A Surreal, Ever-Shifting VR Roguelike Where You Control Reality Itself
MONTREAL, Canada – March 11, 2025 – The Acolytes have heard the call, and soon, the universe will burn with chaos. Hidden IO has revealed that ZIX, its mind-bending VR action roguelike, will launch in Fall 2025 on Meta Quest 3/3S and Steam VR. Debuting today during the VR Games Showcase, the latest ZIX trailer delivers a new look at the game’s relentless combat, larger-than-life enemies, and surreal, ever-morphing worlds. Players will wield a wild arsenal of weapons, chain together acrobatic, high-momentum attacks, and carve their own path through procedurally generated realms that shift and transform in unpredictable ways.
Welcome to the Cult of Chaos
In ZIX, you are an Acolyte, an agent of cosmic disorder tasked with spreading the flame of chaos. Your mission: invade corrupted realms, dismantle their order, and harvest raw instability to feed Zix—the enigmatic force that hungers for destruction. Along the way, you’ll scavenge ingredients from three bizarre worlds, blending their essence in the Cauldron to create new mutations of reality.
Swap enemies between worlds. Twist gravity to reach impossible heights. Unleash cosmic horrors that shouldn’t exist. Every run is a new experiment—a wild alchemy of destruction, discovery, and sheer WTF energy.
A Combat System That Moves as Fast as You Think
At the heart of ZIX is FIRST INSTINCT, a proprietary gesture-based combat and movement system that eliminates menus, button clutter, and clunky controls. With just the triggers and grips, you’ll be dashing, dodging, launching projectiles, and stringing together attacks instantly, intuitively, and without breaking flow.
This isn’t a game where you "press jump"—you vault, you flip, you react, and it all feels as fluid as thought itself. Every battle is a ballet of blades, fireballs, and raw kinetic expression, where the best players don’t just survive—they improvise.
Reality is a Sandbox—Break It
With ZIX’s procedural world-mixing system, no two runs are ever the same. The world is literally unstable, and it’s up to you to make it even more so:
Recipe-Driven Chaos – Collect world fragments, mix them in the Cauldron, and unleash bizarre new effects. Replace an enemy type? Sure. Flood the level with bees? Why not? Change the soundtrack? That too.
Surreal Environmental Remixing – Fuse together multiple biomes for wild hybrid levels that defy logic. One moment you’re leaping between glowing fungal islands, the next you’re fighting inside a colossal, rotting creature’s ribcage.
Twist, Break and Rebuild Everything (and Yourself)– You’re not just warping the world—you’re warping yourself. Stack absurd augments, fuse bizarre abilities, and push the Acolyte’s combat potential past the breaking point. One run, you’re an untouchable blur of blades. The next, you’re a walking arsenal of explosive mayhem. Every mutation is a new experiment, every power-up a fresh opportunity for beautifully unhinged destruction.
Bosses That Bend the Universe
Prepare for colossal-scale boss fights that reshape the battlefield in real-time. You’re not just dodging attacks—you’re dodging world-ending events. Expect reality itself to collapse, shift, and throw you into unthinkable situations as you take on towering, physics-defying horrors alone, or with up to two friends in co-op.
Play Solo or Bring Friends—Every Run is a New Experiment
Whether going it alone or alongside a fellow Acolyte, ZIX is designed for limitless experimentation and replayability. Every run is a chaotic mix of movement, creative combat, and emergent strategies, as players fuse together strange elements to bend the rules of reality. The fast, frantic action scales dynamically, ensuring that both solo and co-op players are constantly discovering new ways to push the limits of destruction.
Become an Acolyte—Wishlist Now
ZIX launches Fall 2025 on Meta Quest 3/3S and Steam VR. Want to get in early? Join the Discord to apply for upcoming alpha playtests. Stay up to date by wishlisting ZIX on the Meta Quest Store and Steam, and follow Hidden IO on X, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok for the latest updates.
Press Kit & Assets: ZIX Press Kit
For inquiries, contact: pr@impactreality.com
About Hidden IO
Hidden IO is an independent VR studio based in Montreal, founded by brothers Tam and Sol Tahirli. Growing up as refugees, the two found solace in gaming, a passion that eventually led them into game development careers spanning industry giants like Unity and Ubisoft. Seeking to push the boundaries of VR gameplay, they formed Hidden IO in 2023 with the goal of blending deep roguelike mechanics with kinetic, freeform movement and surreal, ever-changing worlds.
Backed by Meta’s Oculus Publishing program and the Canada Media Fund, Hidden IO is dedicated to creating bold, experimental VR experiences that reward creativity, adaptability, and mastery. ZIX is the studio’s debut title, bringing a fresh take on VR roguelikes with its player-driven reality-shifting systems, expressive combat, and co-op chaos.
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