ZERO PARADES: Director's Cut — patch notes and updates
Stored observation / content update:
Dated developer announcements recorded from Steam. Open the source for the complete update.
| Update | Date | Excerpt / source |
|---|---|---|
| ZERO PARADES: Director’s Cut | Console Features Trailer | 2026-10-15 | ZERO PARADES: Director’s Cut is coming to PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch 2 on November 3rd! Debuted at the Galaxies Showcase tonight, the Console Features Trailer shows players what to expect once our espionage RPG arrives next month. On Nintendo Switch 2, the game takes advantage of the Joy Con 2 mouse controls, touchscreen support and HD Rumble 2. Work your way through conversations, intel and the streets of Portofiro using controls built around the Switch 2 system, whether you're playing handheld or docked. For PlayStation 5 players, the ZERO PARADES experience has been built around the DualSense wireless controller with adaptive trigge |
| Patch Notes | 09.10.26 | 2026-10-09 | There’s a new update, Operant! A patch for ZERO PARADES: Director’s Cut is now available to download. See the notable fixes below:GAMEPLAYFixed a softlock in “Help Ramses Anchor Himself”, which occurred if players refused the joint from Ramses and then robbed Goat Eyes with the gun. Resolved a bug where players could lockpick the Office Door without a lockpick. Addressed an issue with music disappearing after Game Over. Added vibrations to all Dramatic Encounter scenes. Various UI fixes: adding missing tooltips and prompts, and patching menu display issues. For our list of current known-issues, and for details on how to make a bug report, ple |
| ZERO PARADES: Director’s Cut | Out Now | 2026-10-01 | A bullet five years in the making. The Director's Cut of ZERO PARADES is out now across PC storefronts, available as a free update for all owners of ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies. The definitive edition of our espionage RPG, ZERO PARADES, is out now! ZERO PARADES: Director's Cut brings more story, scenery and mind-fuckery to discover as you step into the loafers of Hershel Wilk. At a glance, ZERO PARADES: Director’s Cut contains: A new Dramatic Encounter: Hershel and Ramses, baked out of their brains, trying to escape Quisach Roundabout. Approximately 40,000 words of new material: discuss L-Pop with Ramses, get into dolphin-human hybridity wit |
| ZERO PARADES: Director's Cut | Accessibility Improvements | 2026-09-30 | With Zero Parades: For Dead Spies, we wanted to make the game accessible to as many players as possible. We weren't able to add all the accessibility features we had planned for the game back when it launched, but we were able to revisit this post-launch and implement additional adjustments for ZERO PARADES: Director's Cut.We (Matt, Design Director here and Kay, Head of Engineering) want to share some more about this process and the solutions we applied to meet our accessibility goals for the Director's Cut. OUR PROCESSWe looked at the experts for guidance, talking to them and consulting valuable resources such as the Game Accessibility Guide |
| ZERO PARADES: Director’s Cut | Arriving October 1st | 2026-09-17 | We’re excited to announce that ZERO PARADES: Director’s Cut comes to PC on October 1st, available as a free update for all owners of ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies.ZERO PARADES: Director’s Cut is the definitive edition of our espionage RPG, bringing more story, scenery and mind-fuckery to discover during your bid to reunite The Whole Sick Crew.And yes, we heard you: that includes more Melita.At a glance, ZERO PARADES: Director’s Cut contains: A new Dramatic Encounter: Hershel and Ramses, baked out of their brains, trying to escape Quisach Roundabout. Approximately 40,000 words of new material: discuss L-Pop with Ramses, get into dolphin-human h |
| Patch Notes | 14.08.26 | 2026-08-14 | Operant, you have an update! A new patch for ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies is now available to download. This update addresses some of the most common player-reported bugs and makes several adjustments to the game based on feedback:GAMEPLAYAfter passing the “Hurt Him” check to push him, Frederik (Phone Sex Addict) will now leave the Miracle Line until after Hershel has received their assignment. Previously, Frederik would reappear offscreen and return to his usual schedule, which caused some confusion. Resolved an issue where SILHOUETTE was available to interact with outside of the Party Alley viewpoint. Fixed an issue where Ramses’ dialogue w |
| Patch Notes | 16.07.26 | 2026-07-16 | Operants, the file has been updated! A new patch for ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies is now available to download. Thank you for your continued patience and support whilst we continue working on the game behind the scenes. This update includes several fixes to player-reported issues and new additions based on feedback:VOICEOVER Additional voiceover lines added – Marco and PSEUDOPOD are now fully voiced. There are 17 lines still missing for Goat Eyes, which will be added in a future update. GAMEPLAYResolved an issue with the Journal, which would occasionally appear blank after the player receives multiple updates regarding Reno’s missing train. A |
