ZIX Opens the Cauldron September 18 on Quest 3/3S and Steam VR

MONTREAL, Canada – August 12, 2025 – During today’s VR Games Showcase, Hidden IO announced that ZIX will launch into Early Access on September 18, 2025 for Meta Quest 3/3S and Steam VR at an introductory price of $19.99 USD. Starting now, Meta Quest users can secure a 10 percent pre-order discount ($17.99 USD) and claim the exclusive “Keeper of the Deep” character skin, marking their initiation into the Cult of Chaos. 

The cultists whisper that Zix began as a single spark inside a star. What matters to you is what that spark became: a restless cosmic hunger that feeds on instability. In every run you (and up to 2 friends) slip into the role of an Acolyte, a willing vessel who spreads that hunger across three broken realms: the crystal-addled Grove, the pressure-crushed Abyss, and the flesh-forged Gut.
 

The Core Loop

1. Invade a Realm
   Pick a starting world and dive in. Each realm is procedurally assembled from layered “slices,” so the path you carve through its forests, trenches, or viscera is never quite the same twice.
    

2. Harvest Ingredients
   Slice through punk bees, armored crabs, or bile-coated automatons, then scoop up the glowing fragments they drop. Every fragment embodies a rule: lower gravity, swap enemy types, twist the soundtrack, and every rule is yours to weaponize.
    

3. Stoke the Cauldron
   Back in the hub, pour any combination ingredients into the living Cauldron and watch reality rewrite itself. A single recipe can fuse biomes, flood arenas with new hazards, or unlock a hidden enemy who should probably stay hidden.
    

4. Push Until It Breaks
   Return to the field and survive your own creation. Zix rewards progress with Blessings: stackable augments that mutate weapons and movement skills. Exploding dashes, teleport-slash swords, cluster bomb arrows: every blessing is an invitation to improvise a new combat style.
    

ZIX Early Access Release Date Trailer 

FIRST INSTINCT Combat 

ZIX abandons face buttons in favor of the FIRST INSTINCT system. Two triggers, two grips, and your own motion are all you need to vault walls, deflect bullets, hurl bombs with real heft, or parry a jelly witch’s spear mid-air. The result feels more like choreography than input; when momentum clicks, UI fades and only flow remains.

Friends, Foes, and Watchers 

Co-op: Up to two more fellow Acolytes can drop in, bringing their ingredient choices and chaos with them. Difficulty and loot scale dynamically, so teamwork is optional but rarely painless. 

Spectacle Bosses: Each realm holds a denizen bound to its fate, think crystal-drunk hive knights or abyssal champions in shell armor. Their arenas morph in real time, turning walls into teeth or gravity into a suggestion. 

Why It Matters 

Every system in ZIX feeds another. Ingredients reshape worlds, reshaped worlds birth new augments, augments unlock deeper strategies, and the loop resets with a harder bite. It is equal parts roguelike experimentation, kinetic VR combat, and surreal cosmic fable; an endless alchemy of player agency and unpredictable consequence.

Spread the flame, feed the star, and remember: in ZIX, reality is just the opening move. 

Hidden IO will use Early Access to refine balance, expand world recipes, squash (or keep) bugs and integrate community feedback ahead of a full 1.0 launch. New ingredients, augments, campaigns, and narrative threads will roll out through regular content updates.

• FIRST INSTINCT gesture combat – Dash, parry, and unleash swords, bows, grenades, and shields with just triggers and grips. No menus. No button clutter.
   

• Reality remixing – Use ingredients harvested in each run to swap enemy types, twist gravity, fuse biomes, and alter the soundtrack in real time.
   

• Spectacle bosses and co-op mayhem – Face colossal foes that reshape arenas. Tackle runs solo or team up with two friends in cross-platform co-op.
   

• Player-driven difficulty – Apply run modifiers that crank challenge up (or sideways), from friendly-fire duels to low-gravity arenas.
   

• Cosmetic progression – Unlock palette shifts, body attachments, and signature skins like the pre-order exclusive “Keeper of the Deep.” 

Claim your torch and join the cult of chaos. ZIX opens the portal to Early Access on September 18, 2025 for Meta Quest 3/3S and Steam VR at $19.99. Quest players who pre-order now receive 10 percent off ($17.99 USD) and the exclusive “Keeper of the Deep” character skin at launch. Ready to spread the flame? 

• Wishlist or pre-order on Meta Quest Store and Steam 

• Descend deeper at playzix.io 

• Confess your theories in the Discord 

• Follow the cosmic signals on X, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok

Light the Cauldron, Acolyte! Reality is waiting to be rewritten…

For press kits, trailers, and screenshots, visit the official press hub.

Press contact:
Impact Reality PR
pr@impactreality.com

Hidden IO is an independent VR studio based in Montreal, founded by brothers Tam and Sol Tahirli. Growing up as refugees, the two found solace in gaming, a passion that eventually led them into game development careers spanning industry giants like Unity and Ubisoft. Seeking to push the boundaries of VR gameplay, they formed Hidden IO in 2023 with the goal of blending deep roguelike mechanics with kinetic, freeform movement and surreal, ever-changing worlds.

Backed by Meta’s Oculus Publishing program and the Canada Media Fund, Hidden IO is dedicated to creating bold, experimental VR experiences that reward creativity, adaptability, and mastery. ZIX is the studio’s debut title, bringing a fresh take on VR roguelikes with its player-driven reality-shifting systems, expressive combat, and co-op chaos.