Beautiful Light Ground Zero: 7 new POIs

Ground Zero is Beautiful Light's first map, the one community playtesters have been dropping into for years. In Dev Update #8, published on Steam on 26 February 2026, Deep Worlds detailed how it is restructuring the map to support the rework of the core game mode. Over the summer, the studio started showing the results.

Top-down map of Ground Zero with seven numbered points of interest: Hydroelectric Dam, Old Radars, Warheads Bunker, Railway Roundhouse, Wood Factory, Old Barracks and Officer's House — The official map published with Dev Update #8 on 26 February 2026. Numbers follow Deep Worlds' own list. Map by Deep Worlds.

Changes to Ground Zero listed in Dev Update #8, 26 February 2026
Location	Size	Change
Hydroelectric Dam	Small	New
Old Radars	Small	New
Warheads Bunker	Small	New
Railway Roundhouse	Small	New
Wood Factory	Small	New
Old Barracks	Big	Expanded
Officer's House	Big	New

The terrain around them is changing too

Beyond the named locations, the update lists a series of changes to the map itself:

The quarry and the lake have been reshaped
Roads and the river bed have been adjusted
A new swamp area has been added in the burnt forest
The procedurally generated forest has been tuned
Other terrain adjustments across the map

Why the map is changing

These changes are the practical side of a decision Deep Worlds announced in January 2026. The studio said Ground Zero's raid had become too linear: a fixed chain of objectives, from finding a laptop and printing a keycard to solving the Artifact Core room in the bunker, where the only real variation was where you spawned and where fights happened. End of 2025 playtests had already pushed the studio to plan more secondary points of interest.

More locations means more routes, more places to fight, and more reasons to take a different path from one raid to the next. According to Deep Worlds, the new points of interest are what will let it add the new gameplay mechanics it is working on, and make the mode more dynamic overall.

Summer 2026: the first locations take shape

On 1 July 2026, Deep Worlds' Head Staff Matavatar wrote in the official Discord that all the level design work for the map extension was done, and that the team was now building the level art for the new points of interest. Over the next five weeks he posted four of them, as raw work in progress screenshots.

Warheads Bunker, 1 July 2026

The first finished point of interest, shown in seven screenshots: concrete buildings perched above a flooded ravine, and industrial halls inside.

Concrete buildings on the edge of a deep flooded ravine, with pine forest and snowy peaks behind — The Warheads Bunker from above, level art shared on 1 July 2026. Image by Deep Worlds.

A tall industrial hall with rows of windows, a large orange machine and scattered equipment — Inside and around the Warheads Bunker, 1 July 2026. Images by Deep Worlds.

A concrete building and a metal walkway above dark still water in a foggy forest — Inside and around the Warheads Bunker, 1 July 2026. Images by Deep Worlds.

Old Barracks, 15 July 2026

A street between old barracks buildings under an orange sky, a rifle in the foreground, with a car and debris hanging in the air — Old Barracks work in progress level art, shared on 15 July 2026. A car and debris hang in mid air above the street. Image by Deep Worlds.

The one expanded location on the list. Note the car floating above the street: rocks hanging in the air already appear in the Steam screenshots, and this is the same kind of phenomenon, in the middle of a location players will fight through.

The dam, 27 July 2026

Presented as the second finished point of interest of the Ground Zero map extension, with eight screenshots, mostly of its industrial interiors.

An aerial view of a long industrial building with a tall chimney, surrounded by dark forest — Seen from above, among the raw screenshots shared with the dam level art on 27 July 2026. Image by Deep Worlds.

A basement storage room with wooden pillars, crates, pallets and a hanging lamp — Inside the dam, level art shared on 27 July 2026. Images by Deep Worlds.

A brick workshop corridor with a caution sign, a white door and a workbench under a harsh wall light — Inside the dam, level art shared on 27 July 2026. Images by Deep Worlds.

Wood Factory, 7 August 2026

The third finished point of interest, shown in four screenshots.

A wrecked washroom with toilet stalls and rubble on a checkered floor — Wood Factory level art, shared on 7 August 2026. Images by Deep Worlds.

A view through a broken window onto a crumbling yellow brick courtyard with an arched passage — Wood Factory level art, shared on 7 August 2026. Images by Deep Worlds.

What Deep Worlds is not saying yet

The studio did not explain what players will actually do at each new location. It said it would rather get the new mechanics through internal validation before sharing them. The only new mechanic shown in the February update was door breaching, described as part of the new game mode. The summer screenshots show places, not gameplay.

What else is known about Ground Zero

Four existing areas are labelled on the official map: the Village, the Radar Station, the Military base and the Quarry Factory, which the new locations are arranged around.
It has been reworked before. Deep Worlds made what it called huge changes to the Ground Zero raid loop in October 2023, and more environment reworks in 2025.
Weather is dynamic. The game's AtmoStorm system, built in March 2024, simulates weather from real sun position data, with hand made lighting and colours on top.
It is one of two Early Access maps. The Steam page lists 2 maps for launch. Deep Worlds describes its second map as a higher stakes follow up to Ground Zero.

The video for the May 2025 update, which mentioned environment reworks on Ground Zero. The map reworks chapter starts at 16:24.

A dead village street under bare trees, a church spire in the fog, two figures moving between the houses — Alpha screenshots from the Steam page, taken before the February 2026 restructuring.

A military truck swallowed by moss and saplings in front of a collapsing concrete plant — Alpha screenshots from the Steam page, taken before the February 2026 restructuring.

The Steam screenshots show Ground Zero before this restructuring, and the Discord level art shows where it is heading, so expect parts of the map to look different in December. For the rest of the launch picture, see the release date and the anomalies guide.

Sources

Deep Worlds, "Dev Update #8", 26 February 2026, on Steam
Deep Worlds, "2025 in review & what's coming in 2026", 14 January 2026, and "Dev Update #1" (2023 rewind), 13 February 2024, on Steam
Deep Worlds' official Discord (discord.gg/project-bl), #leaks-wip: level art posts by Matavatar, Head Staff, on 1 July, 15 July, 27 July and 7 August 2026
Development update videos presented by Psychoghost for Deep Worlds, on YouTube

Ground Zero is getting seven new points of interest