chivalry and Conscience

As the group digs deeper into the investigation, they discover that this case stretches back decades, involving a young Hua Yan and the Breeze Sect. Bit by bit, the tangled history between the killer and the Breeze Sect is revealed. As the saying goes: “Jianghu's shadows linger at the close of the day, the soft glowing moon and gentle breeze have parted their ways.”

New Area: White Mou Marsh

In the remote northwest of the Central Plains lies the White Mou Marsh. A treacherous and tangled swamp infested with venomous creatures, it’s unlike anything else…

Development and testing for this new DLC are progressing steadily. Keep an eye on our upcoming announcements for the exact release schedule and detailed patch notes. We’ll also be hosting a few events to celebrate the launch. Since this is a two-way crossover, if you’re curious about the Hero’s Adventure content coming to Wandering Sword, feel free to visit their Steam store page here:

[dynamiclink href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/1876890/_/"][/dynamiclink]

Even after more than two years since release, seeing thousands of players online every day reminds us that all our hard work and experimentation have been worthwhile. It’s hard to believe we’re already halfway through 2025. Thank you all for your continued support of Hero’s Adventure. Let us know your thoughts on this update in the comments or in our official Discord. Until next time!

Half Amateur Studio

Jun 5

First Patch

Dagger Directive - ArcaneAlpacaDev

Hi Everyone!

First I’d like to say a big thank you to all of you! It’s been amazing to hear all the feedback and seeing so many of you having fun! We’ve also gotten a lot of reports of issues with crashes or blockers, especially while loading from a saved game. We’ve spent the last few days focused on fixing single player and improving stability.

Our first patch is here and thanks to your help we’ve been able to track down and fix a number of issues. Our goal for this first update was to fix as many saving or loading, random hang ups, and adding missing settings as we can. There is one downside to all of these changes, any in-progress mission saves you have are invalidated. Your character saves, progress through the campaigns, and your saved loadouts will all still be there.

If you continue to run into issues please continue to report them here in Steam or in our Discord (https://discord.gg/NnY2JrNPPd) We’ll continue to be focused on improving stability, fixing issues with multiplayer, and fixing bugs over the next few weeks.

Change Log

Important:

All previous in-progress mission saves are invalidated. Character saves, progress through the campaigns, and your saved loadouts are not affected.

Known issues:

Only the first 100 lobbies will appear in the server browser

Destroying all of the BRDMs in the first objective of Chemical Crossfire is likely to cause non-host players to crash

Notes:

Key bindings now allow modifier key combinations (Shift, Control, Alt).
Updated Default key bindings to use Shift + (1 - 6) for Pouch selection on top of the original 6 - 0. Requires resetting key bindings to take effect.

Removed Console hotkey key bindings to prevent confusion.

Updated credits with additional artists.

Added setting “Invert Menu - Y Axis” so the menu and gameplay axis can be inverted separately. “Invert Look - Y Axis” only affects the camera controls now.

Slightly reduced AI’s ability to see drones.

Increased smoke grenade throw distance to be the same as the frag. Also increase the power meter duration.

Updated localization for all languages.

Recon drone can now place a marker and toggle its laser.

Added control instructions to the drone menu.

Added new pinging activation to binoculars.

Equipping a new loadout from the loadout board now destroys your old items instead of dropping everything on the floor.
Added Commander dialogue during the training intro flight that informs the player they can leave the training at any time through the Pause Menu.
Increased helicopter speed in the training intro flight to reduce the time it takes to reach the landing.
Adjusted enemy voices to have a further out volume falloff and increased volume.
Reduced tank volume and distance.
Reduced truck engine volume and distance.
Added Invalid mission save version handling.
The message popup menu can now be colored based on its message.

Bug Fixes:

Fixed the "Game - Y Axis" input sensitivity labeled as "Menu - Y Axis" incorrectly.
Fixed missing localization and audio for the compass intro.
Fixed the Reset keybindings preventing new key remapping.
Fix for m203 and SMAW breaking all input.
Fix for color selection menu allowing players to interact with the UI behind it.
Fixed magazine retention reload not returning the magazine to the player’s inventory.
Fix for interacting with only the button you’re actively holding, not hovering.
Fixed privately hosted multiplayer servers not spawning entities on the ship.
Fix for black screening players when joining and setting up the compass player icons.
Fixed swapping an item with the ground slot in the inventory menu breaking.
Fixed vehicles going all the way back to their first waypoint when loading from a saved game. Now they will properly resume the path.
Fix for sub-objectives not completing loading from a save.
You’re no longer able to pick up grenades once they start cooking and fixed a crash caused by attempting to interact with a grenade while it de-spawns or trying to pick up a grenade once it has been thrown.
Fix for dialogue messages playing all dialogues up to current objective in a loaded mission.
Fixed dead drones appearing for joining players in multiplayer.
The player will no longer drop their equipped item if they die in the middle of swapping items.
Fixed chance for pick ups to not properly clean up when destroyed.
Fixed thrown and placed equipment not saving and loading their positions correctly.
Fixed drones not saving and loading correctly.
Fixed objectives not loading correctly from a saved game.
Miniguns properly spawn when loading from a save.
Fix for “Completed Missions” stat getting triggered more than once at the end of a mission.
Fixed a crash while joining in progress caused by the AI in vehicles.
Fixed an error with the tank not responding when it found a target.
Fixed the HE drone not exploding.
Fixed missing localization for the killed by rotor blades stat.
Fixed Manufacturing Meltdown being unable to save.
Fixed Quick Saves appearing in the Save Menu and breaking if overwritten.
Fixed missing colliders on fishing boats.
Fixed missing collider on Rock C3M5.

While we're mainly focused on fixing issues in the existing build, we’re also preparing the first content update! Here’s a sneak peak of some upcoming content:

Thanks again!

-Dan