Update 1.2

This is the biggest update Novalex Project Zero has had. Nearly every screen has been rebuilt, there is a proper tutorial for new players, and the game now behaves itself on a Steam Deck and on very wide monitors.

What's new

• A complete visual redesign. The garage, car designer, reports and research used to live inside stacked pop-up dialogs. Each is now a full-page view behind a persistent sidebar rail, with a KPI strip along the top and a new icon set throughout.
• A guided tutorial for your first car. New players are walked through the core loop step by step, anchored to the actual controls as they use them. Skippable from Preferences, and you can bring it back whenever you want.
• Steam Deck and big-screen desktop. Full gamepad navigation with spatial focus and dialog focus traps, controls sized for a coarse pointer, and on an ultrawide monitor the content no longer stretches into unreadable full-width rows.

Also in this release

• "Too hard even on easy" is fixed. A new Relaxed difficulty, a cash-runway warning before the death spiral, a Government rescue instead of silent bankruptcy, and a post-mortem that names the cause when you do fail.
• A credit line. Borrow against a limit at an interest rate and repay it, with an auto-draw prompt when cash runs out, and debt properly settled when you swap companies.
• Rivals you can actually study. Compare any of your cars to rivals by type, overlay competitor skill curves on your own report, and see the competitors screen grouped by market segment.
• Design defects that behave like a real quality problem. Defects arrive as a count drawn per design rather than a coin flip, each gets its own decision with the affected car and reputation cost spelled out, and the designer shows the expected range before you sign off.

Fixes and polish

A round of fixes across the game, including audio playback and a number of smaller rough edges.

Keep the feedback coming

This is still a playtest, and your input steers what we fix next. The Steam Community forums are best for longer write-ups and bug reports; the in-game feedback form is there when you would rather not leave your session.

Thank you for playing, and for helping us build this.

See you in the boardroom.