
Zone Idle
A text-based extraction simulator wrapped in a gritty, retro PDA interface. Inspired by the unforgiving atmosphere of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and the high-stakes looting of Escape from Tarkov, you play as an operator navigating the anomalies of the Zone.
Your goal is simple. Kit up, survive the raid, and extract with enough resources to upgrade your Hideout and complete tasks for the traders.
KEY FEATURES
- The Zone Awaits: Explore multiple locales via a "Live View" with distinct backgrounds and event visuals, or stick to the "Standard" text-only view for a pure retro PDA experience.
- Skill-Based Minigames: Success isn't just about stats. Engage in time and skill-based minigames to hack terminals, unlock crates, and survive anomalies.
- Inventory Management: Manage your gear, health, and radiation levels. Your equipment dictates your survival—better gear improves your odds in minigames and event checks.
- Risk vs. Reward: Every raid involves RNG and calculated risk. Do you push for one more loot roll, or extract with what you have?
- The Mirage: Reach the endgame to unlock Prestige. Access "The Mirage" map and the Noosphere, unlocking a new Hideout module specifically designed for unique, high-tier artifacts.
- Leaderboards: Compete against other operators to see who has the most efficient operation in the Zone.
FROM SURVIVAL TO AUTOMATION
When you begin, you are in full control. Raids pause at every event, requiring your direct input. You must manually decide when to heal, when to use rad-killers, which loot to drop to save space, and when to cut your losses and extract.
As you progress, you upgrade your CORTEX AI. This allows you to automate the survival process.
- Auto-Med: Let the system handle your health.
- Smart Looting: Automatically filter junk and prioritize valuables.
- Decision Algorithms: Automated event outcomes and extraction logic.
PLAY ANYWHERE
Zone Idle is built on HTML5. It is fully playable in your desktop browser or on mobile browsers.
DEVELOPMENT STATUS: EARLY ACCESS
Zone Idle is currently transitioning from Prototype to Early Access. The game is fully playable with a robust loop, but new content, features, and polish are being added constantly.
COMMUNITY
Join the community to give feedback, report bugs, and chat with other operators.
Join the Official Discord:
| Updated | 3 days ago |
| Status | In development |
| Platforms | HTML5 |
| Rating | Rated 3.7 out of 5 stars (12 total ratings) |
| Author | Dickie1 |
| Genre | Simulation, Survival |
| Tags | Idle, Incremental, Singleplayer |
| Average session | A few minutes |
Development log
- Hotfix 0.14.013 days ago
- Stimulant Update 0.14.03 days ago
- Update 0.13.58 days ago
- Hotfix 0.13.419 days ago
- Update 0.13.412 days ago
- Hotfix 0.13.3215 days ago
- Hotfix 0.13.3115 days ago
- Introducing The Drone and CORTEX Scav 0.13.316 days ago




Comments
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IDK what happened... but every time I open the game it just... reloads? Like, reloading the page, and takes me to the menu screen every like.. 3 seconds... even if I am on the menu or don't touch anything :C
Oh that's really odd. Maybe you could dm me your save string on discord for testing because this is the first i'm hearing of this. Not sure If having your save would help me but Its worth a look.
The save will not help, it must have been a problem with my navigator or itch, it works fine now...
Also, thought EFIM pocket would give me extra inventory space, not 3 extra safe spaces LOL. (Just used it for the first time, died like 3 times before it worked :fire: )
Huh... so you can have unstable matter outside of the mirage... interesting...
I figure this is a bug?
Yeah that's a bug. I did make unstable matter an Artifact technically but it only gives you increased radiation gain so it's undesirable as an artifact, did you get it from an artifact minigame or something or did you just equip it to get out with it? Curious how you got it to be unconverted, if you take it into Mirage you'll be able to convert it if you want lol.
Thought I could send the bug to you through a direct message or something, can't.
