zero company is released

The Star Wars game I’ve spent the last two years of my life making is out today, for PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PS5!

It feels very strange to have it done and in the wild. Through a long series of projects cancelled, companies folded, and bridges burned, I haven’t released a game commercially in a over ten years, and have certainly never released one with this level of attention - or acclaim, for that matter.

I hope that it leads to some success and stability here in my neck of the galaxy.

zero company review roundup

The Zero Company review embargo ended today, which means outlets and individual reviewers have started posting their official reviews of the game.

The response has been pretty breath-taking! People seem to really resonate with what we’ve made, and have given it high marks.

Some highlights:

IGN - 9/10

Excellent characters, writing, music, and cinematic flair give context and weight to a campaign that centers around a diverse group of mercenaries, with Force powers and lightsabers refreshingly taking a back seat to blasters and thermal detonators. And while its turn-based gameplay is instantly familiar to XCOM veterans like me, its more aggressive playstyle and flexible characters make it far more than a simple Star Wars reskin.

https://www.ign.com/articles/star-wars-zero-company-review

WorthPlaying - 9.6/10

… it feels like a group of talented developers genuinely wanted to explore what the genre could do and had the freedom to experiment. Those ideas succeed far more often than they stumble, and the game’s excellent use of the Clone Wars setting makes Zero Company one of the most entertaining turn-based strategy games I’ve played in a long time.

https://worthplaying.com/article/2026/8/26/reviews/150831-pc-review-star-wars-zero-company/

Hardcore Gamer - 4.5/5

You’ll get to see two enemies on the opposite side of the war slowly become friends, a Padawan gain confidence, and a selfish bounty hunter find a new family. Even Hawks, a fully customizable character, is presented with a strong arc that leads to an emotional payoff. In many ways, Zero Company is a near perfect encapsulation of the emotions and storytelling that makes Star Wars timeless.

https://hardcoregamer.com/review-star-wars-zero-company/

PC Gamer - 90/100

Star Wars Zero Company is one of the best games of 2026 and a new all-timer Star Wars videogame. While I don’t see it having the modding/sandbox “forever game” gravity of XCOM 2, it is excellent, substantial, and highly replayable.

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/strategy/star-wars-zero-company-review/

GameRant - 9/10

… Zero Company’s gameplay is a shining star in its own right, made from a collection of easy-to-grasp mechanics and bolstered by truly incredible presentation.

https://gamerant.com/star-wars-zero-company-review/

The Gamer - 4.5/5

It moves effortlessly between moreish combat and narrative beats so affecting that, at times, I wanted to put the controller down in the hope that everyone would be safe when I picked it back up. Star Wars Zero Company is the breath of life the series desperately needs.

https://www.thegamer.com/star-wars-zero-company-review/

Polygon

Zero Company understands what makes these games tick: the brain-scratching satisfaction of working through battlefields that fit together like puzzles. As you progress, your crew will unlock increasingly specific abilities associated with their classes, offering the tools needed to solve these combat riddles. Use a melee bruiser to knock an enemy out of cover, leaving them wide open for your Marksman. Draw aggro with your Heavy, letting your squishier units hit the flanks unharassed. Use the Scoundrel’s powerful Identify Weakness ability to apply Vulnerable, which guarantees a critical hit. Or just cut people in half with a Jedi.

https://www.polygon.com/star-wars-zero-company-review/

CNet

I don’t think my hugely positive experience will be by any means an outlier. The previews published earlier this month … were largely positive and there seems to be a decent amount of buzz about it on Reddit and social media. I think it’ll build up a strong word of mouth because it’ll appeal to all kinds of players, not just tactics nerds. If you love the Clone Wars era of Star Wars, it has so many deep cuts; and if you like CRPGs such as Baldur’s Gate 3, you should definitely check it out.

https://www.cnet.com/tech/gaming/star-wars-zero-company-review/

Windows Central - 5/5

I did not expect to be sitting here thinking of comparing a turn-based tactics game to the likes of Mass Effect for story delivery, but here we are. Star Wars Zero Company absolutely rose to the occasion with regards to story treatment, given expectations around the legendary sci-fi license.

https://www.windowscentral.com/gaming/star-wars-zero-company-review

Hopefully more to come!

played - darkest dungeon

I beat Darkest Dungeon! I cheated like hell to make it happen.

