Oct 21, 2021

LIVE: 3rd Content Update Imminent | Experimental Build | Full Release 2023

EVERSPACE™ 2 - ROCKFISH Games

Greetings, pilots!

Gosh, I genuinely wanted to share just a short and snappy announcement about Erik, our Community Ambassador and Content Creator, sharing a new location of the Khaït Nebula in Friday’s gamedev & community stream on our Twitch and YouTube as well as here on Steam — I promise, you won’t regret joining us!

But when I playtested the latest build for the first time a few days ago, not knowing what to expect, I sincerely lost it when I entered the Ancient Citadel. This is even after I was already blown away by the new(!) Ancients puzzle mechanics, introduced earlier in the upcoming update.

In case anyone is shocked I don’t know what our team is working on in detail: a) my business partner and CFO/COO, Christian, and I trust our exceptional team knows what they’re doing as they’ve proved many times over the course of 15+ years; b) my main responsibility is to spread the word about our work and get the media, platform owners, and, most importantly, our fans excited for what’s next. I wait as long as possible until playtesting a new build to get that first impression from a player’s perspective, so I can be as nitpicky as any of you might be, while genuinely sharing my excitement about our game—still in the making—with our community.

Imagine, this is just an impromptu 1st-person-view screenshot taken in Photo Mode by Erik during our weekly Marcom chat to make sure we’re talking about the same location which will be revealed this Friday. It’s 100% undoctored except for me slapping the EVERSPACE 2 logo on it. Man, I really have the best job in the video games industry I could wish for...

When I explored the Khaït Nebula, I had some serious Uncharted vibes and I’m loving the (slight) shift from the EVERSPACE’s franchise signature core gameplay of fast-paced combat and hunting for loot to deeper exploration, with mystery taking center stage along with storytelling and more complex puzzle-solving in the new star system.

That said, action fans don’t worry! There’s still a ton of looting & shooting on the way! Get ready for an all-new faction featuring new enemy types you’ll encounter in the new star system—Erik will also show some red-hot concept art of the Redeemers on Friday. Also, to anyone not a fan of puzzles, most of them are optional, especially the tougher ones. I still haven’t figured out where that third Ancient Rune belongs to unlock the next step in one in particular… there’s gotta be a solution!

New Full Release Date: Early 2023

Alright, here comes the bad news: As some pilots might have read in yesterday’s big announcement, we shared that we decided to push back the full release on PC, Xbox, and PlayStation to early 2023. Yeah, we can feel your disappointment through the digital ether, but hear me out because it’s complicated and there’s also an upside for all pilots on all platforms. I know, it sounds like 101 sugar talk, but most of you should know me by now, so here’s the real deal:

First off, we’re super happy with where the game is currently at: EVERSPACE 2 is sitting at 91% positive overall on Steam, and SteamSpy’s owner estimate is pretty accurate—as in we’re doing fine thanks to 150K+ daring space pilots trusting us that we’ll deliver on our promises. That’s a huge compliment to the team, making us all feel fuzzy inside, so big thanks again for all your glowing feedback and for voting with your wallet to help us make a game that we couldn’t be more passionate about.

I know, I know… I must sound like a broken record to frequent update readers, but when I’m sitting behind the keyboard, working on yet another way-too-long news update, I’m thinking about what I, as a passionate gamer myself, would love to know from a developer and what our team would like me to share with our community. It always centers around us deeply appreciating the support and commitment from our fans. Sorry, where was I? Right, the new full release date… it sucks, we know. Here’s the meta...

EVERSPACE 2 Coming to Game Pass for PC

So, big news for the Felsenfische, huh? Yep, you bet, and I’m more than happy to share why this is great news for everyone. If anyone is not happy getting the most bang for their buck when backing us on Kickstarter or jumping in the cockpit during Early Access against the off-chance EVERSPACE 2 being added to Game Pass for PC while the game is still in development, we get it. Buuuut, there’s more to this.

Now, before anyone leaving an angry comment that if they had known that EVERSPACE 2 is coming to Game Pass for PC as Game Preview they would have not backed us on Kickstarter or bought the game on Steam, let me assure you, we genuinely didn’t expect that Microsoft would offer a deal too good to pass on and pick up the game before completion. For several reasons, we’re genuinely excited about partnering with our friends at Microsoft again to bring EVERSPACE 2 to the Windows 10/11 Store as Game Preview AND Xbox Game Pass for PC. And, as early backers, this should excite you, too!

First off, if one of the biggest platform holders decides to partner with an independent studio (again!); that alone is a huge achievement because a) such deals can be game-changers for independent studios like us especially since they are rare with so many other great titles competing for the spotlight worldwide; b) a handful of very knowledgeable individuals working at massive companies are putting their neck out by trusting that we will deliver on our promises even if things get messy; and c) thanks to significant license fees being paid without any strings attached regarding change of creative direction is arguably the very, very best that can happen to an independent studio. Did I mention there is NO exclusivity?

Anyone not familiar with our story, we’ve seen it all, like work for hire under tough terms, raising cash from VCs while putting the house on the line, to AAA publishers pulling the plug only hours after counter-signing a 2-year full-production agreement for a team of 30. No hard feelings, though, we wouldn’t be at the greatest spot in our careers without some vital deals falling apart, forcing us to reinvent ourselves and conquer new territories… Right! Full Release pushed back to early 2023, I’ll get to the point now, promise!

If the past few years (should have) told all of us anything, it’s Shigeru Miyamoto’s iconic statement never gets old: “A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad!”

