“It’s the kind of space game we’ve always wanted to make, but never had the money for.”
Rockfish Games
Something I would consider a sleeper hit, was Everspace. The studio behind the games development, Rockfish Games, has gone through a bit of turmoil and been on the backfoot until recently. However, their kickstarter for Everspace 2 has just broken their main goal, meaning the game can go ahead with all plans. Double the budget of the original, with a team of over 20, the kickstarter is still forging ahead with additions at each major milestone. But, what ‘is’ Everspace, and why are people so hyped to get a bigger and better sequel developed? In this Everspace 2 preview, I’ll take a look into the main features, and how they’re changing.
Everspace was a sci-fi space combat game released in 2016, focusing on roguelike progression, non-linear storytelling, and procedural level generation. In spirit, Everspace played like an in-cockpit Faster Than Light (FTL), and both are some of my favourite games. Everspace 2 is the sequel to this, and from the sounds of it, they’ve expanded on everything feasibly possible to look at. Everspace 2 is set in a persistent open world, with an approximately 20-hour long campaign. Keeping the procedural heart of its predecessor, Everspace 2 will also include a set, designed section of worlds, with its outer, deep-space systems being completely randomly generated.
Everspace had a wonderfully simple and yet intriguing story, this is something Rockfish intend to continue with into their sequel. The immortality your character has, through returning to a new clone after death, has been done away with in Everspace 2, and at the beginning of the game, you’re attempting to lie low out of fear for yourself, finding it difficult to process being said clone. In addition to story being told in comic style, in-game cut scenes will deliver a more cinematic experience than the first Everspace.
In Everspace 2 this story will be occupying much more of the game-time, the completely random story events in the original Everspace have been scrapped, for an RPG-style progression, and a much more focused linear path.
One of the critical changes in Everspace 2 will be the addition of planetary combat. No longer will the player be stuck only within the confines of space itself, they will also be able to fly to and visit locations on the planets themselves, each of these being hand-designed and created, as opposed to the procedural in Everspace.
There will be at least 8 star systems, more than the original, and each of these will have its own unique setting, feel, and alien races. You will be able to interact with each of these, carry out side quests along with the main story, like many other open-world games.
Gameplay itself will remain relatively the same as the original game, with fast-paced space fighter action taking up the majority of a players time, in-between looting, customising, trading and exploring. There are an impressive number of ways to customise your space wagon of destruction, in fact, in total there are 100+ ships that you can choose from, each with advantages and disadvantages.
Ships will not only have different looks and customisable weapons, but different stats. Each will handle differently, have different hit points, and abilities. Abilities will be similar to the kind you find in an RPG, and will be unique to each type of ship. This style of play, for me, at least – likely means I’ll be choosing a specific type of ship I like the feel of, and sticking with it throughout the game, upgrading when needed. This is a massive improvement on the first Everspace, and I’m excited to see how they implement it now they’ve hit their funding goal.
Roadmap
The team at Rockfish Games have already produced a roadmap of how they expect game development to go, now they’ve met the funding they needed this should be mostly set in stone, minus any major glitches. Early Access in Sept 2020 is said to be on Steam, with them waiting for the game to be fully developed before releasing on other consoles in Q3 2021.
I for one will be staying tuned for more gameplay videos, information on the open world, what they’re keeping random/procedural, and other gameplay changes! Any news – I’ll of course keep you informed via a further Everspace 2 preview, and thanks for reading! If I can get my hands on a demo I’ll be flying in with a much more in-depth Everspace 2 preview in the future.
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