Darkest Dungeon is a tactical roguelike RPG that sees you sending parties of heroes on expeditions, where they must battle enemies, gather resources, and stay alive. So far so good, except that, as with many roguelikes, the devil is in the details.

You’re ostensibly gathering gold and loot to improve the hamlet where your heroes live. Gold and loot take up inventory space. So too does food, and torches, and the curatives you need to prevent counter-act blood loss and poisoning, and so on and so forth. Inventory management, and tactical positioning, and character advancement, and stress levels (not metaphorically - characters have individual stress levels that must be soothed and assuaged, lest Heroes become unruly, or worse, suffer heart attacks) - these micro-decisions are vitally important to your success.

The gamut of injuries and phobias that your heroes will rack up to experience the game - an eldritch tale of truths glimpsed that ought not have been, with gruesome hand-drawn art, and evocative voice acting from Wayne June, a Lovecraft audiobook narrator, that punctuates your trifling victories and tragic losses. June has unfortunately passed, since the game came out - his performance is easily a huge part of why this game caught fire.

And catch fire it did - the game is still popular, ten years after it’s release (and after the release of a sequel) - loads of community-made mods and official DLC has been released. It was the announcement of just such a release, The Fire’s Edge (featuring heroes from the aforementioned sequel) that encouraged me to return to the Hamlet and try to beat the Darkest Dungeon.

I played with these DLCs active. There are larger, much more expansive DLCs, but they tend to introduce mechanics into the base game that I wasn’t interested in coping with. I wanted to concern myself with the main event, not sideshow attractions.

DLC enabled:

• Class - Musketeer
  • A fun re-skin of the Arbalist class - a back-of-the-line ranged DPS
• Class - Flagellant
  • A bloody tank who takes damage and dishes it back out
• Class - Shieldbreaker
  • A “dancing” (moves from rank to rank) fighter who can deal big damage, Blight, and take a hit on the chin without flinching
• Feature - Districts
  • An expansion to the main Hamlet, allowing you to get late-game power improvements by investing lots of resources (that you wouldn’t otherwise need any more)
• Classes - Runaway & Duelist
  • Two new classes from DD2 whose inclusion spurred me to revisit the game. The Runaway is a mid-rank arsonist; the Duelist is a dodge/riposte tank.
  • They both seem neat, but I was so close to the end of the game by the time that they came out that I didn’t use them much at all.

I said before that the micro-decisions make the game. This is true in the extreme - the game rewards careful consideration and punishes over-confidence. Unfortunately, I am simply not that good at the things the game is asking me to do. Maybe I could be, if I really focused and devoted itself, but I know that this isn’t something I’m going to do. Not for any game, not even one I really like. It’s simply not how I approach games - even games I’m ostensibly good at.

And so, I accepted that if I was going to make the attempt to beat a 10-year-old game, then I would not only play on the Easiest difficulty, then I would avail myself of whatever other tools I could use in order to complete the game while still making a meaningful attempt.

To that end, I needed to answer: why did I stop playing the game, when I’d previously made the attempt?

• Expeditions have level restrictions. You can’t take a high level hero into a lower level expedition, even if they’re escorting lower-level heroes, or just trying to safely farm resources.
• If a hero falls in combat, they’re dead. Dead d-d-d-dead dead dead. Gone from your roster without hope of recourse.
• The game auto-saves. You can’t make a safe save and then reload if you make a big mistake, or just have a turn of bad luck.

All of these make a ton of sense for the brutal, every-choice-counts experience that the game wants you to endure. But I’d endured it many times over and, while I appreciate it intellectually and aesthetically, I hit the wall where my skillset and willingness to invest time was insufficient to the task.

A note on the point about time - this is the sort of game where I’d play for 20 hours before hitting a hard stop where I literally can’t go any further, or I have to rebuild my hero roster from scratch, or worse, I’m totally out of gold and have no way to get more, so I’m at a game over. I have 200 hours in this game - at least 100 of those were before this recent attempt to beat the game.