THIS right here is why partnering with Microsoft again is a blessing for everyone: Thanks to this major deal, we can afford to work another 6 to 9 months on the full release and make sure that the endgame of EVERSPACE 2 will be worth your while, too. We're also bringing additional external artists and devs to the roster, spending even more budget on final polish of all handcrafted locations and in-game cutscenes (watch for more details with the official release of the Khaït Nebula update) while avoiding the anticipated fierce competition from several major, delayed AA and AAA titles releasing in the second half of 2022. Long update short, you’re going to get an even better, even more polished game for the low, low cost of patience.

I cannot stress enough how grateful we are that nobody is breathing down our neck to ship a title to hit some arbitrary financial goals no matter if the game is finished or not, and I share nothing but my deepest sympathy for any developer, no matter if indie or AAA, being forced to make some very, very tough decisions around cutting content, compromising on quality, and/or putting their team under enormous pressure to meet a deadline.

Keep it civil on the forums, and see you in space! 🚀💥🙌
Michael and your dedicated ROCKFISH Games Team

Aug 25, 2021

Important Message to our Community | System 4 Micro Teaser | New Demo

EVERSPACE™ 2 - ROCKFISH Games

Hey pilots,

Today, we have an unusual news update. We have a few things to share about what’s coming next, but I also wanted to provide more of a high-level, behind-the-scenes look at the overall game direction and some of our business decisions, and how we roll in general for our fans as well as our biggest critics to help everyone better understand where EVERSPACE 2 is heading, and, most importantly WHY we do the things we do. Note to self: if the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators measure the effectiveness of any given marketing/sales activity) of this piece are much lower than previous news updates, I might consider firing myself. I’m joking! ;)

I hope this piece gives everyone a better understanding of who we are as a 100% self-funded, veteran indie team from Germany with a rollercoaster ride history, going all-in with an eight-digit dev budget for EVERSPACE 2. For those not happy about a certain feature, the direction of the game, or who think something major is missing from the game, kindly keep in mind that as indie developers, we are taking huge risks here.

As always, we respect anyone’s opinion, but our stakes are incredibly high. Hence, no matter how passionate somebody is about a certain topic, we hear you, but we’ll do what we think is right for us as a company and always put the wellbeing and sanity of our team first. This is in our very own interest as founders running a professional business within an extremely competitive market, but it is also the right thing to do as decent human beings.

Time capsule moment from the ROCKFISH Games Facebook timeline: It's been an insane roller coaster ride for over 28 years! Once again, it's all or nothing: EVERSPACE 2 just launched on Steam #EarlyAccess and GOG.com #GamesInDevelopment! Time to celebrate together with our awesome team and some fancy Gin & Tonic from our dear industry friends Maarten De Koning and Martijn van Doorn from DDM.

Frankly, it has never been easier to make and release video games worldwide, thanks to open access to top-quality game engines like Unreal Engine and Unity. This is also why being commercially successful in the video games industry has never been tougher. To put things into perspective, by “commercially successful” I mean being able to pay all our bills of our partners on time, provide a healthy working environment for our incredibly talented team, and paying them a competitive salary so that they don’t have to worry about their own bills.

Oh, and in case anyone doesn’t know what the job situation in IT and digital media in Germany is like, every single member of our team could work for at least twice as much dough at Audi, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, Siemens, SAP, or whatever publicly listed company who “would kill for top-talent”. In fact, I know that many of our team members get hammered with tempting offers by an armada of desperate recruiters trying to make business. Side note: if anyone is interested in joining our fine team, check out our job offerings and send us a casual but proper application!

Even with my technical background as a half-baked machine engineer and 10 years of experience as an admittedly mediocre 3D artist/animator at our very first studio, I have absolutely no clue how our amazing team manages to have a working build of EVERSPACE 2 every single week for our Friday live streams, while continuously creating so much top-quality new content for the next big update without breaking the game or burning out.

While we’re at it, we never ever crunch! When in doubt, we cut features and/or content, or push back even major milestones as long as we can financially support it. I usually set the dates of our major beats, while our team is in charge of what content and features will (most likely) be ready on time and give me a few options to prioritize certain aspects in case things take longer (they always do, like literally, always). Meaning, every milestone is a best guestimate, so don’t get too worked up if plans change.

Maximum Transparency

While doing my daily routine of checking our social channels and the Steam forums, I was inspired to write this behind-the-scenes business news update after reading comments from vocal players not happy about the direction of EVERSPACE 2 and our overall messaging, as well as development being slow.

As part of EVERSPACE 2’s development, we strive to do the best for our community as possible. Watching our team works hard every day to create top-quality content, we have not signed any exclusivity deals, EVERSPACE 2 is DRM-free on both GOG and Steam, we’ve committed to not implement any microtransactions, and the latest dev build is streamed every Friday so that everyone can see for themselves what kind of game we’re making and where development is currently at. We try to carefully manage expectations and make sure that we’re not overpromising, but still, we get hammered by a few individuals complaining about EVERSPACE 2 not meeting their expectations.

I’m always up for an educated discussion, but when I come across a post accusing us of false advertising, or spins something to paint a negative picture about our game and studio on the Steam forums or our social channels that really stings! Yeah, I know, that’s part of the internet, but that doesn’t mean that we just have to sit and watch individuals dumping their Very Strong Opinions™ or misleading information about our hard work without me putting the facts right even if some individuals might not like the message or claim that we’re not listening to community feedback.

Everybody Chill!

As I mentioned in our previous news update, we’re always working on having the latest development news spread not only to promote our game but also to keep EVERSPACE fans in the loop about production. Maximum transparency and authenticity in our messaging are of utmost importance to us even if a topic might be controversial (I’ve earned negative comments and reviews by being just straight honest, which doesn’t always go down well with everyone, but that’s ok). I read absolutely every post about our game on our social channels or on Steam. If you get an unsigned response on any of our social channels (I only don’t sign on Facebook and Twitter), it is me behind the keyboard.

