Zen World News & Patch Notes

Zen World has officially left Early Access!

After years of updates, improvements, and community feedback, Version 1.0 is finally here. Thank you to everyone who helped shape the game along the way.

Version 1.0 includes:

Act 3 of the Campaign
Enemy Kingdoms
Two new Daily Challenge modifiers
Updated graphics

Whether you've been with us since the beginning or are discovering Zen World for the first time, now is the perfect time to build your kingdom, explore the clouds, and enjoy the full experience.

Oh, and one more thing!

The previous Daily Challenge season has ended. Congratulations to our top 10 players:

🥇 1. crackken

🥈 2. Scattsound

🥉 3. L&Y31

4. king of the moon

5. mkahl10

6. Cadmia

7. elsanches

8. ricecripies

9. kyrkdaniel

10. LouisTherouxStuntDouble

A new season starts today. Good luck, and we'll see you on the leaderboard!

Zen World has officially left Early Access!

After years of updates, improvements, and community feedback, Version 1.0 is finally here. Thank you to everyone who helped shape the game along the way.

Version 1.0 includes:

Act 3 of the Campaign
Enemy Kingdoms
Two new Daily Challenge modifiers
Updated graphics

Whether you've been with us since the beginning or are discovering Zen World for the first time, now is the perfect time to build your kingdom, explore the clouds, and enjoy the full experience.

Oh, and one more thing!

The previous Daily Challenge season has ended. Congratulations to our top 10 players:

🥇 1. crackken

🥈 2. Scattsound

🥉 3. L&Y31

4. king of the moon

5. mkahl10

6. Cadmia

7. elsanches

8. ricecripies

9. kyrkdaniel

10. LouisTherouxStuntDouble

A new season starts today. Good luck, and we'll see you on the leaderboard!

Server problems are resolved, and Daily Challenge is back! And with that, a new season has begun! Congratulations to the Season 10 champions of Daily Challenge. The leaderboard is as follows: 1. small idiot 2. Scattsound 3. L&Y31 4. peath 5. ricecripies 6. Cadmia 7. ChairmanLMAO 8. elsanches 9. jensen0722 10. king of the moon There is a small technical issue with displaying medals in game that will be fixed during the next week, but rest assured, our heroes are remembered and will be awarded. New season starts, all Daily Challenge Champions points will be reset, and it's now your chance to get to the top!

You may have noticed that Zen World has been experiencing some web API issues, which caused the leaderboards and daily challenge mode to stop working. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience and for the delayed communication on that issue. We're working on resolving these problems, and everything should be back to normal soon. The Daily Challenge season will also conclude once the fixes are in place. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39261595/4602d91e96a6a70e89bf520d5ac49d6cb7f0540e.png At last, this season has ended! Congratulations to the Season 9 champions of Daily Challenge! The leaderboard is as follows: 1. mbutton15 2. small idiot 3. glc 4. Scattsound 5. ArtFlys 6. peath 7. L&Y31 8. Cadmia 9. ChairmanLMAO 10. Tandoo Medals has already been awarded. New season starts, all Daily Challenge Champions points will be reset, and it's now your chance to get to the top!

Season 10 of Daily Challenges is coming! Next week, on April 21th, a new season of Daily Challenges will begin once again! All Daily Challenge Champions points will be reset, and champions at the top of the leaderboard will receive a permanent medal, forever displaying their achievements. The new season will last for some time, after which the process will repeat - new champions will receive their medals and Champion points will reset again. And for now, you still have a week to earn your place at the top of the leaderboard. Good luck!

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39261595/4602d91e96a6a70e89bf520d5ac49d6cb7f0540e.png At last, this season has ended! Congratulations to the Season 8 champions of Daily Challenge! The leaderboard is as follows: 1. mbutton15 2. glc 3. Scattsound 4. peath 5. ArtFlys 6. mkahl10 7. elsanches 8. Cadmia 9. UnicornLord 10. ChairmanLMAO Medals has already been awarded. New season starts, all Daily Challenge Champions points will be reset, and it's now your chance to get to the top! By the way, in the new season we expect some long awaited updates to the game and to the community! Look forward to the news!

