Halcyon Zero is now Starlight Re:Volver
Halcyon Zero is now Starlight Re:Volver
Back in September 2023, we held an inaugural Closed Pre-Alpha I playtest for the upcoming title codenamed Halcyon Zero. Now, in February 2025, we’re excited to announce that Halcyon Zero is now Starlight Re:Volver.
In Starlight Re:Volver, play as magical Divers who possess a special power to access dreamworlds and retrieve its secrets and treasures. Connect with other Divers after thrilling team adventures through fishing, crafting, accessorizing, and exploring a vibrant anime-inspired city.
Our Next-Generation Anime RPG
Pahdo Labs is building Starlight Re:Volver, a multiplayer role playing game set in a colorful anime-inspired world. The core gameplay loop features co-op action combat enhanced by rogue-lite systems and a vibrant social hub for crafting and minigames.
The game will enter Early Access initially on PC and cross-platform releases on consoles and mobile devices are planned. Watch our most recent game trailer.
Be the First to Demo Starlight Re:Volver
We’re now calling fans of anime and multiplayer action games to join the upcoming Starlight Re:Volver Pre-Alpha II playtest in March 2025.
Details will be announced in our official Starlight Re:Volver Discord community.
Our Community
Pahdo Labs is a part of a new wave of indie game studios that found an early community on TikTok starting back in 2021. Their content, showing off the personalities of Pahdo Labs’ young game devs in New York has garnered millions of views. They post across on a variety of accounts, such as @pahdolabs, @starlightrevolver0, and @1indaqin.
Starlight Re:Volver has struck a chord with J-Pop and anime fans alike, with its trailers, set to an original soundtrack featuring artists including Sarah Bonito, Diana Garnet, and upcoming track with LilyPichu, garnering over 800K views on YouTube so far. Gaming publications have described the game as like “a high-octane anime opening” and “Sailor Moon meets Hades 2”.
More on our studio
Mission and Background
We aspire to create memorable anime worlds that capture players’ hearts. Our upcoming title, Starlight Re:Volver, is a 1-4 player co-op action roguelite set in an anime-inspired dreamscape. With the ultimate goal of bringing socialization and creativity to the forefront of the anime RPG genre.
Pahdo Labs is a game development studio based in New York backed by prominent venture capital and angel investors such as Andreessen Horowitz (A16z), Pear VC, Kevin Hartz, Mark Pincus, and Cyan Banister.
Founding Story
Pahdo Labs was founded in 2021 by Daniel Zou out of his apartment in Irvine, California. During the pandemic, he pulled together a small group of game devs online, bonding over their shared interest in anime and action role playing games. One-by-one, the early team members left their day jobs to move to New York and spend days and nights developing multiplayer video games instead.
Note from Our CEO, Daniel Zou
I spent most of my early social life on virtual worlds like MapleStory, Runescape, and Roblox. Online games provided me with a playground where, as a young kid, I could develop a high sense of agency and form lifelong social connections. Then, trying to make my own game mods and web games stoked my early interest in technology and computer science.
I started Pahdo Labs to ensure that the next generation has access to enriching social and creative experiences in virtual worlds. Our founding mission is to “cultivate a world where players are empowered to create things of lasting value.” I believe that Starlight Re:Volver is uniquely suited to deliver on that promise.
Studio Growth
In 2020, Daniel met Jonathan Lai, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz focused on consumer and games investments at the time. In 2022, A16Z GAMES led a $15M round of Series A financing, bringing Pahdo Labs’ total amount raised to $18M.
“We were impressed by Pahdo’s execution speed and believe the team is well positioned to deliver an incredible next generation Anime RPG”.
Jonathan Lai, General Partner, A16z GAMES.
A16z GAMES’ investment memo for Pahdo Labs in 2023 opens with a statement that anime as a media category has exploded in recent years. More recently, the firm published a blog post titled “Anime is Eating The World”.
With new funding, Pahdo Labs grew their team and hired Alijah Ladd, a game developer with experience from Capcom and Bandai Namco. Ladd is currently the Creative Director of Starlight Re:Volver.