Zenless Zone Zero release date is July 4, 2024, for all platforms

HoYoverse made things official
HoYoverse

HoYoverse announced that Zenless Zone Zero, its upcoming urban fantasy RPG, will come out on July 4, 2024, for PC, PS5, iOS, and Android. The Shanghai-based developer confirmed that Zenless Zone Zero will feature cross-play and cross-progression across all platforms right from the start.

Zenless Zone Zero’s final closed beta test, which fixed many of the community’s woes with prior test versions of the game, is winding down today as HoYoverse prepares the title for launch. A pre-registration campaign for the game is currently underway and has already surpassed more than 35 million registered users across platforms – with five million more to go to reach the final goal of 40 million pre-registrations. As usual, cracking this final milestone will unlock rewards for all players at launch, such as a free Agent and free pulls from the game’s gacha banners.

Coming from the minds behind Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail, Zenless Zone Zero is yet another highly polished RPG with gacha elements. Where Genshin Impact is focused on an epic narrative and its open-world exploration and Honkai: Star Rail is a take on turn-based JRPGs, HoYoverse’s upcoming title is a flashy and fast combat game that includes roguelike elements and a good deal of slice-of-life anime genes.

Players take control of Belle and Wise, a sibling duo with a double identity: As they’re running a video store in the town of New Eridu, they have to tackle the everyday challenges of being young owners of a small business and part of a tightly-knit neighborhood. In secret they’re working as one of the most legendary and skilled Proxies in the underworld, accepting commissions in the so-called Hollows – dimensions that have swallowed up parts of the city and in which fearsome monsters dwell. Proxies are talented guides, who can find paths through these ever-changing spaces. Officially, though, civilians aren’t allowed in there, which is why Belle and Wise keep their Proxy activities hidden.

In Zenless Zone Zero, players enlist the help of Agents to fight the threats in the Hollows. Combat is a lot quicker and more mechanical than in Genshin Impact, with the main inspiration being one of HoYoverse’s earlier games – Honkai Impact 3rd. There’s a lot of dodging and countering with the high-quality animations and soundtrack players of HoYoverse games are used to.

While it shares much DNA with other HoYoverse games, Zenless Zone Zero is yet another very distinct contender in the gacha genre, which the company already has an iron grip on, and goes after a slightly different target audience.

Players will be able to dive into Hollows themselves on July 4, 2024, on PC, PS5, iOS, and Android.


Published
Marco Wutz
MARCO WUTZ

Marco Wutz is a writer from Parkstetten, Germany. He has a degree in Ancient History and a particular love for real-time and turn-based strategy games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, Total War, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings, and Civilization as well as a soft spot for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He began covering StarCraft 2 as a writer in 2011 for the largest German community around the game and hosted a live tournament on a stage at gamescom 2014 before he went on to work for Bonjwa, one of the country's biggest Twitch channels. He branched out to write in English in 2015 by joining tl.net, the global center of the StarCraft scene run by Team Liquid, which was nominated as the Best Coverage Website of the Year at the Esports Industry Awards in 2017. He worked as a translator on The Crusader Stands Watch, a biography in memory of Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka, and provided live coverage of many StarCraft 2 events on the social channels of tl.net as well as DreamHack, the world's largest gaming festival. From there, he transitioned into writing about the games industry in general after his graduation, joining GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage for media partners across the globe, in 2021. He has also written for NGL.ONE, kicker, ComputerBild, USA Today's ForTheWin, The Sun, Men's Journal, and Parade. Email: marco.wutz@glhf.gg