| ZERO PARADES: Steam Deck Trailer | 2026-07-02 | Become an Operant on the move with ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies on Steam Deck! Our espionage RPG has been Steam Deck-verified since its release, with our development team making several adjustments to offer the best experience even on a smaller device. An example of this was the choice to use Vulcan for rendering to bypass the Steam Proton translation from DirectX, which raised the framerate by up to 23%. Detailed testing highlighted scenes with complex visual effects, which could lead to framerate drops. These were then targeted for optimisation to benefit players on all platforms.When it comes to resolution, the developers targeted 800p rat |
| IMPRINT - Devcast Episode 6 | 2026-06-29 | Welcome to IMPRINT Episode 6, a devcast from the ZERO PARADES team that looks at the making of our recently released espionage RPG. This month, our host Jim (Writer & Voice Over Director) chats with Mikee (Casting Director & Audio Engineer) as they hash out the challenges of bringing the script of ZERO PARADES alive with voice acting. And a reminder: you can grab ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies now for up to 20% off for owners of Disco Elysium as part of the Steam Summer Sale! Promotion ends July 9. |
| Patch Notes | 26.06.26 | 2026-06-26 | Our new patch to ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies is now available to download. We appreciate your patience and support whilst we continue working on ZERO PARADES behind the scenes. This patch resolves several player-reported issues, including: VOICEOVER Further voiceover lines added: Renotel Technician and Bagman are now fully voiced, with additional lines added for Kaleidoscope. GAMEPLAYFixed a blocker for the "Pump-and-Dump the Junior Negotiator" Quest, related to Ramses and wiretapping. Resolved an issue with duplicate items in the Inventory: players will no longer receive multiple copies of Dante’s Exit Papers."Who Cares About the Moon?" Que |
| Save Up To 20% on ZERO PARADES | Steam Summer Sale | 2026-06-25 | The Steam Summer Sale is upon us. Until July 9th, get 10% off our espionage RPG, ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies, with an additional 10% discount for owners of Disco Elysium through the Disgraced State Agents Bundle on Steam, bringing the total discount to 20% off! Duty calls. If you have yet to experience our first critically acclaimed RPG, Disco Elysium - The Final Cut is available at 90% off during the Steam Summer Sale.Experience two of Metacritic’s “Top 20 Best Rated RPGs" since 2019 at a historic low price. The shadowy streets of Revachol and Portofiro await. |
| ZERO PARADES Soundscape: Audio Director Write-Up | 2026-06-22 | Hi everyone, this is Rubén, Audio Director at ZA/UM. I'm so happy to share with you today a glimpse into the creative process behind the music and soundscape of ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies.SET THE SCENEZA/UM’s audio department is still quite young, made up of four sound designers who have been working together for around two years. This means ZERO PARADES was our first opportunity to define how we want to tell stories through sound as a team.For ZERO PARADES, we wanted the soundscape to become an emotional and narrative vehicle in its own right. By soundscape, I mean the totality of sound design and music. I don't see them as separate discip |
| Patch Notes | 19.06.26 | 2026-06-19 | Our latest update to ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies is now available to download. We appreciate your patience and support whilst we continue working on ZERO PARADES behind the scenes. This patch resolves several player-reported issues, including:VOICEOVER Further voiceover lines added: Phantom Line Engineer, Duchess, Narrator and the Skills are now fully voiced.GAMEPLAYWhite Checks in the Map menu are now scrollable. This addresses the issue of unlocked White Checks crowding the menu when numerous are in progress. Resolved the duplicate Red Disc bug (given by Constanz), which impacted a small subset of players.Fixed several traversal issues pla |
| Patch Update | 11.06.26 | 2026-06-11 | Our latest update to ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies is now available to download. Thank you for your continued patience whilst we work on the game behind the scenes! This patch resolves several player-reported issues, including:VOICEOVER Additional voiceover lines added, and sections of voiceover/dialogue mismatch resolved. More to come in our next update. LOCALISATIONReplaced the stylised title font in Chinese (Simplified) to improve readability, based on community feedback.GAMEPLAYAddressed a bug where a handful of players were unable to deliver developed photos to Ignatz, in the “Who Cares About The Moon?” quest. Please note: this fix is not |
| ZERO PARADES: Reviews Trailer | 2026-06-10 | It's been just shy of three weeks since ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies launched on PC platforms, and the critics have spoken:All of us at the studio have been incredibly moved by the reception to ZERO PARADES. We're a small team, and we see every video, stream, clip, comment, or article about the game, and the support means the world. A huge thank you to everyone who has joined us in Portofiro so far, from the bottom of our hearts. |