So! I wanted to win, but I had the above issues to surmount. Thankfully, as I mentioned, there’s a thriving mod scene. I installed the following mods:

• Remove Level Restrictions
  • Does what it says on the tin. You can send any hero to any mission.
• Resurrect a Hero Every Week
  • Remember before when I said there was no hope of recourse for a dead hero? There IS a town event called “From Beyond” that gives you the rare chance to bring back a hero from the dead. This mod makes this event happen every in-game week, so you can rapidly restore your dead heroes.
  • While this helps get over the issue of time invested in a hero’s overall level, it does force you to re-invest resources to upgrade individual abilities - this, I think, is a fair compromise to getting a hero back.

This allowed me to slowly, carefully build up a big roster of heroes who could survive the dangers of the game’s final dungeon.

I also backed up my saves! Save files are just computer files. If you go to the Darkest Dungeon save directory, you can copy them to a safe location on your computer. If my adventuring party dies, I can exit the game, delete the game save with my safe save, and try again, wiser and more cautious than before.

You might say, “Brendan, you’re not meeting the game on its terms! You’re compromising the integrity of the experience!” To which I’d say - no I’m not! I’m a game designer, and I can safely say that game rules are made up. I appreciate that Red Hook (the game developer) wanted a certain type of experience, and I do not begrudge them that. I wanted a slightly different experience, and sure enough, Red Hook created the framework so that user mods could provide that experience.

For me, it’s no different than turning on subtitles, or looking up with a word means in the middle of a book. It’s an aide, even if it’s not from the original makers.

It was still very hard! I still had to make a lot of very difficult, very rewarding tactical decisions along the way. There’s an added restriction on the final dungeon (the titular Darkest Dungeon) where you cannot send heroes into the final dungeon more than once - which means you need at least 16 heroes to tackle the final dungeon’s 4 expeditions. I could have modded this out, but I didn’t - in part because part of the fun of the game is collecting a big roster of flavorful heroes.

Favorite heroes include:

• The Occultist
  • Debuffs! Tentacles from beyond! Chancey heals, and a wicked knife besides. An all-in-one package.

• The Hellion
  • The Best Tank. Hard hitting, can hit anywhere, and has a multi-target stun besides.

• The Houndmaster
  • When you absolutely, positively need to apply Bleed to every enemy in the room. Accept no substitutes.

• The Jester
  • What if a clown could kill? Getting used to the Jester’s mobility requires some getting used-to (and often a specific party arrangement) but building up a Finale combo and dealing crazy damage is always satisfying. Plus, his songs can buff the party and lower stress in combat!

IN SUMMARY: Darkest Dungeon is a very good video game. If you like Mignola-style art, macabre tales of monsters, and challenging party-tactics RPGs, I recommend it wholeheartedly. Try it on its own terms, and then use mods to season to taste - it’s worth it!

smile like you mean it - an introduction

Inspired by the Every Elric Endeavor that my friend Moose is conducting, I’ve decided to pair my journey through the George Smiley series by John Le Carré (pronounced ka-REY, if you’ve ever been unsure). I’d been reading the books already, and realized that writing my thoughts and impressions about each one would be a pleasant exercise.

Thus, welcome to Smile Like You Mean It, a blog-series on reading the George Smiley novels for the first time.

John Le Carré & his Works

Le Carré (real name David John Moore Cornwell, born 1931) an intelligence officer in Britain’s Security Service (MI5) and Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), was encouraged in his writing by a coworker (himself a published writer) and produced his first few novels while in her Majesty’s employ. With the breakout success of his third novel, he retired to write fulltime, and wrote 26 novels over the course of his 60 year career.

British spy George Smiley is perhaps the most well-known of his characters, and he and his world feature in the following books:

• Call for the Dead
• A Murder of Quality
• The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
• The Looking Glass War
• Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
• The Honorable Schoolboy
• Smiley’s People
• The Secret Pilgrim
• A Legacy of Spies

If you don’t recognize the name George Smiley, then perhaps you recognize a name or two from the list - most likely Tinker Tailor, which was made into an celebrated film released in 2011. More on that anon.