Season 9 of Daily Challenges is coming! Next week, on August 4th, a new season of Daily Challenges will begin once again! All Daily Challenge Champions points will be reset, and champions at the top of the leaderboard will receive a permanent medal, forever displaying their achievements. The new season will last for some time, after which the process will repeat - new champions will receive their medals and Champion points will reset again. Also, expect some long awaited updates and other changes in community this season. And for now, you still have a week to earn your place at the top of the leaderboard. Good luck!

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39261595/4602d91e96a6a70e89bf520d5ac49d6cb7f0540e.png At the long last, this season has ended! Congratulations to the Season 7 champions of Daily Challenge! The leaderboard is as follows: 1. mbutton15 2. Scattsound 3. glc 4. peath 5. UnicornLord 6. elsanches 7. mkahl10 8. SparksV 9. L&Y31 10. ChairmanLMAO Medals has already been awarded. New season starts, all Daily Challenge Champions points will be reset, and it's now your chance to get to the top!

The new Daily season is finally coming! This Christmas, on December 24 a new season of Daily Challenges will begin once again! All Daily Challenge Champions points will be reset, and champions at the top of the leaderboard will receive a permanent medal, forever displaying their achievements. The new season will last for some time, after which the process will repeat - new champions will receive their medals and Champion points will reset again. And for now, you still have a week to earn your place at the top of the leaderboard. Good luck!

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39261595/4602d91e96a6a70e89bf520d5ac49d6cb7f0540e.png Congratulations to the Season 6 champions of Daily Challenge! The leaderboard is as follows: 1. mbutton15 2. robiz 3. Scattsound 4. glc 5. L&Y31 6. peath 7. Gorlo 8. UnicornLord 9. Ignisus 10. SparksV Medals has already been awarded. New season starts, all Daily Challenge Champions points will be reset, and it's now your chance to get to the top!

The new Daily season is finally coming! Next Monday, on February 6 a new season of Daily Challenges will begin once again! All Daily Challenge Champions points will be reset, and champions at the top of the leaderboard will receive a permanent medal, forever displaying their achievements during these first three months. The new season will last for around 3 months, after which the process will repeat - new champions will receive their medals and Champion points will reset again. And for now, you still have a week to earn your place at the top of the leaderboard. Good luck!

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39261595/4602d91e96a6a70e89bf520d5ac49d6cb7f0540e.png Congratulations to the Season 5 champions of Daily Challenge! The leaderboard is as follows: 1. mbutton15 2. robiz 3. rmac1 4. glc 5. Tied 5th place!

Scattsound
peath

7. Ancaluin 8. UnicornLord 9. Gorlo 10. DKforever24 Medals has already been awarded. New season starts, all Daily Challenge Champions points will be reset, and it's now your chance to get to the top!

A little bit overdue (again!), but it is finally coming! Next Monday, on October 24 a new season of Daily Challenges will begin once again! All Daily Challenge Champions points will be reset, and champions at the top of the leaderboard will receive a permanent medal, forever displaying their achievements during these first three months. The new season will last for around 2 months, after which the process will repeat - new champions will receive their medals and Champion points will reset again. And for now, you still have a week to earn your place at the top of the leaderboard. Good luck!

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39261595/4602d91e96a6a70e89bf520d5ac49d6cb7f0540e.png Congratulations to the Season 4 champions of Daily Challenge! The leaderboard is as follows: 1. Enjoy The Game 2. mbutton15 3. Scattsound 4. robiz 5. Thisha 6. Tied 6th place!

rmac1
Ancaluin

8. UnicornLord 9. peath 10. Gorlo Medals has already been awarded. New season starts, all Daily Challenge Champions points will be reset, and it's now your chance to get to the top!

