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GDC 2018: Three Years Later We Take a Fresh Look at ‘Zero Sum’, a “Math Game for Stupid People” from the Maker of ‘One Player Pong’

We came to know Sean Kearney and his studio Squeezebox Software by way of the extremely catchy trailer for One Player Pong (Free) back in early 2015, and then again with another amazing trailer for the Apple TV version called Super One Player Pong in November of the same year. During that year’s GDC Sean also unveiled the new game he was working on called Zero Sum, which was described as “a math game for stupid people." The gist was that you’d be solving simple math puzzles which were the key to unlocking the cure for cancer, which a terrorist organization was trying to steal and profit from in a very ’80s action movie kind of way. It’s a game that totally didn’t take itself seriously which was part of the fun, but we didn’t hear much about Zero Sum following that initial unveiling. Fast forward to January of last year and a new trailer arrived which really captured the purposely cheesy and overly dramatic nature of the Zero Sum narrative. Now we’re at GDC 2018 and got a chance to catch up with Sean and take a fresh look at Zero Sum, which has come a LONG way since first seeing it three years ago. Best of all is that the game is nearly complete and should be arriving towards the end of April. Check out our hands-on look at it below.