ZeroDay.exe - A Cooperative, Deck Building, Dungeon Crawler

THANK YOU - We did it! 2 New Stretch Goals unlocked + Pledge Manager/Late Pledges
12 months ago – Tue, Apr 15, 2025 at 09:42:48 AM

WE DID IT!

Thank you all so much for your support throughout the campaign! We really appreciate each and every one of you and are so excited to start bringing ZeroDay.exe to your tables!

Over the last few days, we gained many new hackers and were able to unlock 2 new Stretch Goals - The custom insert and new enemy level cards!
 

Black Magic Custom Insert

We will be working with Black Magic Inserts (who we worked with on our previous campaign, Curse of the Ghost Ships) on this and have some great plans in place! The biggest benefits this will bring is allowing players to save their campaign progress using trays that will store their decks, mods, and items, as well as their player boards! We are also going to be using a tray system for any tokens and tiles, allowing us to reduce setup and tear-down time to just a few minutes! We'll be updating you as the design progress and if there is anything specific you feel should be included in the design, please feel free to share it with us!

New Enemy Level Cards

Each enemy has 9 level cards - 3 for each level (1, 2, and 3), and each of which has 2 abilities. The ability the enemy uses is decided by its Initiative. As you progress through an Operation and gain Threat from Initiative, enemies will begin to upgrade and become stronger. Each enemy has 3 "paths" of upgrades, but since they are randomly selected at the start of the Operation, they will rarely follow a single direct upgrade path, instead jumping to different paths and changing up their play-style as the Operation progresses.

With this stretch goal, each enemy will not have an additional "Upgrade Path", adding more variety to each enemy and more strategic thinking from players as they level up!

Late Pledges and Pledge Manager

Over the next week, we will be making our final decision on which platform to use for our pledge manager - whether that is staying right here on Kickstarter, using BackerKit as we have in the past, or going over to the GameFound platform. There are benefits to each, but we want to make sure we choose the one that will be best for ZeroDay and hopefully allow us to bring in more backers as we finish designing the game. After we've made our choice, we are hoping to have it open within a couple of weeks!

For now, late pledges are available right here on the Kickstarter page.  Backers can still pledge for the Base, Deluxe, and All-In reward tiers and we will keep this open until we close the pledge manager and we are ready to fulfill!

Thank you all again for your support and for helping us bring this game to life. We seriously cannot do this without you and we are forever grateful!

- Hacker Kat & Zach

Boss Fights, Campaign Rewards, and a New Miniature Sculpt!
about 1 year ago – Wed, Apr 02, 2025 at 06:01:37 AM

Hey Hackers!

Over the weekend, Katie and I re-evaluated our stretch goal plan and made a decision to move some things around so that we could hopefully unlock some more stretch goals during the campaign. We've moved up the more gameplay-oriented goals that don't cost as much to add (such as more cards) so that we could lower the amount needed and get more content added to the game!

We encourage you to check out the stretch goal section to see how close we now can be to unlocking new content. If you're a $1 backer or just still on the fence about backing the game, now would be a great time to jump in to help unlock more content for the game! If just half of our $1 backers upped to the base pledge, we'd hit our next stretch goal instantly! 🦾

Now let's talk a bit about gameplay and how bosses and campaign mode work!

Boss Operations

Boss Operations present unique challenges that are fast-paced and high stakes. While most Operations you'll be able to move through methodically and (hopefully) tough it out to the end, Bosses are stronger and their operation maps are smaller, giving them a more "do or die" feel. 

Bosses also have their own set of 6 attack cards (shown below). Each round they'll draw a new card, revealing their initiative, movement, range, damage type, and any other abilities such as Area of Effect (AoE) attacks or unique mechanics for the round.

Bosses are more advanced Ai bots, therefore they have more unique abilities than the normal enemies you'll face in most Operations. For example, they can tether players so they cannot move away, knockback players which could result in being pushed into hazards (like flesh-ripping laser lights), or punish players for having too many Hacks processing.

The Operation maps for Boss fights also have unique aspects to them, such as the lasers mentioned above, electrically charged water spaces, or terminals that you can access (if you can get past the guards) to weaken the boss.

Campaign Mode and How Upgrading Works

The overall structure of each Operation in Campaign Mode is the same as the One-Shots. You'll still upgrade throughout the Operation, downloading new hacks, building mods and items, and upgrading your skills and starting hacks. The key difference is that instead of starting completely fresh each Operation, completing Operations allows players to choose specific upgrades to keep going into the next Operation.

