Well, it's a mod.

Thanks to everyone for the kind words about Half-Life: Absolute Zero. We’ve been working hard for the last eight years to get this project done and in a playable, stable, and feature-complete state, and seeing the positive reaction to the progress we’ve made has been a huge morale boost.

Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, AZ will not make the release date of February 12th, 2019.

First and foremost, we need to apologize for setting the release date sooner than we could deliver. There are several different reasons why we have to announce this delay, and we’ll share some of them here in the hopes that you’ll understand.

The main reason is that a developer responsible for an important part of the project has gone silent, and we haven’t been able to reach them. He has a lot of files critical to the mod’s development, and his sudden disappearance has left us with only two active mappers on the project.

Multiple aspects of the mod still need finished or refining as well, and with this delay we can make sure that everyone gets a complete fun package once it’s released. We’re also still looking for experienced mappers to join us! You can read more about it at the listing below.

https://www.moddb.com/mods/half-life-absolute-zero/jobs/level-designermapper3

Please keep in mind that the release date on Steam is nothing more than a placeholder and does not reflect the date we plan on releasing!

At the moment, AZ is playable from Anomalous Materials to Questionable Ethics. Some areas still need further polishing and are WIP as hell, however. The maps from the demo have been greatly improved since its release and are closer to the source material than ever.

Power Up has also been finished, polished, and tested, Apprehension has been completed and gained a new ending sequence, Questionable Ethics is nearly done, and multiple chapters have gone through major optimization overhauls and considerable re-balancing.

https://www.moddb.com/mods/half-life-absolute-zero/images/c2a1-footfall4
https://www.moddb.com/mods/half-life-absolute-zero/images/c2a1-footfall5
https://www.moddb.com/mods/half-life-absolute-zero/images/c2a1-footfall6
https://www.moddb.com/mods/half-life-absolute-zero/images/c2a3-abandoned-silo2
https://www.moddb.com/mods/half-life-absolute-zero/images/c2a3-abandoned-silo5
https://www.moddb.com/mods/half-life-absolute-zero/images/c2a3-abandoned-silo9
https://www.moddb.com/mods/half-life-absolute-zero/images/c2a4-questionable-ethics1
https://www.moddb.com/mods/half-life-absolute-zero/images/c2a4-questionable-ethics3
https://www.moddb.com/mods/half-life-absolute-zero/images/c2a4-questionable-ethics6

On A Rail, however, has been a very interesting experience. Half of the chapter is missing in action, so we’ve decided to fill in the blanks with our own interpretation based on the little information we have now, as well as the beta/retail aesthetics of the chapter. In retail, it was essentially backwards!

What this means is that the chapter will start at the rocket labs, instead of ending there. We’ll also be including other cut areas of the alpha in the beta/retail style of On A Rail to fill in any other blanks as needed.

https://www.moddb.com/mods/half-life-absolute-zero/images/c2a2-on-a-rail1
https://www.moddb.com/mods/half-life-absolute-zero/images/c2a2-on-a-rail7
https://www.moddb.com/mods/half-life-absolute-zero/images/c2a2-on-a-rail6

Once again, we’re all sorry to hold it up even longer, but we promise you won’t be disappointed. We’ve made incredible progress on the mod, and we really want to share it with everyone as soon as possible. We’d like to thank everyone for the support that you’ve shown for Half-Life: Absolute Zero up to this point.