There is no grand term for this continuity - it’s usually referred to as something like “the George Smiley novels” or perhaps “the Circus” (borrowing the in-world nickname for Smiley’s workplace), although a trio of books in the middle of the list are sometimes called “the Karla Trilogy” or “the Quest for Karla,” for reasons we’ll discover. Given the absence of a pithy term - and the fact that it’s my project and I can do whatever I want - I shall henceforth refer to the list of books and the universe contained therein as the Smiliad.

Note that Le Carré’s son, himself a writer, has also written a book (and perhaps a second upcoming book?) that features Smiley - I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to read anything past Le Carre’s own oeuvre. I have a lot of other books waiting to be read!

George Smiley

I started reading these in part because my affection for spy fiction is well known. A number of my friends kept recommending the Smiley stories to me, not only for their own quality, but in contradiction of what I (and most people) think “George Smiley” is like as a concept.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is not only one of my favorite movies, but a comfort-watch - I’ve probably watched it several times in the past ten years. It’s a beautiful piece of work, studded with actors’-favorite-actors and some Hollywood stars. It’s slow, sad, and somber, and features Gary Oldman as a quiet, reserved, George Smiley - recently retired but called back in to investigate his former coworkers to ferret out a double-agent.

Oldman’s portrayal is quiet and sad, but he’s also cool. He’s got war stories. He’s got the verve to get in your face when he needs to. He’ll make the hard calls to get the job done. His success is actually perhaps most bound up in his ability to harness the people around him who he trusts, who do real spy work, rather than the leadership.

He’s a successful protagonist, but George Smiley’s actually quite a different character - so much so that my good friend Eve made the case for the 1979 TV series being the superior adaptation of Tinker Tailor, owing to Alec Guinness’s more authentic portrayal of Smiley. He’s not cool - he’s a sad, wet man, wholly underestimated by everyone around him, which makes him the perfect spy. - quite in opposition to the likes of James Bond or John Drake. (I found the TV show to be a bit too slow for my tastes, when I tried it, but I was used to the brisk pacing of the Prisoner - I might give it another go as part of this project.)

Smiley seemingly stands out not only for being so different than British spies in popular media, but for being a bit pathetic.

More on Smiley and what makes him so sad (and so wet) as we begin reading the books.

Next Time

Next time, we’ll start the project with le Carré’s first novel, 1961’s Call for the Dead.

zero company trailer roundup

The final trailer for my upcoming game, Star Wars Zero Company, came out today.

Lot of folks have been surprised by how cinematic our storytelling is - it’s not something folks have come to expect from something in the tactics genre. It’s true! We have a ton of fun scenes in the game. We worked really hard to make sure that everything played nicely together.

It’s deeply surreal to have stuff that I’ve worked out in the public consciousness like this. Not only have I never released something with this level of attention, but I haven’t really released a commercial video game since 2017 (unless you count Double Exposure, which I don’t.) It’s been a long time!!

This final trailer gives you a closer look at the game’s villain, Fathom (no related to the ttrpg I wrote with the same name!)

The gameplay trailer from a couple of months ago gives you more of a taste of the player’s crew:

… and here’s the announce trailer from a year ago, for good measure:

zero company preview roundup

Tons of previews for my upcoming game, Star Wars Zero Company, have dropped today! Here’s some of them.

“… I can say this with confidence: you’re really going to enjoy this game.”

As a massive Star Wars fan and someone who enjoys TBT (turn based tactics) but has never played XCOM, Zero Company easily made me familiar with the mechanics and, so far, offers a cohesive experience that combines the joy of Star Wars storytelling with compelling tactical gameplay.

https://www.techradar.com/gaming/star-wars-zero-company-is-xcom-set-in-a-galaxy-far-far-away-and-even-those-unfamiliar-with-turn-based-tactics-games-like-me-can-get-hooked-by-it

It’s no secret that XCOM fans have been desperate for a return of the franchise for some time, and from what we’ve played of Star Wars Zero Company, it appears that Bit Reactor is living up to the expectation.

