Lead a factory colony on an alien world, or rise up against your corporate overlords, in Dawn Apart, a 'space colony and factory sim' coming to Steam later this year

My initial impression of Dawn Apart, based solely on the trailer that appeared at the PC Gaming Show 2025, is that it looks like Satisfactory crossed with Red Faction. Red Satisfaction? Maybe that's too much of a stretch, but the vibe is there: It's a "space colony and factory sim with fully destructible environments," in which you'll head up a settlement on an alien world as it builds up a thriving industry, "or lead a rebellion against the very corporation pulling your strings."

Taking care of your people is job one, naturally: Providing food, shelter, and whatever else is needed to ensure they remain a productive and growing workforce. But there's more than one way to take care of people, and you may have to, you know, take care of 'em, so to speak: I could be wrong, maybe it's just a little bit of target shooting, but I'm pretty sure they've put a couple guys up against the wall at around the 39-second mark of the video. That's rarely a good sign for a functioning civil society.

Whether or not I'm right about that (and it's certainly possible I'm seeing things that just aren't there) and regardless of your feelings about the maintenance of law and order in general, it sounds like violence, or at least some persistent general unpleasantness, is going to be unavoidable on this extra-terrestrial world: Along with the day-to-day drudgery of factory life, your offworld employees will face dangers from both "relentless environmental threats and mysterious alien forces."

Dawn Apart will launch into early access on Steam later in 2025 and is expected to remain in that state for 20-30 months, and possibly longer depending on how development goes. The initial release will include "core gameplay systems such as automation/building, colony simulation and combat/destruction as well as features such as basic terraforming, day/night cycle, and a campaign and a sandbox mode," while the full release will include additional biomes and gameplay systems developed "with input from our community."

For now, a Dawn Apart demo is available on Steam—it bears the usual warnings about possible bugs, missing content, and other such not-ready-for-prime-time issues inherent in early-development games, but even so it looks like there's real potential here for interstellar micromanagers. You can also follow along with development on Discord.

Check out every game, trailer, and announcement in the PC Gaming Show 2025