New season rules

Once again, we'll have new scoring rules for the new season. Now, only your first attempt will grant you full amount of points you've earned, second attempt will only give you 80%, third attempt - 20% less once more, and so on. The amount of attempts is unlimited. We hope this rule will suit everyone, because on one hand you have only one true chance to earn the highest possible score, but on the other you'll still have chance to earn at least some score even if your game crashes or your ISP fails you. The season will probably last about 2 months, expect more news on that later.

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39261595/e020e8a38a02a781b69b432e5d8c96f5e4477296.png

Leaderboard

A leaderboard is now available for the new Adventure game mode. It shows all time records as well as records set only in the last 7 days. Also, some Adventure mode related bugs were fixed.

All changes:

Adventure mode leaderboard is now available
half tiles from boxes modifier now works correctly
missing modifier description added
fixed a bug that made activating Zen Mode in other game modes possible
Zen Mode doesn't have a lighthouse button anymore
fixed a case where you could end an Adventure level without marking it as completed
saving an adventure level and continuing it twice doesn't break the game now
modifiers in Adventure mode now save and load correctly

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39261595/e837e7930d22aec33a900143b4ebf0ba07c5a529.png

Adventure game mode

A new game mode is introduced to Zen World! In Adventure mode, you complete series of levels with various modifiers, picking you path through them, and keeping your tiles and other placeables between levels. If you fail to achieve the level goal or run out of tiles, you'll have to start from the beginning in a completely new random world.

Adventure leaderboard

At this point, adventure mode still needs some work. We're planning to introduce a leaderboard and more improvements in a patch next week. Meanwhile, you can see your best result and the world record, but rest assured that all scores are saved and could be used in the future.

New Daily format

Also, starting today, Daily Challenge is limited to only 2 attempts per day. It is an experimental new format that we'll run this season and see if we'll keep it or change in the future. The new season will last for 4 weeks.

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39261595/4602d91e96a6a70e89bf520d5ac49d6cb7f0540e.png Congratulations to the Season 3 champions of Daily Challenge! The leaderboard is as follows:

Scattsound

belri833

mbutton15

Enjoy The Game

UnicornLord

rmac1

Ancaluin

peath

Gorlo

glc Medals will be awarded later today along with the newest update. New season starts, all Daily Challenge Champions points will be reset, and it's now your chance to get to the top!

New season rules

In the new season, we're experimenting with a limited amount of attempts for a Daily Challenge. You will only be able to start 2 attempts per day starting tomorrow. Also, this season will be shorter than usual - only 4 weeks and will end on Jule 28.

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39261595/473d15d5cccdd10ead397c9c4a592279f0514685.png A new game mode called Adventure will make its debut in about a week! It is a rogue-lite-esque series of levels where one mistake may mean that everything is lost, but on the other hand you can save your best placeable tools until the hardest levels.

Testing this week

It is not yet completely ready but we want to let you play it early, and help us find bugs and balance the new mode at the same time. You can access it on a "testing" branch of Zen World found in a betas menu (right click the game title in your Steam library and go to "properties" to find it) right now! Any feedback on the new mode is highly appreciated, but keep in mind that it has quite a few bugs right now and not everything is implemented correctly.

New Daily Season

On the same day as the new mode goes live, on June 28, a new season of Daily Challenges will begin! All Daily Challenge Champions points will be reset, and champions at the top of the leaderboard will receive a permanent medal, forever displaying their achievements during the last three months. The new season will last for 1-2 months, after which the process will repeat - new champions will receive their medals and Champion points will reset again.

Limited Daily attempts

Also, the next season we are going to try limiting Daily Challenge attempts. It will most probably be 2 attempts per day, but let us know in the comments if you have a strong opinion of what it should be instead, there's still time to change plans.

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39261595/a033f9117a49a3064a1e265bbd306c1e57032a12.png

Optimization and bugfixes

This is a preparational update before a large patch that will introduce a new game mode for the Zen World. For a long time now a few relatively common bugs have been plaguing the game making matches, it in some cases, unfinishable. In this update we've hopefully fixed most of those game-breaking bugs. Also, game works faster now due to some optimization, most notably in the menu, but it should affect all gameplay on slower machines.