Anyways, I got the item with a full inventory, I don't know if you have any way to prevent this but my game kicked me out of the mirage without letting me switch an item for it, I figure it's a combination of getting an event while the extraction is at 100%-90% combined with the next one, when I entered the red forest I got the "full inventory, switch with something" screen, since I had space, I got the option to just receive it, so I did :D
Now I got that glitched, shiny savefile with a unstable matter on my stash >:D
I ain't selling/converting it!
Since this is pretty rare to happen, it could be left in as an easter egg?
Crap... I just lost it...
Ok, so... if one of those "Ambush" events, kills you, are they meant to not let the "auto-injector" feature work? Or is that a bug?
Tried to get it again, after leaving any map it stabilizes :C
Haha I may need to fix that bug but I wouldn't mind someone having the item, that's why I gave it a debuff. It's kind of an easter-egg but I haven't intentionally left anyways to get the item tbh!
Also those events should still trigger your equipped medkit, maybe you took more damage than your medkit can heal? If not that, then perhaps there's a bug with it. Equipped medkits don't work in instances where Death is considered a potential option, like the EFIM injector.
I had not clicked any option, and my cortex is level 2, so it didn't click anything, death reason said "Factory boss", I have also had it with shotgun scav, are those the events that so far damage you before the event starts?
Yeah Shotgun scavs and all boss events have damage on entry, it's a mechanic I'm trying to be a bit disciplined with as it adds to the randomness but it can be very punishing lol.
The new music is great, but I actually really enjoyed the other music from before the update. Could we possibly get it back at some point? Maybe as a "purchase" in the shop? I loved the creepy vibe of it.
I can add it back next update!
Cool! Having a few music options would probably be a good idea. Different people have different musical tastes of course!
Agreed!
The Legacy music option is now available with the new major update, hope you like it!
Very nice game!
I think the minigames are ok, although they might get boring at some point, so it's still good to know that I can skip them with some upgrade.
I first felt cheated that some minigames don't give you time to understand what's going on before the timer runs out (e.g. the cash registers and the bombs) but I eventually liked it: it gives a sense of urgency and makes the first encounters with them difficult until you get it, which is satisfying.
Otherwise, I face an annoying bug. I've had my hideout button and the medstation section inside blinking since the beginning. I can't upgrade it because I have no soap and have not seen a single soap so far (I'm level 25 and only raid in the first 2 areas). Since I died during the tutorial, I suspect that I've lost a soap that may have been given to me at the start and will never be seen again. I suggest changing the requirements for the medstation to not need a unique item if that's the case.
Keep up with the good work :)
I appreciate the kind words very much!
The feedback on the minigames is nice, i hear different opinions and yours was sort of the intended experience. For some minigames, I've been adding a click to start since users don't always understand how the games work, but maybe I'll limit the click-start feature to the first/easy map's minigames.
The soap should be most findable in filing cabinets but maybe I'll look into making those early game junk items a bit more reasonable to find by buffing those junk loot events in the first areas. Thanks again :)
Thank you for your answer.
And... I've just found soap from a Shotgun Scav in the first area :D
Great game but I do have some issues with the loop of the gameplay. I feel that you should add more quests or increase xp gains because once i got past level 20 it to ages to level up and no more quest with the current traders avalible. I also felt stuck in the cordon, My gear wasnt good enough to go to the red woods or labs, but I feel i couldnt do factory raids often due to rads, i would bring two sets of uncommon rad pills and would have to leave 3 to 4 minutes in and i also had 50 rad protction. One more thing I disliked was the loot rooms where u needed a key, i find that i didnt find the random encounters that often and the loot was mediorce. also one last thing is I feel you should be able to put on gas masks on with a helmet. sorry for the crazy amount of yapping. also how in the hell does the triangulate mini game works
Thank you! I'll look into adjusting XP rates. I definitely want to add more quests. I appreciate you giving feedback and suggestions, I'll be considering them moving forward.
The triangulate minigame requires that all the circles encompass the point of interest on the radar. I'll look into improving this minigame to be more clear as well.
I was excited about the text-based / standard view, but the tutorial requires right-clicking, drag-and-drop, and timed minigames. That makes the game inaccessible for keyboard-only and screen reader users.
