Everspace 1.0 Now Available via Xbox Play Anywhere
It has been a very long road to release since we started development on Everspace more than two years ago, and it’s hard to believe the day is finally upon us. Truly an exciting time for everyone here at Rockfish Games and for space game enthusiasts. The greatest addition coming with the full release is the long-awaited campaign, including missions, cinematic flashbacks, and fully-voiced cutscenes (in English and German) with text localization available for more than 10 languages including French, Chinese, and Spanish.
The Campaign
As all players who have played Everspace in Game Preview have already experienced, the hero finds himself clueless in the cockpit of a space fighter at the beginning of the game. After completing basic pilot training, the peculiar on-board AI provides sometimes useful contextual information about the game world and its lore. Now in the full version, you’ll gradually unveil the mystery behind the hero’s existence and your mission through character encounters and cinematic memory flashbacks.
In the completely revamped final sector, you must survive an all-new boss fight that will provide the last piece of the campaign puzzle. But this will not be the end of the game. There’s still an important objective to accomplish to reach the final destination of your journey — no more spoilers beyond this point!
A Long Way Coming
Since the initial release into Game Preview in September 2016, we have been working closely with the community to further improve the gaming experience. Thanks to that feedback we have released several major updates with more than 500 additions, tweaks, and fixes. The first major additions were two more player ships, the Colonial Scout and Colonial Gunship, each with different capabilities and a broad range of weapons, devices and consumables, allowing for varied ways to play the game.
The Colonial Scout has great maneuverability, the highest top speed of all three vessels, an exclusive cloaking device and a powerful long-range shock rifle. It also features the exclusive Sensor Range perk helping spot potential dangers or the whereabouts of traders and service stations from a distance.
However, the Scout’s hull strength is quite low. Be careful not to ram into any obstacles while dashing through asteroid fields or exploring gigantic shipwrecks and derelict space stations.
You can already can tell by its look the Colonial Gunship flies like a tank with a massive hull and lots of firepower. It comes equipped with a fusion blaster and flak cannon as primary weapons, heavy missiles, cluster mines, combat drones, and an automated gatling turret which can be upgraded. Initially, the Gunship did not have any kind of active protection which was not well-received within the community. So, we decided to make the front shield generator exclusively available for the Gunship, raised its nano bots cap, and added the exclusive Armor perk.
Derelict Space Stations
Earlier this year, we added the remains of Colonial stations which can be explored in order to discover permanent ship enhancements. These uncovered “sub-routines” can be equipped in the hangar before each run. Some buff various ship attributes, others change the play style significantly by, for example, making all enemies visible on the radar (with the downside of letting your enemies track you down more quickly due to the stronger radar signature of the enhancement).
Getting a hold of these enhancements is no easy task: the sometimes-humongous station wrecks are equipped with massive security measures like turrets, laser barriers, combat drones, and security doors. Another threat is the plasma discharges that put the player in danger of being pushed away and colliding forcefully with other objects.
The Ancients
In the most recent update (v0.7), we introduced a new alien faction simply known as The Ancients. Ruins of the once technically advanced race hold teleporters that work as shortcuts, letting you skip a few locations on your journey. They also contain valuable Glyphs, which function similarly to the sub-routines mentioned above, albeit with a lot more fantastical effects, greatly affecting the overall play style. However, to get your hands on them, you must face the mysterious ancient beings themselves.
Functional Cockpit Displays
The second major addition of version 0.7 were functional cockpit displays for all player ships. In addition to the known HUD elements, a lock target info and the component damage overview of the player ship was included. This addition also came with an option for purists to turn off the HUD elements in first-person mode and solely rely on the cockpit instruments.
For the full release, you can also look forward to a great set of Achievements and some further surprises that we got up our sleeves. So look for Everspace if you’re up for a narrative-driven rogue-like space shooter in a procedurally-generated universe full of surprises!