Greetings, pilots!
It’s official: EVERSPACE 2 will be released for PC on April 6, 2023! We’ve been in Early Access for a little over two years at this point, and in just a few short months, space pilots from around the globe will be able to experience the entirety of the biggest (space) game (that anyone at) the ROCKFISH Games team has ever worked on!
[Insert Story Trailer]
The Road From Early Access to Full Launch And what a journey it’s been!
After a massive Early Access launch with 92% positive reviews right out of the gate and #1 Steam top seller spot during that week, we released six major content updates containing star systems worth of locations to explore, ships to acquire, puzzles and challenges to overcome, and more. Throughout the last few years, we’ve iterated on core gameplay mechanics, UI/UX, world design, and overall game performance through a series of major updates. We’ve added new features, ships, entire star systems, several companions, high-quality voice acting, and other content while listening to community feedback. Through it all, we’ve received incredibly valuable feedback from our dedicated community of players which has allowed us to make significant improvements to the game.
Naturally, with more and more pilots taking a seat in the cockpit, we also got more wishes that either don’t fit our vision and/or are not within our budget, and we know it’s impossible to please everyone. That said, we’re super happy with where the game is currently at, and we’re confident that an incredibly polished 1.0 is very nearly ready for its full release!
Price Increase on February 20th
We were in Early Access for longer than originally planned. Yes, COVID and the entire team working from home was one reason, but also because we were able to bring EVERSPACE 2 to PC Game Pass allowing for a bigger development budget. We took the significant revenue from that deal and decided to create a bigger game, packed with more enemies, areas, loot, story content, and features. This financial boost and the extra time have allowed us to craft a more polished experience for players on all platforms.
Thanks to the Game Pass deal with our dear friends at Microsoft, we were able to add Visions to the game—among other improvements and additions. In these short story beats, Adam experiences dreamlike moments that add another connecting layer between events in the predecessor and the story of EVERSPACE 2.
Given the significant amount of new content and improvements that have been added to the game during its time in Early Access as well as the total scope and quality of the finished game, we made the decision over a year ago to raise the price a few weeks before the v1.0 release. This will allow us to still have a small discount at launch, but it will not be lower than the game’s current Early Access price and likely won’t be for some time. Furthermore, there won’t be any sales before we’ll raise the price from $39.99 to $49.99 / €38.99 to €49.99 on February 20, so now is the best time to get into the game for a lower price before the full release!
What Will 1.0 Look Like?
At 1.0, players focused on completing the main story missions and who only explore a few side missions can complete the game in 30 hours. To fully complete all the side quests, explore every region, solve every puzzle, finish every racing event, gain all reputation bonuses, and wrap up all the other odds and ends, completionists will be looking at more than 90 hours of playtime. We’re looking forward to seeing any and full % speedruns after 1.0 launches!
When we launch in full, the game will be voiced in English and German, and include localization in 13 languages including English, Brazilian Portuguese, Czech, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Russian, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, and Spanish.
As the team works on adding more enemies, rewards, equipment types, polished cinematics, customization options, new boss fights, and more for the 1.0 launch we’ll bug fixing as much as possible before release. Please continue to report issues you encounter—our QA team is working with the team to crush bugs as quickly as possible.
Sneak-peek of Khione, the for-now final explorable system coming with the v1.0 release.
Sharp-eyed players may notice that the map currently shows eight star systems in Early Access. Many of you have already visited Ceto, Union, Zharkov, Khaït Nebula, and Drake. At launch, our sixth and final star system, Khione, will open to continue our story.
Having eight systems was our original plan, but we decided to pack a fewer number of star systems with more explorable areas so those vast reaches of space feel less empty. The final event of the campaign will occur in a hand-crafted location for cinematic and dramaturgic reasons in Aethon (no spoilers), and it will not be an explorable system (yet…). You’ll still have 100+ handcrafted locations to explore as promised in our Kickstarter. In fact, we exceed the number of hand-crafted locations we’d planned to create by 20%, but just with a slightly different layout. The map will be updated at 1.0 accordingly.
Post-Launch Roadmap
We’ve talked a little about future free DLC/updates and a paid expansion during our weekly streams without going into too much detail. We wanted to focus on nailing the v1.0 release first and living up to our initial promises before getting carried away by talking about upcoming content. That said, we’re happy to share that we’re planning to have a free content update in the second half of 2023 and that the creative team has already started working on a major expansion, scheduled for mid-2024.
Another banger screenshot of what pilots can look forward to in the final chapter of the campaign.
Excited about launch? Want to know more? Make sure to tune into our weekly live streams as Erik, our community ambassador, continues his latest play session where he’s just recently started a new save file to show off missions, locations, and more that have changed over the course of Early Access.
We’re continuing to stream on Fridays, showing off content from the latest EVERSPACE 2 dev build on the ROCKFISH Games Twitch and YouTube, this Friday from 8:00 pm to 10:00 pm CET / 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm ET / 11:00 am to 1:00 pm PT. Join us and ask your questions directly to the dev team!
That’s everything from us for now. We’ll see you in Cluster 34!
Michael & your dedicated ROCKFISH Games Team 🚀🪐👽