Zoop To The Future! 1st Official Gameplay Footage + Live Action Intro From Us (The Creators!)
by Joey Rodriguez - 10/28/2011

It's what you've been waiting for, like the salavating dogs that you are! Check out the very first gameplay video of "Zoop To The Future!"

As a special bonus treat, Danny and I filmed a live action intro to give you a little background before jumping right into the video. Zoop To The Future! is a new point-n-click adventure game staring myself, my brother Danny, and our best friend, an adorable, blobby ghost named Prickley Pete (who loves marshmallows)! Control all three of us as you solve puzzles across 20 different time periods, interacting with over 300 unique characters using over 300 different items. Solve complex puzzles across multiple time periods, use your mind, your head, AND your brain to solve logic puzzles, and use your quick thinking to outwit action puzzles, where split second decisions could mean that dinosuar you're riding has to jump over a baby duck!

Zoop To The Future! Official Update #1
by Joey Rodriguez - 07/25/2011

It's been two weeks into the OFFICIAL start of Zoop To The Future!, the others were like running starts where Prickley Pete has to get up to full speed before he can actually be super cute. We've gotten a lot done including redrawing over 110 of the 250+ characters that are going to appear in the game (remember, that's characters you can talk to and interact with, it doesn't even count background nonsense characters!). Every Monday will be our official update day (starting today) with bits and pieces of news that we think you'd like to know about (or not know...okay).

Vector Graphics - Back when the game was up and running in August of 2010, we were using bitmap images which could be exporting at basically any size and quality but when translated from a JPG or PNG, no matter how small the file size was to begin with, the resulting bitmap image would be several, if not ten, times bigger. basically leading us to calculate the finished size of the game would probably be at least 3 - 5 GB for art alone. This, coupled with the tons of sounds files (voice, sound effects, and music), meant the game could balloon to over 10 GB (no, really!). But because of Danny's past work expierience in the "real" game industry, he's learned a few tricks, mainly that we can take Vector images from Flash and render them in the game as Vector images. This means that no matter how far you zoomed in on the image, the quality would still remain 100$ clear. And unlike JPGs and PNGs, we would have to output only one file and we could zoom in for close-ups during conversations and cutscenes and not have to worry about the quality dipping or having one scene have multiple images all at different qualities. This approach allows us to fit tons of images into the game with very little space needed, meaning the game can be longer and more detailed.

Action Puzzles - The script continues to be added onto almost everyday. Not only have we gone through almost all the script, but nothing that was previously written has been changed, only added on to! When finished, the script should be over 1000 pages long (and that doesn't even include context menu responses for the environment and your inventory). We're trying to include as many puzzle types as possible in the game: dialogue puzzles, inventory puzzles, POV puzzles, and even (what we like to call) action puzzles. Action puzzles are basically scenes in the game where action is happening on screen and you can use certain phrases to impact the gameplay. For instance, one puzzle involves a Minotaur fighting atop the buildings of Ancient Greece against a wiley thief. As Prickley Pete you must shout out commands to the Minotaur (who isn't so confident in his fighting abilities) in order to defeat the thief. You tell him when to strike, block and kill through dialogue choices (most of them hilarious...well). Each action puzzle ramps up the difficulty and the ridiculousness, but we don't ram them down your throat like other games (we could, but Prickley Pete isn't mean).

Logos - Lastly, our new logo has gone through a little change, making it a little more "update-ey". Click on the image below to embiggen.

by Joey Rodriguez - 04/19/2010



Yes, that's right. We're crazy. Really crazy. Oh God, TOO crazy.

We are about to embark on a very ambitious, and possibly stupid, experiment. We will be creating, from scratch, five games in just five weeks for XBOX Live Indie Games. That means, every week we will come up with a new idea and by the end of the week we will have a fully playable game. The challenge of creating a video game is definitely a rewarding one, by allowing ourselves only seven days to create a game, we hope to find a balance between simplicity and fun. Hopefully, what we learn from our experience can be used to create bigger, more expansive games. (Zoop To The Future!)

Everybody will be able to play the games, once they have gone through the XBOX LIVE Indie Games approval process (that time does not figure into the actual experiment). We are currently fundraising right now in order to fuel our five week, and according to our rules a possible nine week, suicide mission. If you are interested in donating or would like more info, head over to our official fundraising page on Kickstarter: http://kck.st/dnkaih

by Joey Rodriguez - 04/18/2010



Zoop To The Future! is going to be our first big game and we thought we should share a little info about it.

The game will be a point-n-click adventure in the style of The Curse of Monkey Island, Sam & Max: Hit The Road, and Day of the Tentacle. You will be able to control all three main characters (Joey, Danny, and Prickley Pete) at once and you will be able to use them independently to solve puzzles from across the room and across the space time contiuum!

After getting a mysterious letter from the past, Prickley Pete soon learns that his family timeline is in danger of being altered and he could possibly lose his "Zoop!" forever! Oh, and maybe he wouldn't exist...or something. Prickley Pete and his two best friends, Joey and Danny, must jump into action in order to fix time!

Featuring wacky characters, hilarious dialogue, and some mind-bending puzzles, we think Zoop To The Future! is going to be a great addition to the XBOX LIVE Indie Games library. We will also be releasing it for PC, Windows 7 Phones, and Zune HD.

For more info, check out our fundraising page on Kickstarter: http://kck.st/gxu50s

by Joey Rodriguez - 04/17/2010



Welcome back, again, for the second time, to the NEW, official site of The Zero Counts. A new game development studio set to deliver a tone of awesome games in the coming months:

- Zoop To The Future!
- Super Ghosts 'n ... Ghosts?: The Game!
- Back in Blue

We are still updating a lot of information and in the coming weeks there will be more info about all our great projects and some behind the scenes tidbits as well!