What does 2 months of semi-secretive development get you?
Starting Stories and Quests
All 20 starting ships now come with a unique background story and quest, further differentiating your experience based on early-game choices. The new game screen is updated with even more tooltips, and there are more quests you can find early in the game, just by exploring.
That's cool, but it's not really the big news item here...
Syndicate, Asteroid Bases, and NPCs!
That's the big announcement: A new faction. A new kind of location to explore. People you can have conversations with! And they're all intertwined:
Faction:
Who are the "syndicate"? Have they taken over loot stockade planets? Are they coming after that shipwreck you're towing? Are they building a secret base somewhere? You'll have to find out!
(They look kinda friendly to me... I mean, they don't even have guns!)
Asteroid Bases:
This is the great new location you've been promised. And guess what? No monsters! And new stores the likes of which you've never seen:
- Data Broker
- Scrap Dealer
- Parts Junkie
- Gadgeteer
- Planetographer
- Virtual University
- Boutique
- Your Best Self
This is what's available right now, but that list is going to get a lot longer in the future. Eventually you'll be able to buy just about anything you can imagine. Asteroid bases introduce 6 new quests and 2 new devices, and there will be a lot more exciting new systems later on as well.
And one of the really cool things about asteroid bases is that you get to help in their construction... You decide what to build next!
NPCs:
Wait, this game is 9 years old and you're just introducing NPCs now?! NPC's have always been "implied" in Approaching Infinity. You can hail alien ships and take quests from their representatives, but you never just had conversations with them before. Now you can:
Now think about all the people and aliens (wait, aliens are people too, right?) you can meet in all the different places, and just how much potential this opens up! It's just getting started... And that's not the only mind-blowing change that's happening:
Monster-On-Monster Violence
Pirate raiders have been firing on freighters for years, and sometimes your allies will aid you in a battle. But once again, that's not what I mean...
I'm talking about killer bunnies that swarm mercenaries, territorial wars between Limoquee agents and Vordalene security, slimes spitting acid at rock monsters... A whole new level of interaction between
forces in the game-world!
And that's exactly what I've done. All "monsters" have been given a category, such as predator, prey, silicon, or elemental (there are 17 kinds). And every monster now has a list of which types they attack. Finally you'll see resistance soldiers valiantly defending their ships from the floating eyes and zombies that infest them.
Cheat Modes
Expanding on the recent wave of "play how you want" changes (such as allowing achievements to be granted even with perma-death turned off!), I decided to add some new game modes as suggested by some Steam users:
If worrying about oxygen on away team missions is too much for you, turn it off! It's the future right? I'm sure they've solved that problem by now!
If you really like finding, using, and sharing daily codes, and you don't want to stress about which one to use, why not select "unlimited daily codes" for you next game? You still can't use the same code twice though...
And finally, if you don't care whether you're using a fire weapon against a fire monster, and you really want to do those 32 points of damage, you can now turn off resistances (and vulnerabilities)... so don't expect your hammer to be extra good at smashing bugs anymore...
Honorable Mention
I Added shortcut keys for "move to area transition". Hold the [ALT] key while on an away mission and you'll get a little menu in the upper left that tells you ALT+3 to go "down", ALT+4 to go "west" (those are based on using the numpad for movement, the game will automatically use whatever your movement keys are).
I should also call your attention to
THE GRAPPLER GUN! It's a mod for ballistic weapons that pulls monsters closer. But be warned: there may be unexpected consequences if the creature your try to reel in is too big...