Space Engineers releases visual update that was a year in the making

Co-op build 'em up Space Engineers, one of the best space games on PC, just received a major new update that overhauls the graphics and changes the way that surface vehicles work. A video for the update, above, shows that the game indeed looks better than ever, with lots of new particle effects and a freshly polished colour palette.

Most of the audio changes, which you can also read about in the blog or in the full change log for the update, tweak existing sounds to make them more impactful (you now hear a heavier sound when your character falls to the floor, for example), adds new sounds and changes the way the game prioritises sounds based on the distance of their origin from your character.

The changes aren't all on the presentation, though. Guns are more precise, players move faster, and gravity behaves more realistically. Some of the biggest changes have been made to surface vehicles (or "wheels", as the developers calls them). Players will now find that they're easier to handle, and you can hit a button to perform a suspension jump—handy if you get stuck on the environment.

Again, all the changes, including a long list of bug fixes, can be found here.

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.