Gratuitous Space Battles 2 is now available

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Yesterday was the day that the world finally got its first real look at Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and so in a way it's appropriate that it was also the day that Gratuitous Space Battles 2 left beta and went into full release.

"Yup, it’s true, the much-awaited sequel to the 200,000+ selling indie strategy game Gratuitous Space Battles, is finally on sale," developer Cliff Harris wrote on his blog. "This has taken us twenty months to make, involved a complete redesign and re-engineering of the graphics engine, numerous changes, improvements and fixes, not least the fact that the game now lets you design the look of the ships from scratch AND has Steam workshop support, achievements, trading cards and so on."

Despite the many improvements over the original, Harris emphasized that GSB2 is "actually not *that* demanding" in hardware terms, and going by the system requirements posted on Steam he's not kidding: The minimum requirement is a 2GHz CPU, 4GB RAM, and "pretty much any [video] card" that has at least 512MB and supports DirectX 9.0c.

There's also a launch trailer, which isn't necessarily the best launch trailer ever (even Harris described it as "cheesy"), but you get the point: huge fleets, huge battles, huge explosions. Gratuitous Space Battles 2 is available now on Steam, GOG, the Humble Store, or directly from GratuitousSpaceBattles2.com. We'll have a review soon.

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.