Patchnotes:

a couple of linked memory leaks that made the game unplayable sometimes have been fixed
people walking across the water should be correctly displayed as boats now
the world overview is correctly scaled after continuing a previous game
back button in the menu is positioned correctly now
a slightly better system to detect cheating is implemented
a few optimizations should make the game faster on slow machines
menu animations should not lag so much in slow machines
Space button now moves the camera to the last built town
numbers on the buttons in the inventory are more visible now

New game mode teaser and future of Daily Challenge

Here is a small teaser image for the upcoming big new game mode for you! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39261595/ac1146efaf6c5b8afad50389f7aba9d894ede193.png We won't tell more for now, but you can probably guess quite a lot from that image alone! Another issue that was discussed a lot recently is limiting daily challenge to one try per day. We are willing to experiment with that in the same update that introduces the new game mode, so that you can play it instead of Daily Challenge if one try is not enough for you. That probably means that the new game mode will go live at the end of the current Daily season.

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39261595/5b2efbac20671344f0ae8cee04754d3fbe62546e.png

New Daily Season

The Season 3 of the Daily Champions has just begun! Congratulations to the top 3 players this time around:

Scattsound

mbutton15

dutpar These players, as well as the top 10 of the current leaderboard got their trophies to be displayed forever, congratulations! All Daily Challenge Champions points are reset, and it's now your chance to get to the top! We were considering limiting daily challenge to one try a day in the next season but decided against it for the time being. There will be a post in discussions later explaining in more detail why, but basically, most players rarely played more than one or two tries every day anyway.

New and reworked modifiers

Five new Daily Modifiers will be added this season, let us know what you think about them! Also, some of the old modifiers were reworked, notably, there are now some modifiers that give extra items in the beginning of the match, and some reducing the starting tiles amount.

Following updates

The updates were not as frequent as we'd like them to be lately. We hope to improve this in the future, as there's been some reshuffling of the development plan and a new Adventure mode will probably be introduced in one of the next updates.

A little bit overdue, but it is finally coming! Next Monday, on March 28 a new season of Daily Challenges will begin once again! All Daily Challenge Champions points will be reset, and champions at the top of the leaderboard will receive a permanent medal, forever displaying their achievements during these first three months. The new season will last for 2-3 months, after which the process will repeat - new champions will receive their medals and Champion points will reset again. Also, new daily modifiers are planned to be added in the new season. Until then, you still have a week to earn your place at the top of the leaderboard. Good luck!

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39261595/4602d91e96a6a70e89bf520d5ac49d6cb7f0540e.png The Season 2 of the Daily Champions has just begun! All Daily Challenge Champions points are reset, and it's now your chance to get to the top! The top 10 of the current leaderboard got their trophies to be displayed forever, so congratulations to our winners, especially the top 3:

mbutton15

Thisha

elsanches Keep up the great work! The new season will last for less, probably around 2 months, after which the process will repeat - new champions will receive their medals and Champion points will reset again.

It has been three months since the release of Zen World, and it's time to let the newcomers shine in the Daily Challenge Champions leaderboard! So, on January 16 a new season of Daily Challenges will begin! All Daily Challenge Champions points will be reset, and champions at the top of the leaderboard will receive a permanent medal, forever displaying their achievements during these first three months. The new season will last for less, probably around 2 months, after which the process will repeat - new champions will receive their medals and Champion points will reset again. Until then, you still have a week to earn your place at the top of the leaderboard. Good luck!

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39261595/b0882126be1973e028b94e45cede688c11286d46.png

Monuments

The Monuments are a special type of placeable structure that gives you score points for the surrounding tiles depending on the type of the Monument. Right now, there are 3: Windmill, Lighthouse, and Hunting Tower. They give you points for every plain, sea or forest around them respectively. Note that the Lighthouse gives only half as many points because it's really easy to generate a lot of water in one place. You get them from a special type of box - a Green Box. Every second box you get from score starting from 50 points is a Green Box.

