Novalex Project Zero

About this game

Start with a single garage and a sketch. Build the automaker that outlasts the century.

Nothing here happens on reflex. Every turn is a deliberate bet — which technology to chase, which segment to defend, what to charge, and when to stake the company on a factory you cannot yet afford. Then the market answers, your rivals answer, and you live with it. One hundred years and five eras separate the garage from the boardroom, and the decisions you make in the first decade are still compounding in the last.

Design cars from the chassis up

Every model is yours to engineer. Choose from 12 body types, size the engine, pick your components, and balance the trade-offs with fine-grained tuning sliders.

• Engineer the trade-offs — performance, comfort, reliability, fuel economy and cost all pull against each other. There is no perfect car, only the right car for the segment you're chasing.
  
• Live with your decisions — defects, aging stats and facelifts decide whether a model stays competitive or quietly stops selling.
  
• Build a lineup, not a one-hit wonder — cover the segments that matter, retire what's gone stale, and time each successor.

Research the tech that wins decades

Progress down a historical technology tree of 103 technologies spanning five eras, and unlock the engines, materials and features that define each one.

• Time your research bets so your cars lead the market instead of trailing it.
  
• New tech reshapes what's possible — and quietly makes last decade's bestseller obsolete.

Run the whole business

A great car is only half the company. Build and manage the operation behind it.

• Manufacturing — factories, production lines, shifts and retooling. Match output to demand without drowning in unsold stock.
  
• Pricing — set every model's price against what your rivals are asking. Undercut them and their buyers become yours; hold your price and let the badge carry it. Go too cheap and buyers simply read it as a cheap car.
  
• Money — fund R&D, manage cash flow, and use financing to grow faster than your balance sheet should allow.
  
• Brand — marketing builds reputation and prestige, and they shift how buyers rank you against an otherwise identical rival. Let a defect slide and it drags them back down. A trusted badge sells cars a spreadsheet says it shouldn't.

Outplay a field that grows to 30 living rivals

The competition isn't scenery. Every AI manufacturer runs the same logic you do — designing, pricing, researching and reacting, turn after turn — and the field keeps filling as the century goes on, until as many as 30 of them are fighting you for every sale.

• Scout rivals, read the standings, and exploit the gaps they leave open.
  
• Survive market shocks and events that punish the complacent.
  
• No two centuries run the same — every run is seeded, so a new game reshuffles the rivals, the market and the shocks you will face.
  
• Change your own starting hand — four difficulty levels, three company traits picked at founding, and a starting-skill build that decides what you are good at before you build anything.
  
• Climb the rankings to the top of the industry — or go bankrupt trying.

Read everything, miss nothing

The reports are there so you can act on the simulation instead of guessing at it: company value over time, market share, profit margins, sales versus the competition, financials and cash flow, and a full company history — fourteen tabs, each answering a question you will actually have.

When the run ends, a detailed scorecard and leaderboard tell you exactly how you stacked up: a hundred years of decisions, measured against every rival who tried. At the very start of that history, a sketch, a single garage, and a badge you had to think of a name for.

Latest news

• Announcements·9 Aug 2026Official

  The demo arrives 12 August, with controller and Steam Input support

  The demo opens on 12 August This is the build it ships from. Most of the work since the last update went into two things: making the game behave on hardware it had never been properly tested on, and correcting parts of the simulation that were quietly wrong. Controller and Steam Input support You can play the whole game on a pad. Steam Input actions drive the same navigation the keyboard uses, and touching the keyboard or mouse suspends pad focus so the two stop fighting over where you are. A misbehaving controller no longer runs away with the cursor. The device that caused it is quarantined, recovers on its own, and tells you it happened instead of leaving you to wrestle the menu. Settings has a Controller Diagnostics dialog showing exactly what the game reads from each pad. Also in this build Rival firms handle money better. They used to size research, marketing and training budgets from the same pile of cash, committing it three times over. They now spend from one running balance, count overtime in their fixed costs, and check they can pay for a design revision before starting one. A tutorial that waits for you. Steps hold until the thing they describe is actually possible, name the button that is on screen, and stand aside when a turn interrupt takes over. Skip skips the step you are on, not the rest of the chapter. Production lines in one place. A detail sheet gives output and upkeep per line, with Change and Demolish where you are already looking rather than back in Administration. Saves that admit failure. A failed save used to be silent, so you found out by losing progress. It now raises a message that keeps coming back until the write succeeds. Desktop keyboard and screen work. Fullscreen is a real rebindable key, F11 by default. The dashboard economy tile reads as a peer of the tiles beside it, and the research comparison stopped listing the same technology twice. Fixes from playtesting A long tail of smaller corrections. Money committed to a purchase that...
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• Announcements·26 Jul 2026Official