Sorry about that, the game does require that extra level of input. There is some more "Idle" mechanics the more you progress but overall the game is meant to be played with clicking involved.
I would remove the poorly interfaced minigame. It should be about decisions, not how well we manually handle odd controls.
Thanks for the feedback. It's the first I'm being requested to completely remove the minigames so I'm hesitant to do something like that. I will note if you have the CORTEX leveled up all the way (or do a CORTEX Scav run) the auto-decider completes them for you.
I've considered putting in ways around them via The Arcade module as well but I haven't put too much thought into it yet.
Now way you actually added the drone thingy!
Dude seeing it fleshed out is so damn cool!
Do you think it would be okay for me to like throw together a Gdoc to put like my own ideas for dialogue coming from the combat feed thingamabob?
(P.S. this is where I discovered 'thingamabob' is considered a real word)
Haha I'm glad you like it, it was nice getting in this new type of quest. Everything else was fetch and deliver. As for creating that doc, go right ahead! The current text is mostly from the prototype when i first started the project so it could definitely use some love!
Also, I did not realize thingamabob was a real word lmao
Can confirm the 'can't drag' bug is very much so still in the game
Doesn't appear to be crashing the whole browser off rip, which is an improvement at least. For now
Thanks for letting me know, I'm going to be focusing on another hotfix for that tonight. This bug unfortunately is persistent
ok as I play I have come to a opinon. the game as it is I do not want to play. mostly becuase of the mini games they just pop up with no guide. I had a lot of good gear and had to leave early one mission because a minigame failed when I had no idea what to do. if your going to base the game off of completing minigame you have to tell player how to play the minigames
Understandable, I'm working to resolve this pain point very soon, sorry for the poor experience. I appreciate you leaving feedback on it.
I wish you luck and successes with your work
Thank you for the kind words!
if I could make one suggestion. don't make the how to's a once time thing but maybe something the player can check before the minigame. mostly for the cases where a player returns after a long break they may forget how the minigame goes
I appreciate the suggestion, I think what I'll do with the time-based minigames moving forward is sort of a "click to start" thing where once you click the minigame even option, you're given explicit instruction that goes away once you click/start playing the minigame.
how exactly am I supposed to handle the decryption minigame. As far as I have experienced there is no guide to show how it's done
You want to type the big word at the top below the 'TARGET SEQUENCE' text. It'll change, you just keep typing until you fill the progress bar before the timer ends.
I'll try to make this more clear for the next update, sorry it's not very user friendly yet!
EDIT: Update is out and it should make this specific minigame much more user-friendly. If this solution seems to work well, I'll happily apply this style solution to other minigames that are time-based.
After a while, some bug happens, and it stops allowing me to drag things.
What's worse, is that it doesn't just break the game, it breaks the whole browser, because you become unable to drag things outside of the game too, and it (the browser) eventually crashes.
2nd time this has happened to me, both looking in my stash, don't believe I was pressing any other button (such as shift) when it started either time. (Win 11, Chrome)
In general, the game is a little slow, takes too long to get to automation, and it feels like minecraft in regards to how tiny the inventory is. Will keep playing, because it does seem like a good game - but getting sick of the crash for sure
Thank you for the feedback and apologies for the technical difficulties. I'm actively looking into improving and resolving the browser issues.
As for the inventory, do you mean visual size or total capacity is tiny?
I'm currently working on an update that will help hopefully resolve these issues.
Capacity wise foremost. Text isnt the easiest to read (even with enlarged text) but there's other ways to view it like clicking on it so that's lower priority
You're encouraged to have a backup loadout or two, so that if you do die you aren't reset back to almost the basics, but it clogs up inventory - so either some dedicated slots for at least one spare loadout, or possibly some more space dedicated to Rads/Meds would likely go a long way in alleviating the issue and providing whatever scrap or variety we need
Just to add to the crash issue, it doesn't seem to affect other instances of the browser (other windows), but it can be left for hours and the dragging is still broken. If I try to drag something in another tab of the same browser instance, it will crash all browser instances
A little gameplay. a little critique ;)
Wow, thank you for making a video about the game! I'll definitely be studying it and taking as much out of it as I can, I've already got some great notes on my first watch through, appreciate you taking the time sir!
