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Survive. Control. Nihilation.
This is not a battle royale and not a simple arena shooter – it's a tense life-and-death competition where map control, survival decisions, and clutch gunplay all matter.
Survive: The Zone Is Trying to Kill You
Your enemies are not just the other team.
Manage Hunger, Thirst, and Stamina while fighting for loot.
Patch yourself up, share supplies with teammates, and decide when to risk a building full of zombies for that one crucial item.
Getting greedy can lose you the round – or win it in style.
Every bullet fired, every medkit used, and every risky rush into a dark alley can be the difference between victory and being eaten alive.
Control: Fight for Territory and Information
To win, your squad must control key areas of the map.
Contest and capture objectives and chokepoints to gain better sightlines and loot.
Use rooftops, alleys, and interiors to lock down zones and deny enemies movement.
Read the map, rotate as a team, and decide when to push, when to hold, and when to bait zombies into your opponents.
There are no fixed classes – players can flex between roles based on loadout and playstyle. Anyone can be the entry fragger, shotcaller, or last-man-standing clutch hero.
Nihilation: Turn the Zone into a Graveyard
Once you've stabilized your survival and locked down control, it's time to dominate.
Execute coordinated pushes, crossfires, and ambushes.
Use explosive tools, environmental traps, or zombie hordes to wipe the enemy squad.
Out-aim, out-rotate, and out-think your opponents.
Multiple scoring vectors – from kills and assists to objectives and survival performance – constantly shift the meta and keep matches from feeling repetitive. No two games play out the same way.
The Zone itself is a character
Rainstorms, blizzards, heavy fog, and harsh sunlight can all roll in mid-match.
Weather affects visibility, sound, and movement, changing how you approach fights.
The same street can feel like a different map at night in the rain versus dawn in the fog.
You're never just learning a map – you're learning how it behaves under different conditions.
Built by a Vietnamese Indie Team
Zone Nine Nihilation is developed by an independent studio based in Vietnam, aiming for AA production quality on an indie budget.
We focus our resources on:
Tight core gameplay and competitive balance.
Strong atmosphere and a distinct post-apocalyptic identity.
Sustainable development – mixing original assets with carefully curated marketplace content so we can ship a polished, replayable game.
Early Access lets us build the best possible survival-horror esport together with our players.
DESIGN & ART
HLOd + World partition workflow for map optimization:
- Our map optimization workflow combines Unreal Engine 5's World Partition with Hierarchical Level of Detail (HLODs).
- World Partition dynamically streams map cells based on player proximity, while HLODs render distant cells as a single, low-polygon mesh instead of numerous individual assets. This combined approach significantly reduces draw calls and memory usage, allowing us to build a large-scale world that maintains the high, stable framerate required for a competitive esports environment.
Dynamic Lighting:
- The game’s fully dynamic lighting system creates a realistic and tense atmosphere by reacting in real-time to the day/night cycle and shifting weather conditions.
- This directly impacts gameplay, as shifting shadows can alter sightlines and a flash of lightning during a storm can momentarily reveal an enemy's position. Light and shadow thus become core tactical elements that players must adapt to for survival.
Gameplay Development & Systems:
- Real-World Dynamics Simulation: Instead of a static environment, Zone Nine features a complex simulation system that is a core element of survival. This system governs a full day/night cycle and a range of weather conditions, each with direct gameplay consequences. For instance, zombies become significantly more numerous and dangerous after dark. Thick fog severely limits visibility for all players, while rainstorms might slow the rate of dehydration but increase the rate of hunger, forcing teams to constantly re-evaluate their survival priorities.
- Gameplay Ability System (GAS): We leveraged Unreal Engine's powerful Gameplay Ability System (GAS), a framework utilized by blockbuster titles like Fortnite and Marvel Rivals. This allows us to build a highly modular and scalable framework for every action in the game, which is critical for balancing and expanding a live-service eSport.
Programming and Technical Development:
- Revolutionary Zombie AI: The game features groundbreaking AI applied exclusively to the zombie hordes. The goal is to create ultra-responsive, near-sentient zombie entities that blur the lines between predictable NPCs and intelligent adversaries.
- Strategic & Coordinated Threats: Our core Director-Agent AI Framework is used to power the zombie hordes, enabling complex, emergent behaviors. Instead of attacking mindlessly, zombies can exhibit coordinated tactics—such as specific types working together to break player formations, flanking, and reacting strategically to player actions. This makes the "Environment" in PvPvE a truly thinking and unpredictable threat.