To add some more perspective, we’re talking about 50K+ posts on our socials, some 1000 threads on Steam, as well as moderating 90+ live streams on our YouTube and Twitch channel over the course of the past two years. For a small indie dev from Germany making a rather niche space game, the amount of community feedback we’re getting is absolutely mind-boggling, so keep it coming!

Obviously, any positive comment just makes my day, and I constantly share glowing fan feedback coming through our socials or via email with our team (the entire dev and marketing team is monitoring our Community Hubs on Steam, so rest assured anyone’s voice is heard there, too).

Since our Kickstarter in October 2019, this is our 32nd in-depth news update. Each piece had to pass approval by our dev team and Evolve PR, our lead PR agency—I have a very short leash when talking about our game: Every official update has also been proofread by a bunch of very picky PR professionals (sometimes, our dear friends at Swordfish PR, our EU PR agency, also kicks my butt if the wording of a press release still reads too commercially—they’re also German, so you can bet that things have to be precise and not fluffy).

To conclude this long section, here’s a most recent example of how much our team is listening to community feedback even though we have a bold vision for our game:

This is a screenshot of the ROCKFISH Games Slack; you’ll notice the #rfg-feedback channel where anyone can drop personal or external feedback and spark an open discussion any time. In this screenshot, you can see Erik dropping an unusual gameplay side effect discovered by Kizaw, one of the most active members on our discord. The next day, Erik posted his personal thoughts about button hold times which were immediately addressed by Thies & Thilo, our UI/UX designers/programmers, (their response in a nutshell: it’s still WIP!). Finally, Caspar, our Producer, shared the concern from a handful of Early Access pilots on Steam about sniper drones being OP after the last update which was immediately and elegantly put down by Sven (Technical Director) and Marco (Lead Technical Artist and Gameplay Programmer on the side) as you can read in the thread on the right for yourself — indeed, everybody chill!

Now, without further ado, let’s talk about...

Khaït Nebula Teaser

Another behind-the-scenes piece from our communication activities: About four weeks ago, I was pushing really hard to get a System 04 teaser for you guys, but ZeTeam has shot me down saying that they’re not ready yet, the content doesn’t look great, it’s way too early, etc.

So, thinking to myself that is probably really too early to talk about the Khaït Nebula, I told our PR collaborators, already readying for the next beat: “Sorry, no major beat for Gamescom; like, literally nothing! I know it’s one of the biggest beats in our industry, but we just don’t feel comfortable to commit to having new quality content in time, period.” They were like: “Ooookaaaay, it is was it is; we’ll tell all the biggest outlets eager to cover EVERSPACE 2 that we’ll have nothing for Gamescom; fingers crossed that they’ll cover us in fall when things are going to be messy...”

Imagine the sudden radio silence on our internal communications channels, which is why I put in “us” in italics above because it’s a joint effort of RFG and our PR partners to get the word out about EVERSPACE 2.

So, deadline after deadline for Gamescom passed, while our PR folks tried to make a happy face about our next big beat in fall, but I could sense top outlets feeling bummed out because they had allocated a slot for us. It’s not like that there aren’t a ton of other great titles that also deserve a spotlight, and we’re genuinely happy for any other quality game getting highlighted instead. However, in such a highly competitive market, you think more than twice about passing on a major beat, but you also don’t want to disappoint even though clickbaity internet drama pays the bills.

So, until last Friday, I wasn’t even considering having an official Gamescom beat that would also be relevant for our Early Access pilots, but ZeTeam surprised me with a bunch of red hot screenshots of System 04 that made me do a 180 to share these with you — it’s been a running gag of our team always sandbagging for over 15 years, while I’ve learned to anticipate positive surprises to plan our beats accordingly and secure major marketing opportunities, nonetheless. However, this time, they really got me on my back foot which made me chuckle. As much as I could moan about having missed out on big opportunities, I wouldn’t want it any other way. Because, in the end, lasting relationships are based on how much each side delivers on their promises.

Ok, enough of me rambling, here are some straight-out-of-production and undoctored screenshots of the Khaït Nebula.

Just like the predecessor, every star system in EVERSPACE 2 has a signature color & lighting theme; Khaït Nebula embraces the complementary colors purple and green with some sprinkles of blue — nothing revolutionary, but it simply works in terms of general color theme theory, but it’s also a great fit to highlight the system’s deeper mystery.

Speaking of mystery, in addition to raising the maximum player level and adding a set of new player perks, the autumn update will also add several chapters to the campaign. This will not only reveal new essential secrets in the EVERSPACE universe but will also put Adam Rosslin and his companions to the test, where their common cause is threatened by conflicting personal interests.

We’ll have more to share about new gameplay mechanics in the Khaït Nebula later this fall (as a matter of fact, ZeTeam didn’t green-light to share more, so I’m in the dark myself here).

Yet another visual clue about what’s going to be planned to be in the final game, but I’ll let you speculate for yourself. What I can already share is that in the fourth star system, Early Access pilots will make the acquaintance of various new and sometimes already familiar alien life forms. For example, pilots of the early EVERSPACE 2 prototype can look forward to the return of the popular Shadow Creatures, whose mating requires a little help, for which they will show their gratitude by dropping valuable resources for the player in case of a happy ending.

Gamescom Demo

Kudos if you made it this far and thanks very much, indeed. You must be a core member of our community even if you’re one of the few pilots not being happy with all our game design or business decisions thus far. I intentionally went on this massive detour, knowing that Early Access is definitely not for everyone, but I want to make sure that everybody who’s passionate about our work and provides genuinely constructive feedback (spoiler: that’s the one thing that gets every Felsenfisch out of bed every morning) fully understands why, what, and how we’re doing things.

This leads me to our brand-new demo based on the latest Early Access version that we just launched, YAY!