Hey I effectively made this account to post comments
So, do you have any plans for things like Scav Rep and/or scav/scav violence?
I appreciate the interest!
My current "plans" for the scav mode itself was a more Idle mode for people to leave running and it slowly auto-loots. But I can be swayed in a different direction, I haven't made a decision on how to flesh out Scavs and it could involve a poll asking what you guys think at some point soon if I can't make a decision.
Adding Scav rep is definitely an interesting idea and I could see it adding an interesting level of depth to making decisions during events. e.g. you win blackjack against the drunk scav and you lose scav rep lol. Maybe good scav rep could make extraction blocked events lower chance of happening among other things potentially.
Definitely a great idea to consider more.
Golly!
I suppose it could be like the system in tarkov. This time, it could be that some choices have text saying "+_ rep" or "-_ rep" or something like that in small text next to the choice. Higher rep gives you better scav gear while bad rep gives you worse gear and worst cooldowns.
I also have an Idea for the cultist circle ripped right from Tarkov (albeit probably renamed). If you'd like, I can either create a new comment thread or continue it here!
Honestly my favorite place for suggestions is in the discord's suggestion channel but I have no issue with you posting it right here, it'll just go right into my idea notes!
I like that idea for the scav rep, i admittedly haven't played enough tarkov lately to remember exactly how it worked(i stopped mostly playing before they fleshed out scav rep) but that would translate perfectly into the game and will most likely become a feature in the near future.
Thanks for the suggestions, they help a lot.
I've done some thinking now!
To make the cultist circle work in Zone Idle, it could build off the confirmed Existance of the Canon STALKER factions.
Lore:
Mechanic could offer a quest. Something like "Coming in Contact," where the mechanic asks for a bunch of parts (e.g. PC fans, wires, ect). This unlocks "The Drone" in the hideout. Lore-wise, the drone is ran by Ecologists, who are running a program where PMCs in the zone can turn in artifacts in return for rewards.
Gameplay wise:
Find and turn in artifacts for rewards. Uncommon tier artifacts give an hour long time and so on (whats better for an Idle game then waiting?). Higher tier artifacts return better tier items. How this would work I have no clue, but Idling is best when you're wondering what you're gonna find.
(Sorry for the total Yap Fest!)
Great idea, no need to apologize! I'll definitely be implementing this idea, it's exactly what I was looking for. A step in the right direction for fleshing out the quests and it adds more idle to an admittedly not super idle game. I'm trying to bridge that gap without losing the flavor of interacting with the systems.
when I dead in scav, i lost my all stash items and equipment.
That's like data wipe.
also my career too.
I kept my lvl, cash, hideout upgrades(stash upgrade doesn't working).
Maybe it's because I played in galaxy too. Galaxy data is normally.
I'm having troubles reproducing this bug. If you die as a scav, it seems on mobile, you gear gets wiped in your stash and on your main player?
Idk if it's related, I dead by radiation in extract 9/10 ~ 10/10
I exported data from galaxy to itch.io
Both game data's operator id is different now
Pushed an update that should resolve the scav issues but please let me know if it continues. The next update will have fixes for the ID change.
The game is currently unplayable for me (playing on Firefox). I see something for a moment as the page is loading, but then it disappears and all I can see is the scan-line effect.
Hmm that's strange, I'm not able to reproduce this issue and it's the first I'm hearing of it. I'll try looking further into it but I'm not sure what the source of it is.
Passive recovery has stopped and the adrenaline timer no longer counts down from 180s after training. Is this a bug?
Yes, these are fixed on my current build that will be pushed soon. Sorry for the inconvenience, appreciate you reporting it!
Updating this to let you know the changes have been pushed.
Fun little sim. Few suggestions.