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/features/new-gameplay-star-wars-zero-company-is-the-xcom-revival-weve-been-looking-for/

Gaming Bible - Don’t sleep on the best Star Wars game I’ve played in years

Overall, I’m really loving what I’ve played of Star Wars Zero Company so far. I think it’s a fantastic spiritual successor to the XCOM series, clearly wearing its influences on its sleeve but without feeling like a pale imitation. The Star Wars theme doesn’t seem like shallow set dressing either, but rather it feels like an integral entry to the overall franchise canon with plenty of understanding behind what goes into making a good Star Wars story.

https://www.gamingbible.com/news/star-wars-zero-company-preview-151213-20260811

The cinematic presentation and subtle nods to RPGs elevate the workmanlike tactical gameplay, ensuring that the whole feels richer. Zero Company has character and panache—of the kind you don’t often see in a tactics game.

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/strategy/star-wars-zero-company-is-a-very-safe-xcom-descendant-but-its-most-interesting-parts-are-found-in-its-midnight-suns-dna/

I went into my demo expecting an experience that might lightly scratch the XCOM itch I perpetually have. I didn’t expect Star Wars Zero Company to scratch it with the intensity of a lightsaber. I came away from my time with Bit Reactor’s leap into the Star Wars galaxy not only excited to see where the story goes and who might show up, but also feeling incredibly compelled to jump back in for more tactical missions. The gameplay loop, the tactical combat, and the impactful choice and risk/reward mechanics all amount to a formula for something potentially special. Add in the Star Wars dressing, and the nostalgia factor amps the anticipation up even more.

https://gameinformer.com/preview/2026/08/11/xcom-meets-star-wars-in-the-best-way-possible

Skill Up - Star Wars Zero Company is full of (excellent) surprises

From the first moment that I booted it up, I was like … wait a minute … why does this cutscene … look so good?

If you’re anything like me, it’s exactly what you’d hope for after hearing the premise. It’s XCOM Star Wars. It’s based on the sensational foundations of that series and made by people who evidently, thoroughly, get it. And it really is a perfect match.

https://www.eurogamer.net/star-wars-zero-company-preview-xcom

paper labyrinths - ian williams on miniatures & material conditions

We talk with Ian Williams about his recently-announced book on miniature wargaming, the material conditions of craft, the power of nostalgia, and the impact of hydration breaks on association football.

Find Ian on Bluesky (https://bsky.app/profile/brocktoon.bsky.social) and follow his blog (https://stuckness.ghost.io/). “The Doodad Economy”, which we reference in the show, can be found here: https://stuckness.ghost.io/the-doodad-economy-why-your-analog-games-are-starting-to-feel-digital-and-also-why-thats-false/

paper labyrinths - eve golden-woods on creators & contexts

We talk with Eve Golden-Woods about tabletop mechanics, the Book of Kells industrial complex, regency romance novels, and Ancient Babylon.

Find Eve on Bluesky (https://bsky.app/profile/evegoldenwoods.bsky.social) and on itch (https://evelorien.itch.io/), where you can download the award-winning ttrpg, The Creation of Wonder.

paper labyrinths - bria davis on crafting communities

We talk with Bria Davis about Discord servers, Blaseball, passing on lessons learned, and eggs.

Bria Davis ( https://bsky.app/profile/thevoidencore.bsky.social ) is Community Director at Young Horses ( https://younghorsesgames.com/ )

blog - may 17 2026

you ever been more tired than you’ve ever been in in your whole life?

I haven’t shipped a video game since 2019, owing to a combination of projects failing, companies dissolving, and me changing jobs to escape toxic circumstances when there seemed like no other recourse.

That means I haven’t had a game on store shelves since then, but more pertinently, I haven’t gone through the motions of getting a game out the door since then. It’s very hard! It requires a huge amount of time, focus, and energy in the best of circumstances.

I’m 42 now (had my birthday on the 10th!) and maybe in the worst physical shape of my life. The amount of energy that doing this part of the job takes is about all I can manage. My family, my friends, and my coworkers can all see the toll it’s taking on me: I don’t have the energy (or the room, frankly) for the extracurricular activities that sustain me.

The end is coming. Soon this phase will be done, and the pressure will let off, and hopefully things will get better for Brendan.

PS: I haven’t been wholly idle. I’ve had a couple of fun excursions, and I’ll backdate a couple of those entries with some photos for folks to see.