Ascend to ZERO launches on Xbox and Game Pass as a time-bending roguelike built around 30-second runs

Flyway Games' Ascend to ZERO hit Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC, and Xbox Cloud Gaming on July 13, landing day one on Game Pass as an Xbox Play Anywhere title. The studio's director Huh Taewook confirmed the game has been in active development since its Xbox Partner Preview reveal back in March, with the team spending that window tightening character balance, difficulty systems, a new in-game play guide, and the late-game stages.

The core loop is built around a hard 30-second time limit per run. That countdown represents how long the in-game time machine can hold you in the past — you fight, level up, and grab upgrades against it, and taking a lethal hit shaves seconds off the clock, so survival and time management are the same thing. The standout mechanic is Time-Stop: freeze everything on screen — enemies, projectiles, even the clock — while your character keeps moving freely. You can scoop up scattered XP, reposition, dodge attacks that would be impossible in real time, then release the freeze and watch your Avatar Skill and gadgets all fire simultaneously. Weapons auto-aim and fire on their own, so your attention stays on positioning, timing, and build decisions rather than basic attack inputs. Leveling is deliberately explosive — a single run can push you from level 1 into the hundreds of thousands, with stronger enemies dropping better loot and a lucky item roll capable of spiking your build in seconds. Each Avatar scales differently, so character choice meaningfully changes which stats surge and how the build evolves.

Ascend to ZERO is one of several titles hitting Xbox this week. The July 13–17 window also brings Beholder: Conductor — a surveillance-and-intimidation game set aboard a train — on the same day, with Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit, the sequel to the life-sim ghost-bear game, arriving July 15. MAVRIX by Matt Jones, an open-world multiplayer biking game in Game Preview, drops July 16, and the deckbuilder Fogpiercer closes out the week on July 17, also on Game Pass.

With Game Pass day-one inclusion and the Xbox Play Anywhere tag, Ascend to ZERO is immediately accessible across console and PC without an extra purchase. The "just one more run" loop Huh Taewook describes is a deliberate design target, and the short run structure means the game is built to be picked up and put down quickly — a format that tends to suit Game Pass players well.