If I had to name the most enjoyable Roguelike games, 'Hades' comes to mind first. By layering exceptional action and narrative onto a structure of repeating death and incremental progress, it became the benchmark for the genre. Meanwhile, 'Vampire Survivors' used simple controls to define the 'Vampire Survivors-like' subgenre. Countless games followed in its wake, though many failed to find their own identity, settling for being mere 'Hades-likes' or 'Vampire Survivors-likes.

Fleeeway Games (CEO Kim Su-young), a creative studio under KRAFTON (CEO Kim Chang-han), grappled with that very question and found an answer: 'time.' The result is 'Ascend to ZERO,' launching globally on July 13.

Of course, games have used time as a theme before. The concept of 'saving the world in 30 seconds' was pioneered by the PSP title 'Half-Minute Hero,' and 'SUPERHOT: MIND CONTROL DELETE' was the first to combine time manipulation with Roguelike elements.

What makes 'Ascend to ZERO' different is how it utilizes time. In this game, time is a resource to be spent, recovered, and invested; a weapon to be wielded by freezing the world; and a target for growth that strengthens with every run. It is not just a single mechanic, but a language that permeates the entire game.

'Ascend to ZERO' is an action Roguelike centered on time manipulation. Set in the year 2,225, the world has been destroyed by an invasion of intelligent machine lifeforms. Players take on the role of a survivor with the ability to manipulate time, traveling back to the past to rescue comrades and restore the world.

The game will be available on Steam, Xbox Series X|S, PC, and Xbox Cloud Gaming, with support for the ROG Ally X. Notably, it is confirmed for a day-one release on Xbox Game Pass. It was developed using Unreal Engine 5 and led by PD Heo Tae-wook and AD Lee Young-kwon.

In the end, it's time

To summarize the combat of 'Ascend to ZERO' in one sentence: it all comes down to time. The thrill of taking down a boss with only one second left is the core of the experience.

While other Roguelikes are built on the two pillars of player control and character growth, 'Ascend to ZERO' adds a third: a 'time limit.' Even with perfect controls and a fully leveled character, you cannot survive if you fail to manage your time.

Eliminating enemies makes your character stronger while also extending your remaining time under certain conditions; if time runs out, your progress collapses. The timer at the top of the screen is a resource as desperate—perhaps even more so—than your health bar.

Added to this is a 'time stop' ability that can be triggered at any moment. With the press of a button, the world freezes, allowing the player to calmly weave through bullet hell patterns, find the optimal position, combine skill chips, and unleash explosive firepower the moment time resumes.

The short cooldown is crucial, allowing for frequent use. Time stop isn't an ultimate skill to be hoarded, but a basic move used as naturally as breathing. Predict, freeze, counter, and annihilate. Once this rhythm becomes second nature, 'Ascend to ZERO' transforms from a simple Vampire Survivors-like shooter into a strategic action game where every moment is a calculated move.

Even death is converted into time. If a character falls, you can spend a portion of your remaining time to revive on the spot. Time is life, and life is time. The experience of burning your remaining time to revive during the final moments of a boss fight, only to defeat them with one second left, is the game's peak moment.

PD Heo Tae-wook once told an overseas outlet, "If Vampire Survivors asks 'how long can you survive?', Ascend to ZERO asks 'how far can you go within the given time?'" This perfectly captures the game's essence. It proves through gameplay that even with the same auto-attack foundation, a different question makes for a different game.

Time management through a Roguelike lens

When you first start the game, you are greeted by the slogan, 'Save the world in 30 seconds.' If you have no prior knowledge of the game, you might naturally worry whether it is actually possible to save the world in such a short time.

However, after playing for a short while, you realize that 30 seconds is just the initial 'condition.' The real game lies in how you manage and expand that time. While other Roguelikes focus on growing character stats, 'Ascend to ZERO' adds a layer of 'Roguelike-style time enhancement.' Whether to recover 10 seconds immediately or choose an option to gain 5 seconds per boss kill—time itself becomes the subject of your build.

Choosing between immediate gain and long-term investment is a classic Roguelike pleasure, but the fact that the subject is 'time' creates a unique tension. It adds a somewhat realistic lesson: time is, ultimately, about management.

As you follow the game's design, you will inevitably hit a wall where the developer intends for you to struggle. Just as you start wondering how to break through an obstacle that seems impossible with your current abilities, a new NPC naturally joins your party, and new skills and upgrade paths are unlocked. Once you equip these new abilities and return to the section that gave you trouble, you will find that you can clear it much more easily than expected.

This rhythm of frustration and unlocking is meticulously designed. The story flow—where the protagonist travels back to rescue comrades one by one, and each rescued comrade unlocks new features in the bunker—aligns perfectly with the system unlocks. Because the moments you hit a wall are also the moments the story progresses, the narrative and gameplay never feel disconnected.

The most unique, and initially questionable, element is the growth curve. Leveling in 'Ascend to ZERO' experiences inflation. It doesn't climb in steady steps; it skyrockets exponentially. Even if you worry at level 1 about how you'll ever reach level 20k to unlock a NPC, you'll find yourself there just a few hours later.

Crucially, this inflation is different from the accidental economic or growth imbalances seen in online games. It is clearly an intentional device designed to multiply the thrill of growth by letting players see their numbers explode.