| Patch Notes | 04.06.26 | 2026-06-04 | Our second patch for ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies is now available to download! A big thank you for your patience while we continue to work on the game behind the scenes. This latest patch addresses many player-reported issues and adds several new features, including (but not limited to!): VOICEOVER Additional voiceover lines added, notably for Metlia, Karolina and Ultra Violeta. GAMEPLAY Additional changes to the King of Trades in-game logic, to remedy issues with players unable to obtain the boar kibble. Resolved an issue with Karolina becoming unrecruitable at the end of the "Contact the Secret Prisoner quest. This bug would arise followin |
| Patch Notes | 29.05.26 | 2026-05-29 | It’s been one week of ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies! Thank you to everyone who has assumed the role of CASCADE, and provided feedback and bug reports over the last seven days. Our first patch is available to download now, and addresses a number of reported issues, including (but not limited to!): VOICEOVER Added in a number of missing voiced lines – including all lines for Boat Man. Temporarily, voiceover lines that severely differ from the text have been removed – missing voiceover will be re-added in a future patch. Fixed the inconsistencies with Bagman’s voiceover. LOCALISATION Added in additional translations for missing lines, including m |
| Play ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies with Your Friends, Fans, and Enemies?! | 2026-05-22 | ZERO PARADES is a game about making careful, deliberate decisions in the world of espionage. The ZERO PARADES Twitch Companion Extension lets your audience play with you in real time: Stats, info and map overlay: Viewers don’t need to ask on chat what you’re doing right now or how you’ve skilled your character. They can open up an overlay menu and can see your character's stats, skills, inventory, journal map and Conditioning Thoughts at one glance. Live voting on dialogue and quests: Once connected, a poll button in dialogue gives streamers the chance to ask viewers to vote on which dialogue options to choose or which journal entries to foll |
| Play ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies Now | 2026-05-21 | ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies is now available to play on PC. In ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies, play as Hershel Wilk, a brilliant but burnt out operant (cryptonym: CASCADE), who’s recalled to the city of Portofiro five years after the greatest failure of her life - the disintegration of her old network. Now back in the theatre, Hershel must pull together the ‘Whole Sick Crew’ for one last show. Her final, desperate mission.The game is out now with English voiceover, and full text localisation in English, German, Russian, Simplified Chinese, and Spanish (Latin America). Eight additional languages are planned and will be added through free update |
| UI & UX Design in ZERO PARADES | 2026-05-18 | Being a spy means living a double life. There’s the inner self – who you truly are – and the outer self, the version of you that is presented to the world. A spy must switch out this outer self frequently in order to take on different identities, either to manipulate a situation or to enshroud who they really are. What this means for their inner self is their own problem to deal with.In ZERO PARADES, this tension between inner and outer lives extends across our art style and UI as well.Balancing the Objective and the SubjectiveWhat we mean by the ‘Objective’ in ZERO PARADES is the outer world that you move through as Hershel. This is where yo |
| ZERO PARADES: Showcase Round-Up | 2026-05-16 | Last night, the ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies Showcase premiered on Steam. The 16-minute spotlight included a gameplay deep dive with our developers, music from in-game artist Ultra Violeta, an announcement of a ZERO PARADES-inspired collection with ZA/UM Atelier, and the beginning of a Pen & Paper one-shot adventure played by some of our talented voice cast.Catch up on the events now, with the full showcase on our YouTube:The Showcase opened with a psychedelic music video from in-game hyperstar Ultra Violeta. The track, 'Cover the Moon', was written and recorded entirely by our in-house audio team. Composed by Fernando Cabrera and performed b |
| LIVE NOW: ZERO PARADES Showcase | 2026-05-15 | The ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies Showcase is now live on our Steam page!Tune in for a premiere from Luzian hyperstar Ultra Violeta, a gameplay deep dive with VO Director Jim Ashilevi, Lead Producer Ruudu Ulas, Tech Art Lead Nicolas Piret, and Principal Writer Siim “Kosmos” Sinamäe, plus appearances from some of our talented voice cast. |
