Xbox Addict

Everspace 1.0 Now Available via Xbox Play Anywhere

Everspace 1.0 is a big thing, as developers Rockfish Games finally have released the "long awaited" campaign that includes missions, cinematic flashbacks, and fully voiced cutscenes with text localization for up to 10 languages.

Here’s a bit of a summary of what Rockfish are excited about:

The Campaign

All players who have played Everspace in Game Preview have already experienced that the hero finds himself clueless in the cockpit of a space fighter at the beginning of the game. After completing basic pilot training, the peculiar on-board AI provides sometimes useful contextual information about the game world and its lore. Now in the full version, you’ll gradually unveil the mystery behind the hero’s existence and your mission through character encounters and cinematic memory flashbacks.

In the completely revamped final sector, you must survive an all-new boss fight that will provide the last piece of the campaign puzzle. But this will not be the end of the game. There’s still an important objective to accomplish to reach the final destination of your journey — no more spoilers beyond this point!

A Long Way Coming

Since the initial release into Game Preview in September 2016, Rockfish Games have been working closely with the community to further improve the gaming experience. Thanks to that feedback they have released several major updates with more than 500 additions, tweaks, and fixes. The first major additions were two more player ships, the Colonial Scout and Colonial Gunship, each with different capabilities and a broad range of weapons, devices and consumables, allowing for varied ways to play the game.

• The Colonial Scout has great maneuverability, the highest top speed of all three vessels, an exclusive cloaking device and a powerful long-range shock rifle. It also features the exclusive Sensor Range perk helping spot potential dangers or the whereabouts of traders and service stations from a distance.

• However, the Scout’s hull strength is quite low. Be careful not to ram into any obstacles while dashing through asteroid fields or exploring gigantic shipwrecks and derelict space stations.

• The Colonial Gunship flies like a tank with a massive hull and lots of firepower. It comes equipped with a fusion blaster and flak cannon as primary weapons, heavy missiles, cluster mines, combat drones, and an automated gatling turret which can be upgraded. Initially, the Gunship did not have any kind of active protection which was not well-received within the community. So, we decided to make the front shield generator exclusively available for the Gunship, raised its nano bots cap, and added the exclusive Armor perk.

Derelict Space Stations

Earlier this year, Rockfish Games added the remains of Colonial stations which can be explored in order to discover permanent ship enhancements. These uncovered “sub-routines” can be equipped in the hangar before each run. Some buff various ship attributes, others change the play style significantly by, for example, making all enemies visible on the radar (with the downside of letting your enemies track you down more quickly due to the stronger radar signature of the enhancement).

Getting a hold of these enhancements is no easy task: the sometimes-humongous station wrecks are equipped with massive security measures like turrets, laser barriers, combat drones, and security doors. Another threat is the plasma discharges that put the player in danger of being pushed away and colliding forcefully with other objects.

The Ancients

In the most recent update (v0.7), a new alien faction simply known as The Ancients was added. Ruins of the once technically advanced race hold teleporters that work as shortcuts, letting you skip a few locations on your journey. They also contain valuable Glyphs, which function similarly to the sub-routines mentioned above, albeit with a lot more fantastical effects, greatly affecting the overall play style. However, to get your hands on them, you must face the mysterious ancient beings themselves.

Functional Cockpit Displays

The second major addition of version 0.7 were functional cockpit displays for all player ships. In addition to the known HUD elements, a lock target info and the component damage overview of the player ship was included. This addition also came with an option for purists to turn off the HUD elements in first-person mode and solely rely on the cockpit instruments.

So there you have it folks, some big things have been added and refined for Everspace. We know that the game is deep and involving, and we think that we might just have to make time for it.