Rust marks end of four-year Early Access with a visual overhaul

Multiplayer survival game Rust has finally left Early Access, increasing its price from $20 to $35 and tweaking its update schedule from weekly to monthly to ensure changes are properly thought through. There's now a testing branch, too, for those that want to trial new features before they make it into the game. And you can still expect a lot of new additions: creator Garry Newman said last month that the transition from Early Access to full release "was more like leaving Prototyping and entering Alpha".

The biggest change to accompany that transition is a graphics refresh. Environment artist Vincent Mayeur wrote in a blog post that he has rethought the visuals "from the ground up, combing over almost every aspect of the game, striving for consistency".

He said that visual consistency had been eroded throughout development because of the need for constant changes, many of which didn't match up, so he's "undoing what it has become and starting afresh". In practice, what that means is improved lighting, a refresh of the colour palette and post processing, prettier rocks and foliage, and lots of new types of trees dotted around the landscape.

Away from graphics, the team have reworked weapon recoil. Previously, your aim would sway randomly every few second while aiming. Now, it will only sway if you haven't fired for several seconds, so you'll be able to track a target and tap fire knowing that your gun isn't going to start jumping all over the place. This will perhaps make it easier to kill enemies if you get your hands on a rifle, although the AK47 now has slightly more recoil overall.

There's a whole list of other, more minor changes (including giving out squishy frog boots to anybody that bought the game in Early Access), which you can read about in that blog post. Scroll down to the bottom if you just want the long list of changes.

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.