Shortly before the Early Access launch, we decided to pull the early prototype as a demo because it just didn’t do the current production state any justice. Recently splitting the base game into several PAK files allowed us to have a proper demo that wouldn’t be too massive in file size, can easily be updated when making changes to the base game, but also cannot be exploited by unlocking the full game — basically, as a developer, you don’t want to have a demo that just blows up in your face.

The demo is NOT time-gated but content-capped to the first sector in Ceto. You can play the first five main missions, two side missions as well as many random encounters as you please.

Before anyone asks, yes, your save game will carry over from the demo to the Early Access version, so you won’t lose any progress. However, to make sure that the difficulty is not entirely off when upgrading to the full game, we decided to cap the demo’s player level at 5, but you can make as many credits as you want to shop until you drop. You’re welcome! ;)

Veteran EVERSPACE 2 pilots wondering what today’s minor patch is all about. We had to make a few adjustments to the base game in order for demo save games to properly carry over. Of course, I asked the team if we could slip in the latest fixes, too, so everyone would have something to look forward to. However, that idea was immediately shot down because it would have required a full QA pass. Well, it was worth asking even though it was quite naïve. ^^

Alright, that’s it for today! Not too much mind-boggling news about upcoming content, but we wanted to keep everyone in the loop and share a bit more behind-the-scenes material about us as a 100% self-funded, veteran studio. LMK in the comments below if you would like to read more about this kind of stuff in the future or just keep it short & snappy (definitely easier for me, but I genuinely believe we’re in this together because it’s about communicating our vision, managing expectations, listening to your esteemed feedback, but most importantly it is about mutual trust and respect.

Per usual, don’t miss our weekly gamedev & community streams where Erik, our Community Ambassador and ACE pilot, will show the latest build of the week on Twitch and YouTube every Friday from 8:00 pm to 10:00 pm CEST / 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm EST / 11:00 am to 1:00 pm PST. Speaking from moderating chat of 90+ live streams myself, I can testify it’ll be a ton of fun and very informative, too. In fact, chances are that Erik will reveal more than I allowed him to, but what’s new, right? ;)

Keep it civil on the forums, and see you in space! 🚀💥🙌
Michael and your dedicated ROCKFISH Games Team

Epilogue

Ah, you're still here, and you might find this news update a bit awkward, especially since we’re obviously doing great; like, way better than we’ve been hoping for, so what’s this all about? Well, I don’t want to over-dramatize things, but my business partner and best friend have been through a lot over the past 28 years. Well, I might include an epilogue worth a read (top-tier readbait, I know, but you won’t find this kind of content in your regular Steam news update, promise!).

Here’s the thing, though: No matter how competent Christian and I might be as serial entrepreneurs over the course of 28 years, we wouldn’t be here without our fabulous team—many have been working with us since 2004, always trusting in our leadership even when things were rough.

When we rebooted as ROCKFISH Games in early 2014, everyone following us from our previous studio took a huge bet because our AAA publisher back then could have pulled the plug for convenience (as in without any cause) any time.

Fun fact, after nine months, they had a change of heart the very same day they had just signed an amendment to ramp up the team to 30 ppl for two years of production. Did our team panic or look for other opportunities? No! Instead, they worked their butts off to create a compelling prototype for our first Kickstarter campaign, and have continuously delivered beat after beat after beat since then.

This is why, no matter how anyone with a super strong opinion about the game we’re currently making might have (fair enough!), if our team or Christian and I do not agree, it’s not gonna happen. Spoiler: 9 out of 10 of my “great” ideas get shot down, but that’s ok because Christian and I made sure to only hire people who are way more creative and smarter at gamedev than us, and we trust their expertise and gut feelings with everything we’ve got.

Long story short, I just wanted to make abundantly clear that our Early Access is not about discussing the direction of EVERSPACE 2, but helping us make the best version of the game we envision. So, keep it coming but also respect the talent and expertise of our team as well as the enormous entrepreneurial risk Christian and I take.

We know that we won’t be able to please every space pilot out there, but we also know what we’re doing as a team of seasoned artists, designers, story writers, and programmers, while Christian and I are 100% personably accountable for every single decision we make. Our motivation is to make a sizeable group of like-minded gamers as happy as possible and make sure that every Felsenfisch makes a decent living from our hard work. That’s really all that's to it; our creative freedom and individual happiness are absolutely paramount to us.

Aug 4, 2021

Second Major Content Update "Zharkov: The Vortex" Released | Changelog 0.6.20128

EVERSPACE™ 2 - ROCKFISH Games

Greetings, pilots!

Grab a drink, sit back, and relax! What was intended to be a short & snappy news beat about the official Zharkov release on top of all the information shared in recent news updates, became our longest news update so far, covering new topics of the 2nd major content update of EVERSPACE 2 in-depth as well as some important studio and community-related news.

First off, a big shout to all the daring test pilots who smoke tested the experimental release opened up a few days ago. You all provided very useful feedback on the overhauled game balancing and also flagged a number of bugs that slipped through the cracks. The team acknowledged and fixed most of them, while a few improvements have to wait until the next major content update, currently scheduled for fall (or spring if your home base is on the Southern hemisphere of planet Earth). You’ll find the official changelog at the bottom of this news. Changes based on the experimental build are marked with the prefix (Exp).

Now, before you jump cut to the bottom of this release to check out the 150+ changes this update brings, let me put a spotlight on several team members and external partners who’ve been hard at work to hammer out yet another meaty content update.

It sounds easy, but one of the most critical tasks for any update is left to Sven Lohse, our Technical Director, who has moved his mouse and clicked a few buttons to open the jump gate to Zharkov on Steam and GOG for all Early Access/GiD pilots. Technically, you’ll have to play through the new main story to unlock the jump gate yourself, but you’ll find the way. And yes, all new and previous content is fully voice-acted... except for Banjack, the adorable scrapyard robot.