It'd make for a bit longer gameplay loop overall if gear wasn't fully repairable forever like it is. Max durability should probably go down each time an item is repaired so that players have to actually use the new legendary helmets they keep finding instead of just selling them, or if I couldn't have just used the gauss rifle I pulled from like the third time I rolled the wheel for the entire rest of the game...lol
This is a big change to gameplay so it probably needs some testing, but I'd make the "risk" indicators more vague. Instead of -48hp if this fails, it'd simply say "moderate risk" for anything between, say, -40 and -60hp. "High risk" for -60 to -90. "Very high risk" for like 90+, but don't give away too much info here, let there be some stakes sometimes. Even if you have 135 max health, even if there's a 90% chance you won't take that damage, things don't always go as planned in extraction shooters...make the player just a bit unsure about clicking that fire button over a safer option, instead of knowing 100% that if they do lose the roll they'll have exactly 2 hp left and can just heal right up. I'm not sure the big hits from "turning the corner" in the lab line up with this as they are or as this is written though, things like that would likely need some rebalancing.
A loot filter would be nice. I don't even want any of the green/blue stuff anymore, I'd rather just auto-drop it. Maybe make it value-based so I can set it at 10k and it won't auto-drop a keycard or something.
Another option would be a window that pops up for each item over the inventory screen with a Keep and Toss button. Continue to put the items in the inventory and don't pause the game, just keep stacking those windows up until the player clicks through them all. Bring up a second confirmation window when tossing items over a certain value, let the player choose what that value is. Give the option to enable/disable this feature if they'd rather just keep everything.
You can kindof do this already on the "live" feed now, if you've selected an inventory space and dropped an item already, the description for the next item you pick up will automatically open and you can just press drop if you don't want it or drag it to an empty space if you do.
It'd be nice if when your inventory was full you had the option to swap something in your inventory for whatever you've just looted instead of just losing the new loot...lost out on an orange a while ago during an extract ambush because my bag was full. My fault, should've seen that coming, but I had blues in my inventory I would've just swapped for the orange if I had the option.
Thank you for the feedback, I'm already working on implementing the first suggestion and will be looking into everything else thoroughly, this is very helpful!
No problem! Really enjoying the game. I've got one more idea, when you go into the live view, while your character's walking, it'd be neat to have some duck-hunt style enemies pop up. I'm thinking on the Cordon, you could have little hatchet scavs pop up behind the cars sometimes. On the Factory, snipers in the windows with a lens flare, in the Forest, ducks fly up from the bottom or dogs run across the screen, maybe some PMC's behind the walls in the Labs. Just spot em and click them in time for some random loot. Would give the player something to watch for while waiting for the next choice to pop up
You know what's funny, i got a note to make random things pop up in the backgrounds but decided it might be annoying for players to not be able to interact with them, you helped me reconsider that a lot! I'll definitely be revisiting the idea soon.
Well that was fast, changes look great! Filter works perfectly, I like the damage ranges. Little worried about that one event in Labs that does like 160 damage 😂 another idea, rarely if you're friendly toward one of the guys you run across they could give you a task to find an item. Either a random item that already exists or something specific that now has a chance of dropping once you've accepted the task, that was you could exclude it from the loot filter. Or if it's a random item, give the item's value next to the item name in the quest so the player can reconfigure the CORTEX to make sure it doesn't just get autodropped. Find and extract with it, get something extra. Might be a reason to sometimes hit that heal button instead of just robbing the guy every time lol
Doesn't feel good to have unsolvable minesweeper puzzles. I just had one with 3x coin flips in it...
I'll definitely look into it, thank you for the feedback.
Just to give an update to folks, I've been massively improving the game balance trying to slow down the early game a bit and make gear feel better. I've added more features and I just recently wiped the game's progress. Plenty of new things to checkout.
This is an incredibly fun lil game, thank you!
Wow thank you so much! I just pushed out another little update that adds some idle features accessible in the hideout. I really appreciate the feedback, feel free to lmk if you have any suggestions!
Balance is wonky, but fun enough for an hour
Appreciate the input. Just pushed an updated and will be continuing to do so, focus has been balance
Welcome to Zone Idle! This is a prototype build for feedback and trying out different features, what's fun and what might not be. Any bug reports or suggestions are very appreciated!