Set in a persistent open world, it is driven by a captivating sci-fi story that picks up shortly after the events of its predecessor, but instead of the previous roguelike game mechanics, the focus in EverSpace 2 will be on open world gameplay combined with classic RPG elements and extended storytelling. 

Thanks to the expanded perks and a brand new class-based player ship system with dozens of models, players can also fully customize their spaceship to their individual playing style with weapons, plating, and equipment, similar to classic RPG character development. Despite all the innovations, EverSpace 2 remains true to its space shooter core and presents fast-paced space action in the well-known EverSpace style.

The story of EverSpace 2 continues from its successful predecessor. As one of the surviving clone pilots, the player is faced with the remnants of his past: the cloning program has been canceled, the colonial authorities have placed a bounty on him, and now that dying means the ultimate death the search for the meaning of life suddenly takes on a whole new importance. Fate, however, has big plans and soon the player discovers what it means to evolve from a former military clone to a truly real person. EverSpace 2 not only creates a powerful gaming experience, but also one that is visually impressive in the beautiful infinity of space where breathtaking cinematic scenery invites - encourages - exploration.

To ensure the narrative quality of the 20+ hours campaign, with countless side missions, ROCKFISH Games is working with creative minds such as Joshua Rubin, who has been involved in AAA productions such as Destiny, Assassin's Creed II, and The Walking Dead. Streamline Studios and Volta will also be involved as external development partners. 

It sounds like right out of a sci-fi horror movie: An aggressive virus is spreading around the globe, causing great uncertainties, severe supply chain issues and cancellations of big international events pretty much everywhere. Unsurprisingly, all our GDC meetings with major platform holders and potential console co-publishing partners have been canceled, too. We are now setting up conference calls or meetings at upcoming events. Right now, we are prepared for everything and are hoping for the best. In short: We have to deal with a lot of uncertainties regarding business development, external game production as well as marketing and PR. 

Another issue is that some AAA blockbuster titles will hit our initial Steam Early Access release date: The hotly-anticipated open-world sci-fi shooter RPG Cyberpunk 2077 was recently pushed back to September, plus the brand new sci-fi looter shooter RPG Outriders from Square Enix has just been announced to release the same month, too. Obviously, there is quite an overlap between those audiences and ours, so we have decided it wouldn't be wise to directly compete against two sci-fi shooter RPG juggernauts, leaving not much room for any other sci-fi shooter coming out at the same time. 

Considering all those new challenges, we had to make a tough decision about postponing the EverSpace 2 launch on Steam Early Access, now aiming for early December this year. Consequently, we’re also pushing the closed Alpha back to the end of May and the closed Beta to August. We will reach out to backers with creative rewards towards the end of this year. 

Even if this is just a strategic decision to mitigate commercial risks when major market conditions change, we are fully aware that some of you won’t be too happy about this, but we hope for your understanding. Thankfully, we’re in a financially comfortable position, so the project itself is not at risk, and we are developing the game internally as planned. This extra time also means we’ll have more content for you to enjoy in the closed Alpha, Beta, and Early Access builds.

Okay, now that we've got that news off our mental stack, let’s finally talk about some new awesome stuff in EverSpace 2.

Cockpits

Fast-paced combat in open space as well as inside of interior locations will remain the main pillar of the EverSpace franchise, so location awareness in 3D space as well as strafing quickly in any direction is key to survival. This is a reason why playing in 3rd person view is advantageous. However, we know from the predecessor, there is also an avid group of space pilots who put game immersion above everything else so we’re spending quite some effort on designing detailed cockpits with fully functional instruments for each player ship subclass.

You can see in the early concept art above that each cockpit interior is based on the exterior geometry of each subclass, so when swapping views the transition between exterior and interior looks accurate. The distinctive cockpit designs will also make you immediately aware of which subclass you are currently piloting. 

As the cockpit system is modular, it even allows us to display certain parts of the geometry based on the ship’s tier, class or subclass. So are the positions of the display panels, whereas the interior materials will be based on the color scheme of the ship. 