| ZERO PARADES Showcase: Friday 15th | 5PM UTC | 2026-05-14 | Join us tomorrow for a ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies showcase, packed with gameplay footage and music that are sure to get you excited for what’s in store at release next week. The ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies showcase includes a music video premiere from in-game Luzian hyperstar Ultra Violeta, a gameplay deep dive from our developers, and reveals some of our talented voice cast, who have exciting news to share.See you there, operant. The ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies Showcase premieres on Steam and YouTube this May 15th at 10:00 am PDT | 1:00 pm EDT | 18:00 GMT | 19:00 CEST | 20:00 MSK | May 16, 1:00 am CST. |
| Faction Spotlight: Major Powers at the End of History | 2026-05-12 | It’s been 96 years since the Latour-Woolgar Treaty was signed and the calendar reset to zero, resulting in the so-called End of History. Ever since, three major powers have had a good chunk of the world carved up between them… The Superbloc, officially the Supreme Union of Proletarian Republics, is the largest geopolitical entity in the world: a communist megastate comprising some 70 republics, ranging from city-states invisible on world maps to multi-time-zone-spanning powers with populations in the hundreds of millions.Vast. Omniscient. Senescent.Home to an intelligence service no less sprawling and disorganised, known as the Operant Bureau |
| ZERO PARADES: Features & Gameplay Trailer | 2026-05-07 | There are just two weeks until ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies launches on PC! To prime you for your time in Portofiro, our new Features Trailer takes a look at how Skills, Conditioning, and Dramatic Encounters play out in-game, coming together to form our psychedelic espionage RPG.With cRPG mechanics at its core, choose from one of three pre-set character archetypes at the beginning of the game, or create your own. Reshape, reinforce or regress Hershel’s inner belief system with 15 unique Skills. Read more about the Skills in ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies here. Being an operant is no walk in the park, and balancing Fatigue, Anxiety and Delirium |
| Meet Your Skills | 2026-05-06 | “Man is changed by his living; but not fast enough.”– W.H. AudenIn ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies, Skill Badges are responsible for shaping your operant through three main faculties: Action, Relation, and Intellect.These three faculties represent the key branches of an operant’s training, and within each faculty sit five skills, making 15 Skill Badges in total. In ZERO PARADES, skills exist at the intersection of who you are and what you do. Think of them as applied selfhood.Skills are not static qualities you choose. In ZERO PARADES, Skills are entities with personalities that speak to you directly. If you want something from your skills, they |
| The Skill Badge Re-Designs | 2026-05-01 | If you played the ZERO PARADES demo during Steam Next Fest, you’ll be familiar with the Skill Badges. These don’t just represent your aptitude with various abilities related to spycraft; they’re entities with personalities that speak to you directly.If you want something from your Skills, they want something from you. As ZERO PARADES has continued to develop behind the scenes, the team have been iterating on the visual identity of the Skill Badges, introducing new designs for all fifteen, ready for the game’s launch on May 21st:The design of the Skill Badges are inspired by the embroidered activity patches reminiscent of various Scouting orga |
| IMPRINT - Devcast Episode 4 | 2026-04-30 | Welcome to IMPRINT Episode 5, a devcast from the ZERO PARADES team that looks at the making of our upcoming espionage RPG, which will release next month!In this episode, our host, Jim (Writer & Voice Over Director), chats with Chris Priestman (Principal Writer) and Nicolas Pirot (Lead Technical Artist) as they zoom in on that special place in development where gameplay meets narrative. |
| Meet The Friends You Left to Die | 2026-04-23 | Portofiro ‘91. The “Whole Sick Crew.” A black page in official records. Reports of “How It Went Down” remain contested, inconclusive…In ZERO PARADES, you play as operant Hershel Wilk, alias CASCADE. Five years ago, you led your team into the abyss and have been haunted by your failures ever since. Now, back in the city-state of Portofiro, you must rebuild your broken network: Karolina | Cryptonym: KINDREDThe youngest member of the old crew. When you last saw her, she was undercover in a highly experimental Dream Study. For all you know, she may still be there.Ramses | Cryptonym: RADIAN^^The resident circuit-surgeon of the Whole Sick Crew. The |
| Play the ZERO PARADES demo in Chinese! | 2026-04-15 | From today, all Chinese (Simplified) language users on Steam can download the ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies demo in Chinese (Simplified). This marks our first localised demo, released together with our partner Heybox. The Chinese (Simplified) ZERO PARADES demo offers the same content as the Steam Next Fest demo, plus an exclusive look at Conditioning: a core gameplay mechanic in ZERO PARADES that allows you to recall your operant training to reshape and influence Hershel’s thoughts and skills. We’re incredibly excited for the community to have the opportunity to immerse themselves into the world of ZERO PARADES prior to the game’s release on M |