He has his charming TTS voice back by popular demand from the community and because we also think TTS just perfectly fits his character. In fact, since he became such a beloved shop dealer, we’ve decided to write a proper side mission for Banjack, shedding some light on how he ended up in that abandoned scrapyard in the first place. But that’s for a future content update. Now, let’s have a look at our new gameplay trailer, produced by Lol_bye, one of our Kickstarter backers (of course, we’ve compensated him like a pro for his excellent work)!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn0kEi4e_-c

The Vanguard

For those who haven’t watched Erik Schrader, our one-and-only Community Ambassador talking about the all-new Vanguard light fighter class during its reveal stream, here’s the nuts and bolts description and a nice äktschon shot from GeometryPrime, one of the most active space photographers on our Discord:

The Vanguard is a lightweight, highly maneuverable reconnaissance ship with a high emphasis on speed/mobility and defensive measures. The Vanguard’s Special “overcharges” the shield to up to 200% capacity when boosting or when in Cruise Mode allowing for shield-buffed attacks. Thanks to its Expertise of increased critical hit chance when attacking enemies from the rear, clever combat positioning can provide a significant advantage in dogfights. When things get too messy, the Vanguard’s Ultimate “Time Extender” slows down the action, allowing pilots to regain the upper hand in any given combat situation. Vanguards also come with one out of four random Passive Perks that let cruise drive be activated with enemies nearby, reduces Web effect by 50%, lowers up to 20% support device cooldown depending on overcharge percentage, or makes Time Extender immediately restore all weapon and boost energy.

But wait, we’ve got even more ship news coming from Matthias Kummer (Senior 3D Artist) who’s exclusively been working on all player ships for over two and a half years. With the new update, pilots will have access to Tier 2 ships of all currently existing ship classes, featuring fancier wing types and better base stats, such as increased cargo space.

New Story Content and Companion

In the new content update, the plot thickens. You’ll finally catch up with Maddocks in Union and get a better understanding of how all the parties involved so far are connected to each other. After you found out how to activate the Outlaw’s jump gate, Zharkov will be your new oyster, filled with new secrets, activities, alien mystery, puzzles (yes!), and loot, but lots of danger too. Watch out for lightning rods that cause havoc when flying too close as shown in the Zharkov teaser trailer and other environmental hazards.

In the continued campaign, you’ll meet another old friend: Tareen, the Okkar trader from the EVERSPACE: Encounters expansion, will join your roster of companions and provide some very useful perks. As your new quartermaster, Tareen will allow you to expand storage and increase the number of ships to park at your Homebase. He’ll become even more useful later in the game, but that’s a topic for another day.

New Gameplay

One particular highlight of the main campaign that we haven’t talked about yet are the all-new drone missions. These are all about your 6DOF maneuvering skills as you remote-control a maintenance drone through narrow tunnels and bypass moving security barriers deep underground of the G&B Lunar Mining Colony to prevent an undercover job from going down the drain. So no looty-shooty for a change but no touchy-touchy those lasers either, or AAAALERRRRT!!! No worries, there’s no time limit so you can take it slow and careful, and you can immediately try again if discovered.

Some fans of hardcore space sims might think: “RC drone gameplay and even more puzzle-solving, what the heck!? I thought this was supposed to be a space game…? I didn’t sign up for this, I want more space combat and exploration!" Well, our vision for EVERSPACE 2 has always included introducing new gameplay mechanics and objectives to keep things fresh, like puzzle-solving or, in this case, remote controlling a drone à la Descent. If you’re also a fan, go check out the Overload Kickstarter, the spiritual successor created by the same devs; Overload is currently sitting at 94% positive on Steam, and they even have a free demo, also currently sitting at 94% positive.

Now, even though we’ve talked about this before, anyone not into puzzle-solving or 6DOF drone gameplay, please understand that EVERSPACE 2 is meant to stand for its own within the space game genre. There are much bigger titles already out there or in the making, so there would be no point in us trying to compete against the juggernauts of space games. While on the creative side, we believe there’s enough room for an arcadey space action RPG with looter-shooter mechanics bringing new things to the space game genre, which our team is very much excited about. On the whole, allowing our designers the freedom to flex their creative muscles with additions like these is going to make for a stronger game overall.

Continuing the main mission, you will be introduced to another gameplay mechanic right before bumping into the next boss encounter, testing everything you should have learned so far. Without saying too much, HOTAS pilots don’t throw your precious gear at the screen! It’s gonna be rough, but don’t you worry! We’ll have various difficulty and accessibility options at full release, so it’ll be fine™! For now, you might want to fly some of the more challenging missions with a mouse + keyboard or a gamepad of your choice, though.

Along with voice recordings that are replacing the TTS voices of the story content of the previous update Contracts/Hinterland, Gero Goerlich (Sound Director), Uwe Wütherich (Creative Director), and Bernie Duffy (external Lead Story Writer) have worked with 20 voice talents to record 2180 new lines with over 20,000 words for more than 40 roles just in the most recent recording session alone. In the final game, we’ll have well over 6,000 lines / 60,000 words of voiced dialogue, putting EVERSPACE 2 on par with various iconic AAA action adventures/RPGs.

Gero, Uwe, and Bernie have also worked closely with our friends from Puppetworks to add new quality cinematics based on concept art by Moritz Manhart (our in-house Concept Artist) and Tobias Frank (external Concept Artist on artstation, but part of the RFG family since the very beginning).

So yeah, while we won’t have gazillions of proc-gen planets in a vast, seamless universe, we hope that experiencing our carefully handcrafted content in a pseudo-open world while playing through a proper sci-fi story is a journey worth your while. And we’re not even done yet!

