After rave reviews, Zero Company dev says it would love to make more Star Wars games

Developer Bit Reactor says it would love to continue working on Star Wars games, after this week’s Zero Company received the franchise’s strongest reviews for two decades.

Press reviews went live for the XCOM-inspired strategy game earlier this week and, at the time of publishing, Zero Company has a Metacritic score of 86, which puts it above or on par with every Star Wars game to date, bar only 2002’s Jedi Knight 2 (89), 2001’s Rogue Leader (90), 1997’s Jedi Knight (91), and 2003’s Knights of the Old Republic (94).

Speaking to VGC on the game’s release day, Bit Reactor founder and game director Foerstch called Zero Company’s critical reception a “surreal” moment, four years after he quit Firaxis to start fresh.

“It’s surreal. When you start making a game, you aim to make a game of the year, not a strategy game of the year, but a game of the year. That’s why you do it. But to see the reviews come in and kind of validate that feels good. So, yeah, it’s an amazing feeling,” he said.

Foerstch said he’d received “a lot” of nice messages from Lucasfilm and publisher Electronic Arts and confirmed that he intends to work on another licensed game next – potentially more Star Wars.

“When I started the company, I actually wanted a license,” he said. “The whole thing I was doing was looking for IP when we stumbled into Star Wars. Starting a company and making your own IP just felt too risky. It’s just another thing to solve.

“And everything we’ve ever done in our careers has kind of felt like not original IP anyway. Whether it was Civ, or XCOM, or Pirates, or whatever. All those games, I always approached as existing IP that I was curating and responsible for. So we’re pretty conditioned for that, at least I feel like I am.”

He continued: “And I think for the next game maybe too, I think we’ll be looking to do existing IP. And we’ve loved working with Lucasfilm. It’s been an absolute joy and such a good experience. So we’d love to keep making Star Wars, potentially. But yeah, I think the next game we’re doing is probably going to be an existing IP.”

Zero Company director acknowledges technical issues

The game director said he was particularly pleased by the positive reception around Zero Company’s customization options, but acknowledged some complaints around technical issues, which he said Bit Reactor would aim to resolve.

“Oh, of course. Anything that’s a technical issue, we’re always looking to make sure we figure it out,” he said. “And it can be tricky with PC builds and all being different. It’s a little easier on console. But yeah, any time there’s anything like that, that’s something that we’re always going to be looking to immediately correct in the process.”

Asked about potential post-launch plans for Zero Company, Foerstch was noncommittal on what the game’s developer could potentially do next.

“We’re a new studio, and even though we’ve got kind of an old soul with a lot of core people that have been together for multiple games, I think the industry’s still at a point where they’re kind of waiting and seeing, can you guys do this?” He said.

“And I think right now, we’ll see what the reviews of the game bring. But it’s definitely a challenging time out there right now. And so we’ve been pretty focused on getting this done and trying to line up some future stuff. But there’s still the process.”

VGC’s Star Wars Zero Company review called the game “a deeply strategic space opera with a surprisingly big heart”.