In the Operation Book, the left page will be the story for the Operation, while the right page will be the spawn map, showing where to place terminals and part piles, and where to spawn enemies. As you can see in the image, at the bottom of each story page we will have a list of rewards you get for completing it in Campaign Mode. These rewards are gained by each player and are cumulative during the campaign, allowing you to have more control over your characters progression path as you work through the campaign. 

As you progress through the campaign, enemies will also start Operations at higher levels, which means less upgrades and more enemies spawning as you gain threat.

Ollie Miniature Sculpt!

We also wanted to show another example of the miniatures that we are offering in the Deluxe and All-In pledge levels. Check out Ollie below!

If you have any other questions about gameplay or anything, please don't hesitate to ask us in the comments!

-Hacker Kat & Zach

First Stretch Goal Down - 3 new Item cards added to the game!
about 1 year ago – Mon, Mar 24, 2025 at 09:25:25 AM

Hey Hackers!

Over the weekend we funded enough to access and download the data for our first stretch goal, adding 3 new item cards to the game! Items are powerful, one-time use effects that can be used at any time, gained by drawing the orange part cube when scavenging defeated enemies.

Next Stretch Goal - Foil Upgrade Cards

Our intel shows foil upgrade cards are our next target to hack! We'll need to work hard and recruit some new hackers to access this data and add it to the game. 🦾

Also gained by using scavenged parts, players can upgrade their character's starting hacks into better versions! This will almost always upgrade the hacks main ability, but can also change things like their program cost, their initiative value, their flux ability, or any combination of those things. This stretch goal will turn the upgraded versions into shiny, foil cards, making them more distinct from their original and making the upgrade feel even better!

Teach and Play

If you are still on the fence about backing ZeroDay.exe (or just want to learn the game and play), we want to invite you to our discord and set up a time for us to teach you how to play and play through an Operation with us!

Click here to join the discord.
Once you join, just send us a message on the "play-test-chat" channel to get a game scheduled!

Live Play

As we mentioned in our previous update, we ran through a live play with a few backers on our Discord last week! One of those backers was gracious enough to record the session, which you can watch below!

Again, if you have any questions about the game, we are here to answer them so feel free to ask us! 

Thank you again for believing in ZeroDay.exe, now lets recruit some new hackers to help us access even more stretch goals!

-Hack Kat & Zach

We are Funded!
about 1 year ago – Fri, Mar 21, 2025 at 07:50:23 AM

Thank you all so much for believing in ZeroDay.exe and helping us reach our goal! We can't say enough how grateful we are to you! 

If you are a $1 backer on the fence about the game, now would be a great time to Load in and help us reach some stretch goals! We encourage you to check out some play-through videos, ask us any question you may have, and try the game out on TableTop Simulator to see just how unique and fun ZeroDay.exe can be!

If anyone would like to try out the game, we invite you to join our Discord and schedule a time to play with us. We'd be more than happy to teach you the game and show you the ropes!

Now let's keep this going and unlock some of the great stretch goals we have planned! 🦾

-Hacker Kat and Zach

First 24 hours!
about 1 year ago – Wed, Mar 19, 2025 at 08:27:53 AM

Hello Backers! First off, we just want to thank everyone who has backed the game so far! You backers are our lifeblood and we cannot do this without you. We are always so thankful for your support!

In the first 24 hours, we've reached just about 75% funded. We are hopeful to hit our funding goal over the next few days and start unlocking the awesome stretch goals we have planned, but we need more eyes on the page! If you are excited for ZeroDay.exe, please share the campaign on social media and with your other gaming friends to help us get as many eyes on the campaign as possible!

All-In Pledge and the Character Expansion

We've had a bit of confusion regarding the "All-In Pledge" and the 2-character expansion. If you pledge at the "All-In" or "PudKat Games Collector's" pledge levels, you do not need to add the 2-character expansion, as those pledge levels already include it!

Live Playthrough

We also wanted to invite everyone join our discord and watch a live play of ZeroDay.exe! We'll be running a game at 8:30pm EST tomorrow, March 20th. We'd love for you to come hangout, ask questions, and checkout the game!

Click here to join the Discord!

Thank you again for all of your support so far!

- Hacker Kat & Zach

Now, let's have some fun in the comments!

If you could choose one, what type of cybernetic body modification would you get?

Would you completely replace your face with a holo-mask like Shade? Or maybe get some hydraulic titanium fists like T.? Or do you want it all, replacing almost your entire body with cybernetics like Kit-E! Let us know in the comments!