The developers have stated they were inspired by Japanese 'Inflation RPGs.' The system of carrying over powerful equipment from previous runs to the next is designed with the same intent: to alleviate the emptiness of starting from scratch every time. While personal preferences may vary, it is not a negative factor that detracts from the game's quality. It is rare to see a game push the joy of growing numbers this explicitly, yet in such a controlled manner.

The deck-building options are also quite flexible. Each avatar comes with unique weapons, skills, and combat styles, as if to say, 'Surely one of these will suit your taste.' Whether you prefer a melee style wielding a sword or a gun-based ranged damage dealer, you can either follow the avatar's inherent characteristics or customize your skill deck to your own preference.

Depending on your combination of equipment, skill chips, and devices, you can even create extreme builds that forgo time-stopping entirely in favor of other advantages. The developer's promise of 'infinite growth and infinite combinations' has been faithfully realized.

The bunker that connects runs is another pillar of this cycle. When time runs out, the player returns to the ruined underground bunker, where they convert equipment salvaged from the previous run into permanent assets and prepare for the next run using features unlocked by rescued comrades.

Converting temporary items into permanent ones involves success rates and costs, maintaining the tension of choice even in the bunker. There is plenty of incentive to rotate through different avatars, and with new avatar packs and an infinite mode (Tower of Infinity) DLC planned after the official launch, there is plenty of room for expansion.

The graphics feature high-quality 3D voxels with the familiarity of a Minecraft style. The visual of a cyberpunk city built of square blocks collapsing and scattering captures the unique materiality of voxels, and the visual contrast when time stops—walking between bullets and debris frozen in mid-air—is impressive. Based on Unreal Engine 5, the combination of modern lighting and effects over simple voxel forms strikes a good balance between pixel-art charm and 3D presentation.

Character art is another highlight. During development, the original SD (two-head-tall) style was completely overhauled into cartoon-style full-body illustrations, making each avatar's personality stand out much more clearly. However, there are moments when the screen becomes cluttered when enemies, effects, and projectiles flood in at once, sometimes exacerbated by the information-heavy combat UI.

Personally, I was interested in the optimization for portable gaming. The clear top-down view and short run-based play loop are a great fit for handheld devices. Considering the support for ROG Ally X and Xbox Cloud Gaming, it seems the game was designed from the start with 'pick up and play' in mind. The time-based run structure, starting from 30 seconds, seems less like a coincidence and more like a deliberate design choice for portable session play.

KRAFTON's new grammar from a 'privileged' studio

Another notable aspect of 'Ascend to ZERO' is its path to release. Since the first demo in April 2025, the team has spent over a year refining the game through user testing and feedback, including Steam Next Fest (June), public playtests (December), and three limited demos in 2026. It reached 65th place for 'most played demo' at Next Fest, and the Steam user rating remains 'Very Positive' (92% positive).

The traces of feedback-based updates—such as reduced excessive grinding, added difficulty systems, revamped onboarding, renewed stat information, and a redesigned codex—are palpable in actual gameplay. The aforementioned time management options and the rhythm of frustration and unlocking were clearly the result of iterative verification, not something that happened overnight.

In this sense, 'Ascend to ZERO' means more than just a single game. Fleeeway Games is a studio specializing in soft-launching, established by KRAFTON in 2023 alongside its new project proposal system, 'The Creative.' The goal was to quickly bring ideas to market without platform or genre restrictions, verify them through user reactions, and officially launch the projects that pass.

'Ascend to ZERO' is a representative case where that methodology has completed a full cycle from demo release to global launch. For KRAFTON, which relies on the PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds IP for most of its revenue, it is worth noting what it means for these small-scale new IP experiments to cross the finish line one by one.

Clear flaws, yet a distinct identity

Of course, it is not without flaws. Some systems, such as upgrades or grade hierarchies, still have unfriendly in-game explanations, leaving sections where you have to learn by trial and error. Despite several onboarding revamps, the layers of growth systems—equipment, skill chips, devices, and stat chips—can act as a barrier to entry for newcomers.

It is also worth noting that the initial movement tempo can feel slow. Before the strategic fun of time stop fully opens up, the first hour or two might feel somewhat flat. Due to the variance in randomly generated battlefields, some runs feel smooth while others feel particularly frustrating. Even if it is the fate of the Roguelike genre, there are moments that feel like a gamble.

The repetition that sets in toward the late game due to the genre's nature is also a drawback. As powerful as the 'time stop' hook is, how diversely the gameplay remains after getting used to it depends on post-launch updates. The promised infinite mode and new avatar packs must provide the answer.

Nevertheless, 'Ascend to ZERO' is a game with a clear identity among the many Roguelikes available. The shift in the question from 'how long can you endure' to 'how far can you go in the given time,' the build design that treats time as a subject of growth, the rhythm where frustration and unlocking align with the narrative, and the thrill of defeating a boss with 0.1 seconds left all stand out.

Considering the 20+ hours of playtime in the official version and the accessibility of Game Pass day-one, it is well worth a Roguelike fan's time to play. After all, in this game, you can always turn back the clock.

8

Ascend to ZERO

Ascend to ZERO

• Unique combat using time as a weapon
• Design where frustration and unlocking align with the narrative
• The taste of explosive, inflation-style growth
• Wide range of avatars, deck-building, and portable optimization

• Somewhat flat early tempo
• Variance in battlefield RNG and late-game repetition

Review Platform: PC (Review Build)