One week ago, Amplitude Studios released the first of four trailers intended to showcase the pillars of the 4X strategy game Endless Space 2: Explore, Expand, Exploit, and Exterminate. With the exploration element covered off, it's now time to move on to Phase Two of the operation. 

Expansion is a slow and steady process, with inherent dangers: Moving people between worlds is a risky prospect, especially in rough neighborhoods. "Luxury resources" can help colonies "gain traction" by unlocking specific bonuses, but different races take very different approaches to colonization. The Vodyani, for instance, don't need to build outposts at all, because they live in massive ark ships orbiting around planets, leeching dust, resources, and "life energy" from the system. 

Technological growth plays a major role in the expansion of your empire, and so does "cultural influence," which enables the peaceful conversion of neighbors and allies, if that's your thing. You will also "come to realize that the secrets that have shaped the history of the galaxy might shape your future as well."   

Endless Space 2 is scheduled to go into full release on May 19, but can be had right now as an Early Access game on Steam for $30. If you want to see where it all began, the original Endless Space is currently on sale for $5 on the Humble Store.

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With the 4X strategy game Endless Space 2 just a couple of weeks from release, Amplitude Studios and Sega have released the first in a series of four new trailers, each of them showcasing one of the game's "X" features. First up, as determined by the traditional 4X hierarchy—that would be Xplore, Xpand, Xploit, and Xterminate—is "Explore."

At the beginning of Endless Space 2, your civilization has finally discovered the secret of "starlanes, the cosmic strings that connect planetary systems and form constellations," and more importantly, figured out how to use them. That means it's time to start flinging things into the void: Probes, perhaps, if you're a Nervous Nelly, or your one and only exploration ship if you are a Manly Man Interstellar Adventurer. Either way—destiny awaits! 

Endless Space 2 has been available in Early Access for a while now, and so far the response seems quite positive, although multiple players note that it does suffer from the sorts of bugs and technical wonkiness you'd expect from its pre-release state. Hopefully Amplitude will be able to sort them all out before the game goes into full release, but there's not a lot of time left: Endless Space 2 is scheduled for launch on May 19. 

Amplitude Studios announced today that the 4X strategy game Endless Space 2, which debuted on Steam Early Access in October, will go into full release on May 19. The game will be available in both a standard and a Digital Deluxe edition, and box collectors will also be able to take advantage of a proper retail release, which will come with a double-side Pathfinder Academy poster and a printed version of The Last Flight of the Gray Owl, a "community-driven" origin story that was written in 2015 for Endless Legend. 

We dug into Endless Space 2 last fall ahead of its Early Access release, and it sounded like a really interesting take on the 4X genre. There's a heavy RPG element to it, and its factions aren't just varied, they're fundamentally different: Creative director Romain de Waubert de Genlis said the studio decided "it would be better to have an unbalanced game with crazy factions all being different, than to have a perfectly balanced game with all the factions looking alike." 

And if you haven't got time for that, you can get a crash course in what it's all about in this four-minute "first look" trailer. 

The final price for Endless Space 2 will be $40/£35/€40 for the standard edition, or $50/£45/€50 for the Digital Deluxe, which will include the soundtrack, Pathfinder Academy heroes, and Hero ship skins. Both editions are available for Early Access purchase on Steam at a 25% discount until launch, and if you've previously sprung for the regular release and now wish you'd gone all the way, a deluxe upgrade offer is now available as well. And finally, if you'd like to get a taste of where it all began, the original Endless Space is on sale in the Collection bundle for $1 until April 17.