Everspace launches into early access today

Lovely lookin' space shooting roguelite Everspace releases into early access today, on both Steam and GOG. What is it? It's a game about exploring a procedurally generated universe in a little spaceship (no No Man's Sky-style planetary landings here), a ship you'll upgrade and improve, before you inevitably die in a big fiery explosion and yes, yes I know there'd be no oxygen for that in actual space.

Everspace promises a non-linear story, and the ability to keep credits and blueprints between runs, so this will differ from some other roguelites in ways beyond the shiny 3D art and nifty visual effects. Matthew Cox went into more detail in a post a few months ago, but know that the beta hitting Steam and GOG today is one that went out to Kickstarter backers in July, and that developer Rockfish has fixed "most" of the bugs reported since then.

It's unclear what's included in the current build, exactly, but over the next few months Rockfish plans to add VR support, two additional player ships, a Hardcore mode with proper permadeath, and oh yeah, that aforementioned story.

The full version of the game is expected to launch sometime in January, February or March of next year.

Tom Sykes

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.