Speaking of more story content being in the works: with a heavy heart, we have to share that Kevin Mentz, our very much esteemed Quest Designer, has left the RFG family on good terms.

We have very much enjoyed working with Kevin for three full years. He was the mastermind behind the EVERSPACE 2 tutorial and most of the side missions. Kevin also worked closely with our story writing team on the main campaign, bringing lots of great narrative ideas into the mix. If you’ve been laughing over some of the absurd 4th-wall-breaking TTS jokes or bloopers of yet unfinished missions, that was also him. Here are some fond memories of watching top content creator Cohh Carnage losing it when he played the closed Alpha:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDvycrt32Ys&t=1200

Kevin will be joining Osmotic Studios to work on more narrative-driven and less action-heavy games. Everybody at ROCKFISH Games wishes him nothing but the best for his future, and godspeed to our indie dev friends at Osmotic with their offices pretty much just around the corner, while our doors will always be open for Kevin to return just in case... nudge-nudge, wink-wink!

Ok, put away your tissues because here’s the good news: a) Kevin left us with a ton of more wicked ideas for future side missions, and b) since the core gameplay mechanics of EVERSPACE 2 are mostly in place, you can look forward to Andi, Senior Game Designer and Programmer, who’s been working with us for over 15 years(!), as well as the creative-minded Gameplay Programmer, Thorben Kohler, who already was a former colleague of Kevin when they were working together at Daedalic Entertainment taking over.

They’re both super excited about creating new main and side missions for you, and I can say from experience, you won’t be disappointed. In fact, Thorben already got his hands dirty by designing and programming the side mission VaultWorthy in this very update, while Andi, in case you didn’t know, worked together with HCK, our Lead Game Designer, on all main and side mission of the Galaxy on Fire 2 - Supernova add-on (arguably the closest thing to Freelancer on mobile, but that’s a looooong story maybe for another day).

All that said, with Kevin leaving and no substitute in sight, we have to slightly reduce the complexity of the game world. Meaning, instead of having eight star systems at full release as originally planned, we decided to go with seven — imaging Erik playing his inglorious BOO! sound on stream before telling everybody to calm down — but to hear us out: System 8, as we call it internally, has always been designed to be a rather small star system primarily meant to stage a major plot point in the campaign. Thus, we can integrate it into one of the other seven systems without cutting any super relevant content.

New Gear

Playing through the new content would be only half as fun if there wasn’t any new gear! We’ve got all you loadout tinkerers covered with a slew of new weapons and devices. Get ready to try the already teased Fusion Hook for some cool Zero-G swing maneuvers, new types of secondaries, such as the (mostly) self-explanatory Corrosion, Armorbreaker, Shieldbreaker, and Destabilizer Missiles, and the Web and Corrosion Mine Launchers for more sophisticated crowd control. Last but not least, we’ve also added set bonuses for Bloodstar items and introduced a new item affix Swift, which reduces ramp up and charge time of certain weapons by 30%—you’re gonna love this one!

Swift auto cannons now take less time to go DAKADAKADAKA, significantly reducing TTK, if you can land all your shots, that is. However, you'll notice that weapon ramp up / charge time is not shown; this might change in the future when we're done designing all weapon attributes.

Crafting UI/UX Improvements

Thilo Eggers (UI/UX Designer) and Mathias (Thies) Ebell (Senior UI/UX Programmer) have been working hand-in-hand to make crafting more intuitive and more streamlined. Not only can you now perform any action with both mouse click or hitting a key. Use is also visually and functionally the same for both mouse and keyboard users and gamepad pilots so that neither side has to sacrifice comfort options or usability. Another new feature added is the Material Overview Overlay, which can be summoned over the crafting interface. It shows which materials you already have and how to obtain any further required resources.

Thilo & Thies have also significantly improved the UX of unlocking blueprints. New unlocks are now visually highlighted with a shine animation, while upcoming unlocks are teased. So when unlocking a blueprint, you can immediately see the next two unlockables.

Furthermore, you can now change the rarity of an item directly without losing focus on your selected item. The selection will remember the last slot selected, even if you toggle through rarities or reenter the crafting interface to improve user experience by letting players start over where they left off.

Thilo & Thies also improved the side-by-side compare function before and after successful crafting, so you are always aware of possible changes and improvements. Also, all interactions are now more mouse-friendly.

Technical Improvements

Finally, we’ve made significant technical changes under the hood. For instance, game assets are now compressed to save disk space and are distributed among several PAK files to speed up patch installation via Steam, so no more hours of copying data from your jampacked SSD to your HDD and back for incremental updates. That said, due to all the handcrafted content and baked high-quality GI lighting still to be added, we’ll probably hit the 75 GB mark for the final game. To help running EVERSPACE 2 on lower-spec systems, we optimized texture memory usage even further, but please don’t expect any miracles when running EVERSPACE 2 on a potato from several years ago.

To smooth out some spikes in the overall game balancing, especially when fighting against ten or more enemies simultaneously, Sven also tweaked our in-house developed AI director (we went a bit too far in the experimental build, so we had to scale it back for this official release; thanks again for providing community feedback). It’s a pretty complex beast, so if you want to know more and see it in action, check out Erik’s most recent gamedev stream where he talks about us addressing game difficulty issues in highly populated areas:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38ENARXfAZk&t=1567

While Sven was knee-deep in the technical code of the game, he also improved floating-point precision for more accurate hitscan and long-range weapon targeting. Bonus news: this allowed us to even add weapon zoom for Rail Guns, a much-requested feature by several marksman pilots. 🎯

