Our official launch is officially on the horizon!
But just like the hyperjump you take at the start of a match, our upcoming release on July 22 is only the beginning of our adventure together. And...just like you can’t predict what might happen to you and crew once you’ve left The Lucky Docks, we can't know for sure what kind of exciting shenanigans await us once we open Wildgate to the world.
We can, however, set a strong navigational heading—in terms of where we'd like to go with Wildgate in the future and how we’re thinking about getting there as a development team. And we can share that plan with you! (Even though we realize we may need to toss it right out the airlock and improvise on the fly based on what we learn together.)
So, in the spirit of being good crew members, here’s our current development roadmap.
POST-LAUNCH CONTENT PLAN
Before we dive into our roadmap, let’s first lay out our post-launch content plans.
Wildgate is a premium digital game, but our team is committed to providing value well beyond the point of purchase. To us, this means two very important things: 1) ensuring that the game feels fun and engaging at launch, providing hours of entertainment on its own, and 2) offering a reliable stream of free post-launch content that will evolve your experience and enjoyment over time.
Based on those goals, our post-launch support breaks down into three main categories:
Bi-weekly updates
Mid-season patches
Seasonal content drops
We’re also going to present a few opportunities for players to purchase in-game content; however, our goal for paid content in Wildgate is for it to remain cosmetic and opt-in. As noted above, we want to continue to provide the big things—like prospectors, ships, weapons, equipment, loot, systems, and features (i.e. stuff that impacts your gameplay)—as part of the base experience and at no additional cost.
Oh, and PS… This is all based on what we know as a team today. Our post-launch approach can and should evolve as we learn more about what makes Wildgate great together.
BI-WEEKLY UPDATES
(TARGETING ROUGHLY EVERY TWO WEEKS)
These updates will be focused on two very specific systems: 1) activating new Reach anomalies and 2) rotating items in our in-game shop (more on those below). We may also occasionally piggy-back a few server-side hotfixes onto these updates, but that’s likely to be the exception vs. the rule.
MID-SEASON PATCHES
(PROVIDED AS NEEDED)
These smaller patches will have no set content or cadence. Their primary purpose will be to implement more responsive changes to the game—based on player feedback, game telemetry, or some combination of both—at a more flexible pace. likely to include balance updates, performance optimizations, bug fixes, and/or other quality of life improvements.
SEASONAL CONTENT DROPS
(TARGETING ROUGHLY 3 PER YEAR)
These seasonal content drops will be more substantial and include a variety of changes to further your space crime sprees in new and interesting ways.
NARRATIVE ARCS: In Wildgate, seasons will be focused on a specific theme. While these themes may seem familiar on the surface—Pirates! Aliens! Adventure! Treasure!—they will also serve as important narrative threads, providing insights into the history of this ancient sector of space while gently progressing the overall story in which your prospectors are now unwitting accomplices. These narrative threads will be part of larger (roughly) one-year arcs, with each arc being told over the course of three individual seasons.
NEW CONTENT: Each season will introduce new gameplay content inspired by its corresponding theme—including (but not limited to) new loot, new hazards, new procedural dangers or conditions, new POIs and biomes, new lore, and more. Depending on the storyline of a specific season, entirely new areas of the Reach may be uncovered for you to explore, too!
NEW ADVENTURES: New seasons will also introduce new themed Adventures, with unique content that can be unlocked by earning in-game experience. These Adventures will feature a base rewards track, available to everyone at no additional cost. The rewards track for Adventures typically includes new gameplay content—like prospectors, ships, weapons, and/or equipment—as well as different cosmetics. If interested, players will have the option to purchase an upgraded "Adventure pass" (note: name may change in the future), which will add more cosmetic content to their existing seasonal rewards track. Although new Adventures and Adventure passes will be added each season, they will not be time-gated. This means that no matter when you may start playing Wildgate, all previous seasonal Adventure content will be available to you to progress through or complete at your discretion.
Seasonal drops are when we are most likely to implement new gameplay systems and features. You can also expect these to include more balance updates, bug fixes, and quality of life improvements.
DEVELOPMENT ROADMAP
So…how does this all play out in practice?
Great question! We’d love to tell you.
This is our development roadmap for Wildgate.
It probably looks like some other roadmaps you may have seen, but this one is ours. And we’re pretty excited about it. There’s a lot going on here, though, and likely some words that mean absolutely nothing to you right now, so…grab your nearest void turbine and let’s dive in.
COMING AT LAUNCH
While it was important to us that our pre-launch playtests represented as much of the game as possible, there’s a variety of new content and improvements coming at launch.
BALANCE UPDATES: Based on player feedback from the Open Beta, we’ve made adjustments to prospectors, ships, weapons, equipment, loot, and more. You’ll need to wait for the full patch notes for all the juicy details, but some highlights include nerfs to AIM-E, The Doctor, Rock, Mine Layer, and Laser Ram, tuning respawn rates, adding a “Close All Doors” button to the Security Device hardpoint, increasing durability of helm windows as well as tweaks to boarding and stealing.
QUALITY OF LIFE CHANGES: In addition to balance updates, we’re also making several smaller changes that are aimed at reducing points of friction across your day-to-day gameplay experience. A few examples of these changes include making improvements to matchmaking and upgrading Spectator View, as well as adding Ukrainian and Russian language localization.
SCRAP CRATES: While adventuring in the Reach, players may now find scrap crates in loot rooms! Just like everything else in this weird corner of space, these crates are random—which means you may not find any crates in a match, you may find one, or you may find multiple. When located, two things will happen for all members of the crew: 1) you will each earn 500 XP and 2) you will each unlock a cosmetic that can be used after you exit your current match. There are currently 150 cosmetics that you can unlock from scrap crates and the order in which you unlock them is the same for every player. Even after exhausting the current pool of available crate cosmetics, you’ll continue to earn 500 XP per located crate. (In what capacity and how often we add more cosmetics to scrap crates is still being determined!)
