Defend your interstellar factory when Dyson Sphere Program gets combat this December

A new trailer from Gamera Games came out of Tokyo Game Show this week, showing off a new look at combat gameplay in Youthcat Studio's interstellar factory-builder and giving a release date: December 2023 will be when the Rise of the Dark Fog update releases for free to all owners of Dyson Sphere Program. A second, longer trailer also released goes more in-depth with gameplay footage of the Icarus robot defending its factory from attack.

A variety of enemies have also been revealed. The Dark Fog will both deploy swarming units to planetary surfaces, apparently in several airborne varieties requiring different strategies to defeat, and launch fleets of ships from its space hives to bombard your factories with lasers from orbit. Defending against those will require planetary defense shields, which can be built and expanded until they cover entire worlds.

It's actually kind of exciting as someone who was initially skeptical about adding a real-time strategy element to Dyson Sphere Program, a game I mostly enjoyed because of the sprawling connection of logistics it let me create. The auto-rebuild is pretty high on my list of things I'd need to enjoy it at all.

"Even if defenses fail and multiple production lines are destroyed, you don't have to panic about losing facilities they’ve spent a lot of time building. They can simply upgrade the "Auto-Rebuild" technology. Provided they have sufficient items, drones will automatically reconstruct the destroyed buildings, which will gradually return to normal operating conditions after reconstruction," says Youthcat Studio in their update.

For a deeper look into the combat you can check out the longer gameplay video, which has some really cheesy narration dialogue that can be hard to stomach, but does show off specific systems in action like Gauss, Implosion, and Laser defense turrets.

That also shows of "supernova" mode, which is apparently an activated buff that speeds up the power of your defensive towers to fend off particularly potent waves of enemies. The developers describe it as a "large-scale fireworks display."

You can see both trailers and read the announcement for Dyson Sphere Program's Rise of the Dark Fog update on Steam.

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.