Ground Zero 0.0.1: Countdown to Alpha
- Crytivo
- Sep 18
- 6 min read
Updated: Sep 19
Hello future Autonomics.
I have a few important updates to share with you today.
First of all, we’re incredibly super duper excited to finally let you experience our very first Alpha soon! The team is doing great, hard at work and pushing towards that initial release. There are a ton of systems behind the curtain that all need to be stitched together so everything feels smooth and coherent.
Unfortunately, we had a few bumps in the road after the Kickstarter, not serious, just the usual challenges that come up. Because of that, unfortunately, we have to shift the release of the Alpha slightly to November 19th.
This is an incredibly important update for us, and we want to make sure we do it right. Since we said that we’re ok for streamers to stream (even though the game still will not be ready for it, probably?!), we chose to go with full transparency as we always do.
The initial release - Ground Zero: 0.0.1 is going to be challenging for us. Since it’s the first time ever that many of our systems need to activate and collaborate effectively. It feels like the anticipation before a spaceship launch, we’re super nervous and excited, hoping that your first experience is going to be as smooth as possible (but don’t expect it to be super polished).
Check Out Alpha Island Fly Through Video
In general, I'm very against overworking my team, and I care a lot for their physical and mental health. I want to make sure we’re not pushing them past their limits. At the same time, I promise you guys we’re working really, really hard, putting in a ton of effort, bringing everything together in the game.
To help manage expectations, we put together a basic Ground Zero 0.0.1 planned feature list. Big emphasis on planned. I can’t stress enough how complicated what we’re building is, but your support is incredibly motivating and fuels our passion.
Planned Core Features at Launch
Isolated open-world island
Tutorial Que
st System to help guide you through the game
Character Vitals and Stats, including a few Buffs and Debuffs
Farming with selected Crops (probably around 5–7)
Creation of plots
Plant Stages
Plant Health
Probably a few Fertilizers
Plants can see the sun
Plants hydration level
Potentially Plant Biome Boosts and Debuffs
Automation (early stages) with selected machines and very complex conveyor line tools
Electricity: Windmills, Solar panels
Basic Weather Patterns: rain, snow, wind changes etc
A few vehicles to try out: hoverboard, bicycle etc
Blackbox integration
Crafting tools and resources
Tool Repair Station (craft repair kits for tools)
Inventory and storage system
Interactable Systems, including interaction indicators
Looting system
Advanced world environment lighting linked to weather controllers, potentially with moon phases
Ability to cut trees (duh)
Ability to mine ground resources: stone, iron, copper ore, quartz
Super complex and detailed construction system (we are already proud of what we have). You’ll be able to build with selected materials: wood, stone, and glass. More advanced materials like steel, iron, and more will be introduced later. It probably will not have strong meta yet - later house and decoration will count towards your character stats (Home Pod)
Progression system:
Manufacturing Station (unlock new technologies, ~3–5 tiers of unlocks)
Maybe Botanical Station (advances in farming)
Some basic character Masteries (levels)
Character leveling up system - Players skill levels grow based on actions they perform in the game. (highly wip)
6 preset characters to choose from to play as. (You’ll be able to customize and create your character fully a bit later in the development process)
Manual Watering Mechanic (via water gun)
A store with furniture and accessories where you can purchase props and furniture for your new homes.
Basic Economy
Dynamic Points of Interest - places that you can recover and restore.
Delivery system (we might not have this one for the Ground Zero though, but we’re trying guys)
Basic Cooking - meals from plants you have grown yourself.
Basic construction customization - presets for now.
What we will not have:
Fully integrated animals (probably disabled for the first Alpha)
No Co-op or Multiplayer. Foundationally we have this working, but some systems don’t support it properly yet. Rather than just seeing your friend in the game without much else, we’d rather roll it out soon after release when it actually offers something meaningful.
No NPCs yet. It’s a massive and very complex system, and we want NPCs to feel dimensional. This will take more work.
More dynamic and complex weather patterns (like tornadoes, hail storms, infestations) will come later.
No Phantoms yet. They’re super complex, similar to NPCs, and will probably roll out with co-op modes shortly after the first release.
No character customization. The system is still in heavy development; the goal is to let you morph facial and body shapes.
Additional Buffs and Debuffs (including some fun immersive ones) will be introduced later.
Automatic Irrigation - Pipes, pumps, sprinklers, etc.
No full gamepad support yet (we’re working on it, you’ll have it soon)
More complex customization, where you can choose colors, patterns,s and materials for your construction elements coming soon.
Audio
As we launch the alpha, some audio effects will be missing. We started working on audio kinda late (programmers usually don’t listen to their own games and get way too comfortable playing them silently, …silly fools that we are.). But we’re committed to adding audio to all the key elements so the world never feels muted. This is just the beginning of making the game feel truly alive.
Now for some exciting news: we’ve purchased a license for Wwise, The industry leading audio middleware that brings interactive sound within games to a whole new level. This will add a whole new dimension to our already rich world.
Our new audio engineer is hard at work implementing systems that will make your experience truly feel immersive and alive.
We’re building dynamic soundtracks that are designed to change with the world around you. The weather will affect sound differently. In fog, sounds become softer; rain will add richer reverb to every step and action, and trees will rustle or roar depending on the wind and the movement of their leaves. Every sound will respond to the world… and to the actions you take.
It’s pretty, pretty cool.
⚠️ Note on the lists We’re 100% missing some things from these lists. They aren’t meant to give you a super accurate breakdown; the goal is just to give you an idea of what to expect. We’re also building a stronger roadmap to give you an even better glimpse on the journey ahead. It will outline upcoming features in more detail.
Important Note: What we are doing with this release is unprecedented. I don’t know any team working on a game of the scale of Autonomica that has allowed their fans and backers to start playing the game this soon. Usually, it takes years of testing and planning before players get to experience anything playable after a Kickstarter. We, however, felt it was important to be open and transparent and let you into the experience as soon as we possibly could.
With this in mind, it’s important to manage expectations and understand that the game is going to evolve over time and you’ll experience it from the first row seats. Our goal is to update, patch, fix bugs and introduce new features on a monthly basis. It’s going to be a lot of fun and every month or other month you’ll see new features rolling into the game. The game will offer you a new experience even after you’ve already sunk many, many hours into it.
Please, please, please — we’re asking for patience and support. The scale of this project for our team is massive, but I promise, we’re charging through it! I absolutely love how things are shaping up. It just needs a little more time to shine.
Want to get into Alpha? We’ve been getting new requests from people who missed our Kickstarter campaign and still want to join Alpha, Beta, and so on. We do plan to introduce some tiers on our website a bit later, but you’ll need to wait a little.
Right now we want to work closely with our community — the initial Alpha participants — to get feedback and make sure the game is ready for more people. My guess is it will take at least a few months before we offer a limited number of new Alpha seats.
And before I go, how about we do another Q&A with me and some of our dev stars? We’re thinking about doing it on 24th (next week) on our Twitch Channel at https://www.twitch.tv/crytivo, we will take questions from our Discord and Twitch Chat.
Don’t worry, we won't spoil too much of the game, but we can have a good, healthy chat. Let’s call it Breakfast with Crytivo. Grab your donut, cookie, and coffee (or milk!) and join us for some quality time together on September 24th. I’ll be happy to answer your questions and hang out with you all.
-Alex K.