MORE PLAYER CARD CUSTOMIZATION: We’ve added more ways to customize your player cards. The first is titles! Players can now unlock titles by reaching certain milestones (like destroying 500 ships) and hitting different in-game streaks (like blasting 20 prospectors without dying). Then there’s the Infamy system! Through this system, players can earn badges and tiles that correspond with different ranks that are unlocked based on preset point thresholds—TL;DR you gain points by winning games, and lose points by losing games. Your point total resets every month, along with your badges, but any titles you earn will stay with you until the heat death of the universe.
MORE COSMETIC UNLOCKS: To celebrate our launch, we’re adding a few more fun cosmetics to the game! This includes more pixel sprays that will be earnable as Twitch Drops, login rewards, and as a bonus for creating and linking a Dreamhaven account. We’ve also added a brand new set of rare outfits for each of our prospectors (inspired loosely by their backgrounds), available as the final unlock in their respective reward tracks.
IN-GAME COSMETIC SHOP: At launch, an in-game cosmetic shop will be available for players who are interested in further enhancing their prospector and ship drip. Our current plan is to rotate a few cosmetic items (and/or item bundles) in and out of the shop on a bi-weekly basis. All items within the shop can be unlocked with a new currency, called “credits,” which will be available for purchase with real money. In-game shop item value will typically range from around $5 to $15 USD, depending on the quality of item and whether or not it’s part of a bundle, and our goal is to make it as easy as possible for players to purchase credits in increments that align with our shop offerings. (IE - We don’t want to force players to have to purchase way more credits than what’s needed to unlock an item.)
DELUXE EDITION: In addition to our standard edition, we’ll also be offering players the option to purchase a deluxe edition of Wildgate! This will come with themed outfits and styles—aka “skins”—for each prospector and ship, respectively (as well as new styles for your ship’s helm, processor, probe, probe station, reactor, and turrets).
We’ll be sharing more information about our new progression types, launch celebration cosmetic rewards, in-game shop, and deluxe edition over the coming weeks—so stay tuned!
COMING LATER THIS YEAR
Launch is really just the beginning, though! Here’s some of what you can expect to see in the coming weeks and months following the release of Wildgate.
REACH ANOMALIES: Beginning a few weeks after launch, our bi-weekly updates will officially kick off! Each of these updates will introduce a brand new anomaly to the Reach. These anomalies can range from new environmental hazards to new hardpoint upgrades to new POIs. Once added, they will remain part of the game’s proceduralism pool.
SEASON 01: Before the end of 2025, we will release our first seasonal content drop for Wildgate. Season 01 will bring its own themed content, including a new prospector, new weapon, and new piece of equipment—all of which can be unlocked as part of the base Adventure rewards track. (There will also be a variety of new cosmetics you can unlock as part of base rewards track and via the upgraded Adventure pass.) To complement the theme and storyline, this first season will introduce changes to the Reach—including a new puzzle mechanic—as well as more anomalies for you to discover as part of our bi-weekly updates.
CUSTOM LOBBIES: As part of our first seasonal content drop, we’ll be adding in the first iteration of custom lobbies. This is one of our MOST requested features, so we’re excited to be rolling it into Season 01. (We're also excited to continue adding more functionality to the feature over time.)
IN DEVELOPMENT (OR EXPLORATION)
Beyond what we have actively planned for this year, there’s also a variety of different content, systems, and features we’re working on behind-the-scenes.
SEASONS 2 & 3 (IN DEVELOPMENT): Remember earlier how we noted that we’re looking to tell narrative arcs over the course of a year and three individual seasons? That means we’re already working on content for Seasons 2 and 3! And that means new ships, new prospectors, and even new areas of the Reach to explore are on the horizon.
NEW TYPES OF COSMETICS (IN EXPLORATION): We’ll continue to add more prospector outfits, ship styles, and weapon appearances to the game, but we’re also prototyping new types of cosmetic content for Wildgate. Let us know what types of cosmetics you’d be most interested in!
MORE WAYS TO PLAY WITH FRIENDS (IN EXPLORATION): Wildgate is best played with friends, but sometimes your crew may want to try out the game before diving in headfirst. We’re looking into different ways to provide this as an option!
COMPETITIVE PLAY (IN CONCEPTING): Many players who’ve tried out Wildgate have expressed interest in some sort of ranked mode. While we’re still evaluating what version of this mode might be best, we hear you! We’ve added the Infamy system as a very VERY light first step, and we’re jamming on what a more robust implementation of competitive play could look like for our game in the future. We don’t just want to “add in ranked,” though; we want to design a system that makes sense for Wildgate—and that will take us a bit of time to do well.
✨ IMPORTANT NOTE: Anything we’ve included in this section is very much a work-in-progress and does not currently have a target release window. Some of this work may be put on hold and/or change significantly from what we’ve outlined here. These are priorities for our team, though, which is why we’re still communicating them with you.
Space Crime Summer officially begins July 22.
In the meantime, we hope you’ve enjoyed this update! We’re certain some of the things we’ve shared with you today will change, but what won’t change is our team’s commitment to giving Wildgate—and this community—our full hearts.
We’re excited to explore with you, adapt with you, and find victory with you, too. We look forward to sharing more information about many of the new topics revealed here, and we promise to keep the comms line open. (PS - If you haven't already, we encourage you to join our official Discord server so that you can stay-up-to-date with the latest game news and connect directly with our team.)
We’ll see you in the Reach!