Changelog

Features

Added new main and side missions
Added new star system: Zharkov
Added new player ship class: Vanguard
Added new companion: Tareen (spoiler)
Added new device: Fusion Hook
Added new missile weapon types: Corrosion, Armorbreaker, Shieldbreaker, Destabilizer
Added Bloodstar items set bonuses
Added new item affix "Swift" (reduces ramp up and charge time by 30%)
Added "Union Explorer" challenges + challenge reward for "Explorer" challenges, allowing to fast-forward in supralight
Tier 2 ships are now available at ship dealers
Added English voice acting for all dialogs that were added since the previous Contracts/Hinterlands update
Cinematics now feature improved animation and professional voice-overs (but are still WIP)
Added new music tracks
Increased max level to 18
Added 10 new ship colors to collect
UI: Added "new" and "invest" indicators to the perks tab
UI: Item crafting and modification rework including item preview and materials overview

Tweaks

Game assets are now compressed to save disk space
Distributed game assets among several .pak files to speed up patch installation via Steam
Optimized texture memory usage
Improved Thermo Gun projectile performance
Overhauled enemy damage and hitpoint balancing
Balanced difficulty when fighting against multiple enemies at the same time
Fewer Outlaws in Siren's Sea and Palaemon's Wound
Cargo space will now increase with higher ship tiers
Slightly reduced Scout agility
Increased ship acceleration while not boosting
Outlaw Ravager and Bloodstar Overseer now have fewer and more prominent weak points
Outlaw Vipers now leave behind a corrosion field when destroyed
Creatures and cruisers can no longer be targeted by the Magnetic Repulsor
Nanobots and Nano Injector will now repair a percentage of hull hp, not a fixed value
Improved Teleporter collision detection to prevent getting stuck in geometry
Corrosion will now first damage the armor before damaging the hull
Annihilator Virus: reduced explosion delay and doubled infect interval
Annihilator Virus: reduced kinetic damage from 150 to 90
Annihilator Virus: limited maximum number of infected targets to 6
Annihilator Virus: increased range from 400m to 600m
Annihilator Virus "Symptomatic" mode: increased target damage reduction from 20% to 50%
Annihilator Virus "Incubation" mode: renamed to "R-Naught" - now increases the maximum number of targets by 2
Corrosion Injector, Annihilator Virus, Quantum Entangler, and Quantum Tether (Striker ULT) can now be used on capital ships
Doubled Quantum Tether (Striker ULT) effect range
Rail Gun: Reduced energy consumption
Rail Gun: Added zoom when charging
Rail Gun: Increased full charge damage by 50%
Baron Executioner: Increased max spread angle from 0.5 to 1.5 degrees
Beam Laser: Increased energy consumption by 20%
Elek will only jump in if the player is in a fight with more than 2 enemies
Reduced "Play It Safe" perk effect duration from 12s to 5s
NPCs will now gain EMP resistance immediately after receiving the EMP debuff to prevent stun locking
EMP resistance duration is now scaled with the duration of the EMP itself
Increased hull hitpoints of G&B and Freelancer freighters
Decreased probability of Interceptor passive perk that recharges Weapon Overdrive with critical hits from 50% to 20%
Increased global elite enemy probability
Signal Decoders will now reveal a high-risk area inside the current region of the system
Signal Decoders will now always have a higher rarity (no more common signal decoders)
The first boss now gives more and better loot
Improved support for mixed input methods like joystick + mouse (added option to specify input method or use auto-detect)
Prevented crafting exploits via reloading
Fully mine ore deposit when using Flak or Missile Launcher
Portable debris can now be picked up from a further distance
Only play detonator drone warning sound when it is flying towards a target
The pinging sound and icon-effect of invisible containers continue until the container is emptied
Added options to quickly invert camera pitch/yaw (in addition to the already present invert option in the "customize controls" screen)
Force fields now have two distinct textures representing their access state
Flying Dutchess will now spawn-kill enemies when jumping in
Post effects produced by conditions, devices, and damage are now hidden in Photo Mode
UI: Added dedicated HUD marker icons for different drone types
UI: Improved speed when first opening the map
UI: Joystick keybindings are now displayed in HUD when a joystick binding is assigned
UI: Tractor Beam Range is now shown in "Ship" screen
UI: Master rewards for challenges are now instantly revealed
UI: Added implicit cargo sorting for M&K in case sorting was active on the last menu visit
UI: Repair and device hold actions trigger an error on the start of hold action in case of insufficient credits/points
UI: Clickable action buttons in crafting result screen
UI: (Batch) marked items now feature an animation
UI: Added ingame menu tab pre-loading for Inventory, Ship, Perks, Mission, Data, and Map
UI: Better explanation of locked player perks when in space
UI: "Crafting XP" is now called "Crafting Data"
UI: Opening ingame menu with gamepad implicitly sorts inventory and selects the first slot
UI: Dismantling and destroying while using a controller now implicitly sorts inventory (removes empty slots in-between)
UI: Enabled "Expand Cargo View" / batch actions in loot container view
UI: Enabled "Send To Homebase" action in loot container view
UI: Added navigation SFX to mission item inventory
UI: Hovering one of the six main attributes will now show the items that contribute to the respective value
UI: Added descriptions for condition tooltips in ship screen
UI: Added storage slot ratio to inventory headline
UI: When activating a high-risk area and choosing to show it on the map it's now highlighted and centered