Wonders

There is currently only one Wonder and it is a Mega Mountain! There is usually one in the Sandbox mode and it might appear in Daily challenges sometimes. You get score points just for discovering it, but also for placing tiles around it. Beware, though, it might give you a lot of points but at what cost?

Lookout tower rework

Lookout towers are now a thing of the past. The most useless power-up was removed and instead all new monuments act as a Lookout Tower in addition to their score-granting abilities.

Land Reclamation

A new type of power-up was introduced to replace Lookout Towers. It lets you fill all the water on a selected tile with random land. You can now fill the sea or cross rivers without using bridges!

Full patch notes:

New features:

introduced Monuments and Wonders
Land Reclamation to remove unwanted water (replaces Lookout Towers)
every second score box is a Green Box containing random Monuments

Balance:

much less score is now needed to get score boxes in the late game, but every second box only gives you Monuments
reduced amount of water on water tiles
reduced amount of water tiles given with More Water Tiles daily modifier
20% more towns spawn in Daily with modifier that pre-spawns town flags on tiles you place
you can only place Exploration Marker over an existing tile now

Bug fixes:

fixed a few typos

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39261595/1e23c7ba1a53a363c4068aee7862b63bf18309de.png The quitting and resuming later now works in the campaign mode too! It is especially useful in Chapter II, where levels are long enough to not complete in one seating. There are also 3 new Daily Challenge modifiers and we plan to introduce more in time, as well as change and balance the old ones.

Full patch notes:

New features:

continuing previous game now works in Campaign mode
3 new Daily Challenge modifiers

Bug fixes:

deformed landscape in level I-2 fixed
box duping bug fixed
incorrectly loading camps (introduced in the last patch) now work as intended

Bugs fixed:

incorrect tile loading on resuming large sandbox maps
few instances of the infinitely spawning scouts bug
it was sometimes possible to place camps on top of the towns
roads invisible on the forest tiles

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39261595/eddf322491a95a4f007e554f8762cf4258772a56.png You can now quit the game during the match and save your progress! More testing is still needed, that's why this feature is only enabled for the Sandbox for now, but it looks good so far. If nothing game-breaking will come up, resuming the game will be also activated for the campaign soon.

It's November 4 and the save/load update was scheduled to release today but we want to be upfront with you: it is not ready yet. Instead of forcing the release with possible bugs, we want to take time to improve and test it more. The new planned date for the update is November 11 and in a few days, a beta branch will become available for people to test the new build in advance. We are sorry for the delay, see you next week!

With the release of Zen World in Early Access, we continue the development, and today we want to share a plan for the upcoming weeks.

Save/Load update

The second planned update (after the Daily Champions!) will bring the ability to save and load your progress. That means you can quit during a game and continue later. It will be especially useful in harder campaign maps and Sandbox!

Future development

After that, we'll try to release a new update every two weeks. It might be not always possible to implement a major feature every time but we hope to share at least some progress in that timeframe. Here is a list of major updates planned before the full release of Zen World. Please note that it might change in the future! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39261595/d3dfaa5bb27ee6da702926cd96ca8996a34b040e.png

Due to the statistics server maintenance on October 21, leaderboards and daily challenges won't be available from 19:00 to 20:30 UTC. Please note that if you start playing a level before that time and do not finish before 19:00, your score would not be saved. That includes daily challenge scores. In case that happened and you really want to submit a score, you can try waiting until the maintenance is finished without closing the "sending the score" window. It should be sent and saved as usual automatically after the maintenance is done. We are sorry for the inconvenience.

Zen World news & patch notes

Zen World news & patch notes

New season rules

Leaderboard

All changes:

Adventure game mode

Adventure leaderboard

New Daily format

New season rules

Testing this week

New Daily Season

Limited Daily attempts

Optimization and bugfixes

Patchnotes:

New game mode teaser and future of Daily Challenge

New Daily Season

New and reworked modifiers

Following updates

Monuments

Wonders

Lookout tower rework

Land Reclamation

Full patch notes:

New features:

Balance:

Bug fixes:

Full patch notes:

New features:

Bug fixes:

Save/Load update

Future development

Steam news for Zen World