  A Complete Visual Redesign, a Guided Tutorial, and Steam Deck Support

  Update 1.2 This is the biggest update Novalex Project Zero has had. Nearly every screen has been rebuilt, there is a proper tutorial for new players, and the game now behaves itself on a Steam Deck and on very wide monitors. What's new A complete visual redesign. The garage, car designer, reports and research used to live inside stacked pop-up dialogs. Each is now a full-page view behind a persistent sidebar rail, with a KPI strip along the top and a new icon set throughout. A guided tutorial for your first car. New players are walked through the core loop step by step, anchored to the actual controls as they use them. Skippable from Preferences, and you can bring it back whenever you want. Steam Deck and big-screen desktop. Full gamepad navigation with spatial focus and dialog focus traps, controls sized for a coarse pointer, and on an ultrawide monitor the content no longer stretches into unreadable full-width rows. Also in this release "Too hard even on easy" is fixed. A new Relaxed difficulty, a cash-runway warning before the death spiral, a Government rescue instead of silent bankruptcy, and a post-mortem that names the cause when you do fail. A credit line. Borrow against a limit at an interest rate and repay it, with an auto-draw prompt when cash runs out, and debt properly settled when you swap companies. Rivals you can actually study. Compare any of your cars to rivals by type, overlay competitor skill curves on your own report, and see the competitors screen grouped by market segment. Design defects that behave like a real quality problem. Defects arrive as a count drawn per design rather than a coin flip, each gets its own decision with the affected car and reputation cost spelled out, and the designer shows the expected range before you sign off. Fixes and polish A round of fixes across the game, including audio playback and a number of smaller rough edges. Keep the feedback coming This is still a playtest, and your input steers what we fix next. The Ste...
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• Patch Notes·5 Jul 2026Official

  Playtest Update - First Trailer, Native Localization, and Now on Linux & macOS

  Playtest Update First of all, thank you. The bug reports you have been sending in have been incredibly helpful, and this update is built directly on them. We read every one, and they made the game better - so please keep them coming. Here is what changed since the last playtest build. What's new Now on Linux and macOS. The playtest now ships native builds for Linux and macOS, alongside Windows. Install it on your platform of choice straight from Steam. Our first trailer. Novalex Project Zero finally has a trailer. Head to the store page to watch it. Native localization reviews. Simplified Chinese and German have both had a full native-speaker review pass, so the game reads far more naturally in those languages. Animated main menu. The menu now greets you with ambient motion for a more alive first impression. Fixes Fixed savegame corruption in non-USD currencies. Playing in a non-USD currency could corrupt your savegame. This is now fixed. Screenshot buttons fixed. Taking screenshots works again, with buttons in two convenient spots: in the main menu next to Achievements, and inside the Reports dialog. Several small bug fixes. Plus a round of smaller fixes and polish across the game. Keep the feedback coming This is still a playtest, and your input directly steers what we fix next. Two easy ways to reach us: The Steam Community forums. Best for longer write-ups, bug reports, and conversations with the dev team and other testers. The in-game feedback form. Open the menu and send us a note without leaving your session. We are still focused on three things in particular: bugs, balancing, and translations. Tell us where the numbers feel off, where text reads awkwardly, and anything that breaks or behaves unexpectedly. Thank you again for playing, and for helping us build this. See you in the boardroom.
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• Announcements·27 Jun 2026Official

  The Novalex Project Zero Playtest Is Now Open

  The Novalex Project Zero Playtest Is Now Open Build your own car company from a single garage into a global manufacturer. Design cars, research new tech, set up production lines, price your lineup, and outmaneuver around 30 AI rivals in a turn based market that reacts to every move you make. The playtest is open to everyone right now, and we would love your help shaping the game before launch. How to join the playtest It only takes a moment, and access is granted automatically: Head to the Novalex Project Zero store page on Steam. Click the Request Access button in the Playtest section. Access is granted instantly, no waiting for approval. The playtest will appear in your Steam library. Install it, launch it, and start building your empire. That is it. You can hop in and out whenever you like, and updates will download automatically just like any other Steam game. We want your feedback This is a playtest, which means your input directly steers what we fix and improve. There are two easy ways to reach us: The Steam Community forums. Post on the Novalex Project Zero discussion boards to report issues, share ideas, and talk with other testers and the dev team. This is the best place for longer write ups and conversations. The in game feedback form. Open the menu inside the game and send us a note directly. It is the quickest way to fire off a thought the moment you have it, without leaving your session. Use whichever fits the moment. Both land with us. What we are especially looking for All feedback is welcome, but right now we are focused on three areas in particular: Bugs. Anything that crashes, breaks, looks wrong, or behaves unexpectedly. Tell us what happened, what you expected, and what you were doing at the time so we can reproduce it. Balancing. Does the economy feel fair? Are research, pricing, marketing, and production costs in a good place? Is any strategy too strong or too weak? Does the difficulty curve feel right? We want to know where the numbers feel of...
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