Bugfixes

Fixed ship selector sometimes not being displayed in Homebase despite owning multiple ships
Fixed floating-point precision issues related to weapon aim
Fixed already destroyed Bomb Thrower Turrets sometimes still throwing bombs
Fixed energy orbs not restoring armor
Fixed not being able to activate buttons using a flak cannon
Fixed a potential blocker and a wrong dialog being played in "I Heart Scrap" side mission
Fixed dialogs related to fights being played when colliding with level geometry
Fixed destroying Okkar units not yielding correct XP
Fixed Okkar being spawned by the Wanted System giving loot and XP after re-entering a location.
Fixed player stats not being updated immediately after re-entering stats screen
Fixed highlight effect on some structures being visible from far away
Fixed "Data Fishing" side mission briefing dialog being played again when docking before leaving the location
Fixed mission item "Drone Debris" not getting removed from inventory after becoming obsolete
Fixed Gauss Cannon and Rail Gun having improper affixes
Fixed Baron Executioner weapon receiving energy damage modifiers
Fixed item bonus attributes that grant extra damage not working properly
Fixed bounty not increasing when defeating an enemy with a device like the Corrosion Injector
Fixed problems with axis inversions also affecting other logical axes that were bound to the same physical axis
Fixed that Elek could appear multiple times in a location
Fixed that Elek sometimes left too soon
Fixed that Elek and Dax could die when acting as wingmen
Fixed enqueued hull repairs being lost when docking to a station
Fixed faction rewards not being displayed for accepted jobs in the missions tab
Fixed being able to use warfare devices on allies
Fixed timestamps of items accidentally being renewed after having been moved to a different inventory slot
Fixed device inventory did not update after changing ships under some circumstances
Fixed quick equip with right mouse button in loot container screen might send an item to Homebase instead of equipping it
Fixed that some item attribute bonus values (like Resistance) would not spawn
Fixed Sentinel ULT (Static Overload) not scaling with Utility attribute
Fixed Sentinel passive "20% reduced cooldowns for warfare devices." falsely stacking until cooldown was zero
Fixed that missiles could not be destroyed after the ship or turret that fired them died
Fixed additionally spawned Okkars not leaving location after having paid bounty
Fixed "ULT ready" not being triggered by Interceptor passive perk
Prevent being able to switch camera while in "1st person no cockpit" view and having activated auto-pilot
Fixed that retractable turrets could be destroyed by very high damage, e.g. Annihilator Virus
UI: Fixed that only one missing attribute was shown when comparing items
UI: Fixed item actions for Aeterna Bypasses and Signal Decoders being visible in multi-select mode
UI: Fixed equip action being visible in multi-select mode
UI: Fixed focus and hud visibility problems after very quickly opening and closing ingame menu
UI: Fixed wrong device slot length in item selection
UI: Fixed wrong implicit cargo sorting when using a gamepad and first opening the menu
UI: Fixed inventory items clipping through scroll indicators
UI: Fixed icons for companion perk upgrade requirements sometimes being wrong
UI: Fixed that when using mouse+keyboard, gamepad icons were displayed on a device icon and consumable slots in the menu
UI: Fixed stats and condition tooltips sometimes still being shown on screen after changing ships
UI: Using dedicated icon for ship special in the stats panel
UI: Fixed that log sometimes displayed items with the wrong affix
UI: Fixed that pressing Tab while "Press Tab to Show" was shown for completed or new challenges not opening the challenges screen
UI: Fixed slot focus being lost after clicking on various regions in ingame menu header
UI: Fixed item sorting type 'Latest' (newest item first) not working properly
UI: Fixed "Quick equip" action of selected equipment in storage inventory being broken after changing ships on Homebase
UI: Fixed icon scale for devices that can't be used not being reset after being replaced by another device
UI: Fixed damage numbers not shown for damage-over-time conditions like Corrosion
UI: Fixed shop icon not being shown on Map for Flying Dutchess beacons
UI: Fixed Ben's speaker image not showing implants after his operation
UI: Fixed "Outdated Equipment" message appearing at a bad time
(Exp) Fixed a bug that resulted in inadvertently easy fights against large numbers of enemies
(Exp) Fixed that energy spheres would show resist marker in radiation fields
(Exp) Fixed false unlock of random system regions when entering supralight which leads to Union Explorer Challenge unlock banner not being shown
(Exp) Fixed being able to activate gas harvester boss from the outside
(Exp) Fixed invisible forcefield spawning right above shield generators after beating gas harvester boss and loading checkpoint save
(Exp) Fixed being able to damage the Okkar Corvette during "Tipping The Scales" Side Mission
(Exp) Fail "The Vortex" main mission when attacking G&B at Vesna Mining Colony
(Exp) Fixed colliding with invisible ships on ship dealer platforms
(Exp) Fixed that fast-forwarding in travel mode affected playtime
(Exp) Fixed faction standing not increasing after completing a job
(Exp) Fixed fast-forwarding not pausing when opening menu
(Exp) Fixed camera being inside remote drone occasionally
(Exp) Fixed that the Raid Booster's "Boost After Kill" bonus was stackable

Phew, that was quite something! We hope everyone will enjoy all the new content and improvements. If not, let us know, and we’ll have a look into your concerns; Again, that’s why we’re doing Early Access to constantly improve the game based on community feedback. While full transparency is of utmost importance to us, so every space game enthusiast can find out where EVERSPACE 2 is heading, but also where it isn’t.

To get everything, you gotta read all our news material, though. Or, even better, join our weekly ROCKFISH Games Show on Twitch and YouTube to watch the latest dev build in action and hear it directly from the dev horse’s mouth, Erik Schrader, ace pilot and beloved Community Ambassador. He’s there for you to answer all your questions every Friday from 8:00 pm to 10:00 pm CEST / 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm EST / 11:00 am to 1:00 pm PST. 🚀💥🙌

In case you missed grabbing EVERSPACE 2 during the summer sale at 20% off, we deliberately timed another weeklong 20% sale with the release of Zharkov: The Vortex, so here’s another chance to get in the cockpit and save a few more bucks. Note that we’ll raise the price at full release, so you won’t find a better deal to grab a copy of EVERSPACE 2 anytime soon.

Keep it civil on the forums, and see you in space!
Michael and your dedicated ROCKFISH Games Team