Similar to the original EverSpace, we'll have special effects displayed on the cockpit's windshield based on the status of the ship, like the current damage and shield level. We also plan to display vital information on the cockpit displays so that you can even play without any HUD elements for the ultimate immersion of space piloting.

State Of VR

Now, before some of you ask: We still haven’t decided if we will support VR at some point. All we can say is that based on the experience from the predecessor, supporting VR is a ton of work for many reasons (like overhauling the UI, rebalancing the game, optimizing to demanding VR specifications) for a total addressable market of presumably close to 35 million on PC and console. 

At first sight, that number doesn’t look too shabby. However, the technical requirements for VR, as well as significant fragmentation issues and major marketing challenges, have to be factored in.

To elaborate a bit further, optimizing for PSVR on a regular PS4 all the way to the brand new Valve Index with its proprietary VR controllers takes even more effort than porting a typical PC game designed for mouse + keyboard input to also run with proper gamepad controls on Xbox360/PS3 all the way to Xbox Series X/PS5. 

On the marketing side of things, we have seen non-VR players who ignore or hesitate to buy games with a VR tag. While on the other hand, quite a lot of VR players miss or have trouble altering graphic settings in games with optional VR support, resulting in negative reviews and complaints about performance issues in VR, which of course hurt overall sales. Last but not least, it would actually be hard to justify to our entire community if we spent a lot of development resources exclusively on a feature for a comparatively small group of players.

Therefore, we decided to look at VR as a separate platform that requires a solid business case to make it worthwhile to support. Long story short, EverSpace 2 for VR is currently not on our list, but who knows what kind of deal might happen in the future…?

Assault Fighter Redesign

As you have probably seen in our previous vlog about player ships, we also spent a lot of time and effort on making sure that our modular design approach does not lead to a pool of generic-looking ships. Our mantra is that every model has to look slick and distinctive but also fit in its subclass. While we were very pleased with the community feedback on our ship designs so far, we felt the original bi-wing design of the Assault Fighter was underwhelming if not a bit awkward, so we decided to come up with a redesign.

The redesign of the Assault Fighter Wing 3 features twin turbine-aero-spike engines combined with the typical multi-wing design of the assault fighter subclass. This agile combat craft gets its iconic and distinctive shape through angled primary wings and shorter, horizontal secondary wings that are directly attached to the frontal section of the twin engines. In the next design iteration, we will make some changes to the front parts of the engine as they feature typical design elements that are usually found at the engine’s rear. 

Apart from that, the redesigned Assault Fighter is our new favorite player ship, and we would love to hear your feedback in the comments below or on Discord.

Ultimate Abilities

What’s a looter shooter without a devastating superpower attack that you can unleash to gain back the upper hand when under great pressure...? Exactly! Think of your class-based Super in Destiny or Ultimate in Anthem, Overwatch or anyMOBA. 

For those who are new to this, here is how it’ll work in EverSpace 2: Ultimates (ULTs) are special ship abilities that can be activated to unleash a mighty offensive or defensive power. They need to be charged by shooting down enemies, or, later in the game after the right perk has been unlocked, they can also be charged by other means, e.g. by collecting energy orb remains or getting hit by lightning. 

Each Ultimate is tied to a specific ship subclass, designed to exploit its full potential. For example, a certain heavy subclass might have an energy shield that reflects incoming shots back to the attackers, while one of the light subclasses unleashes a power that allows the ship to quickly teleport between targets, leaving behind a shredding energy trail, corrosive mines or web fields.

As with the successful campaign of its predecessor in 2015, the EverSpace community will thus be involved in the development process as early as possible. On the other hand, the financial independence of the studio will be further secured in order to ensure full creative control at all times during production and, if successful, to even increase the scope of the game by activating stretch goals.

EverSpace 2 will clearly outperform its predecessor in terms of both audiovisual quality and scope, which is reflected in the significantly higher development budget.

Early access of EverSpace 2 on Steam is currently scheduled for December 2020, with the full version for PC, PS4 and Xbox One scheduled for release in the second half of 2021.