Zendo - The Hidden Path is a free 3D action-adventure game.

Peace has left the Garden

The demons of anxiety are spreading and corrupting the hearts of the Four Symbols.

Only you can bring them back to their senses and ring the Great Bell to restore peace.

The path through the Garden isn't exactly straightforward: you will need to find ancient relics to gain the abilities required to reach new places and fight the legions of demons... including the corrupted Four Symbols.

But every relic weights on your mind. Without a pure heart, there can be no lasting victory. The more relics you collect, the sooner the plague of anxiety will come back. Can you learn the secrets of the Garden to avoid some of those relics? Or better yet... all of them?

What if the answer was within you all along?

The hidden path

Metroidvania games are often maximalist affairs. You explore every nook and cranny to hoard powerups, abilities and upgrades. Many players aim for 100% items completion! Of course, I intend you to play Zendo that way.

But one of the tenets of zen is to let go of physical possessions. That's why there's another way to play this game: a minimalist way.

As you go for 100% completion, you will discover secrets abilities and interactions that can be used to bypass some of the obstacles you encountered. Armed with your newfound knowledge of the Garden and its rules, you can then embark on a new journey to skip every single ability in the game and aim for the 0% item completion ending.

And yes, that includes the starting weapon. How will you fight the four bosses without it? Well, it's for you to figure out. ;)

Can you ring the Great Bell relying only on your base abilities and your knowledge of the Garden?

How to play

The game can be played both with keyboard & mouse or a gamepad.

With K&M: use the mouse to orient the camera, WASD or the arrow keys to move,  left click to attack or interact, middle click to jump and right click to dash and ESC to access the menu.

With a gamepad (Xbox or equivalent): use the right stick to orient the camera, left stick to move, X to attack, A to jump, B to dash and Y to interact and Start to access the menu.

You can change the controls at will in the game's settings.

The game has been tested on SteamDeck with compatibility set to "Proton Experimental". It should work similarly on other Linux distributions.