Open-world (or open galaxy?) sci-fi shooter Everspace 2 has spent the last couple of years in early access, where it’s amassed quite a loyal following, but now it’s time to leave that bubble behind. Developer Rockfish Games has announced Everspace 2 1.0 will arrive on PC in early April, along with more enemies, cinematics, boss fights, and an all-new star system. Everspace 2 will also be getting a new price tag due to the Rockfish’s vision expanding during development (in part due to a Xbox Game Pass deal) – beginning on February 20, the game will now cost $50 instead of $40. You can check out a release date trailer for Everspace 2, below.
Here’s a bit more information on what you can expect from Everspace 2 1.0…
“At 1.0, players focused on completing the main story missions and who only explore a few side missions can complete the game in 30 hours. To fully complete all the side quests, explore every region, solve every puzzle, finish every racing event, gain all reputation bonuses, and wrap up all the other odds and ends, completionists will be looking at more than 90 hours of playtime. We’re looking forward to seeing any and 100 percent speed runs after 1.0 launches!
As the team works on adding more enemies, rewards, equipment types, polished cinematics, customization options, new boss fights, and more for the 1.0 launch we’ll bug fixing as much as possible before release. Please continue to report issues you encounter—our QA team is working with the team to crush bugs as quickly as possible.
Sharp-eyed players may notice that the map currently shows eight star systems in Early Access. Many of you have already visited Ceto, Union, Zharkov, Khaït Nebula, and Drake. At launch, our sixth and final star system, Khione, will open to continue our story. Having eight systems was our original plan, but we decided to pack a fewer number of star systems with more explorable areas so those vast reaches of space feel less empty. The final event of the campaign will occur in a hand-crafted location for cinematic and dramaturgic reasons in Aethon (no spoilers), and it will not be an explorable system (yet…). You’ll still have 100+ handcrafted locations to explore as promised in our Kickstarter. In fact, we exceed the number of hand-crafted locations we’d planned to create by 20%, but just with a slightly different layout. The map will be updated at 1.0 accordingly.”
So, once the full version of Everspace 2 finally arrives, what comes next? Well, Rockfish is promising a free content update for the back half of this year, and a major (presumably paid) expansion for 2024.
“We’ve talked a little about future free DLC/updates and a paid expansion during our weekly streams without going into too much detail. We wanted to focus on nailing the v1.0 release first and living up to our initial promises before getting carried away by talking about upcoming content. That said, we’re happy to share that we’re planning to have a free content update in the second half of 2023 and that the creative team has already started working on a major expansion, scheduled for mid-2024.”
Everspace 2 launches on PC on April 6. Xbox Series X/S and PS5 versions of the game will arrive sometime this summer.
