Day Zero - Build, Craft, Survive

Day Zero - Build, Craft, Survive is a sci-fi sandbox RPG set in a galaxy where the Maria are trying to survive after their home planet faces destruction. You play as the newly promoted Commander of the Nexus Defense Force, responsible for gathering intelligence, strengthening the Nexus’ defenses, coordinating strike teams and fighting insurgents to maintain peace.

The Maria’s survival

Millions of years ago, the Maria lived on a small planet orbiting a star in the Milky Way. An excavation near the planet’s largest volcano uncovered an artifact that led to an ancient crashed vessel. Its message warned that solar flares would strike the planet, while solar winds would strip away its atmosphere and leave it barren.

The Maria created the Oculus, a virtual hub that let them access their Unity Network, and the Anima, which produced artificial bodies for them to control. They used those bodies to explore worlds on their journey to the Homeworld, and built a mobile colony platform from materials taken from one of their planet’s three moons. Disagreement over whether destroying the moon was necessary fractured the Marian Empire, as political parties and religious groups formed and threatened secession and civil war. The Nexus Defense Force was established in an effort to preserve peace.

Explore and recruit

You can travel through procedural solar systems in the Campaign or create your own. On planets, you explore towns, objectives, creeps and wreckages, among other locations and discoveries. You can find and hire companions on different planets, and wake crew members to help with tasks around the Nexus.

Fight and customize

The game includes hundreds of melee weapons for fighting NPCs. You can customize weapons with combinations of crossguards, pommels, blades and hilts, or build energy sabers. Ranged weapons have a growing arsenal, and you can create guns using a wide range of attachments.

You can purchase, loot or unlock thousands of combinations of weapons, items and armor. You can also create your character’s backstory and customize your Anima.

Build and survive

You build outposts on new worlds to withstand the Void onslaught, and customize your home using a growing library of hundreds of modules and parts. Crafting lets you make items, consumables, weapons and armor. Survival also means managing hunger, thirst and sanity in a world filled with darkness and chaos.

Game modes and features

The game includes a Campaign, different scenarios and game modes, multiplayer content, abilities, mini-games and audio playlists. The sandbox mode is available from the scenarios menu under the party games tab; it is where most of the stable features are found. The sandbox continues to be updated, with a focus on addressing stability issues in the requested features.