Oft-times touted as an ‘HD Wallpaper Sim’, Everspace, the beautiful roguelike space shooter from indie developer Rockfish Games has officially left Steam’s early access! Originally scheduled to leave early access on May 26, the ‘3D FTL‘ game instead launched on May 25, breaking free from its space training wheels early and going live with version 1.0 on Steam. With the official debut, Rockfish has also released a gameplay trailer which can be seen below:

Version 1.0 of the roguelike title adds some major features to the game. First and foremost, as listed in the patch notes, it has officially “added the story”, which should please those looking for a stronger sense of purpose than simply ‘getting to the end’. Another significantly impactful change in v1.0 is the removal of scanning probes. Rockfish discusses this at length within the patch notes:

We watched a lot of streams and videos of people playing EVERSPACE and noticed that crafting/using scanning probes has become too obligatory. The routine would be to craft and use a scanning probe at the beginning of every location which is neither fun nor does it promote explorative gameplay. We realized that a lot of gameplay elements would not work the way we intended, i.e. cloud fields, comm hubs, jump suppressor signals and many more. On the other hand, not being able to craft scanning probes (e.g. due to a lack of gas) would result in frustration, so increasing the crafting costs was not and option.

Our solution: Remove scanning probes completely, add radar memory (so that scanned objects will remain on the HUD), increase the amount of comm hubs and introduce a new device, the sensor relay which increases the ship’s sensor range.  With these changes in effect, we noticed a huge improvement in gameplay, shifting the approach towards risk/reward driven exploration rather than dully working off HUD markers one after another.”

The patch also adds several new features to Everspace including achievements, new ship colors, VR support for the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, and more. The full list of notes can be seen below and it includes the various tweaks and bug fixes that are accompanying the new features of the game.

Everspace v1.0

New Features

• Added the story
• Added more points of interest
• Added achievements (version dependent)
• Added new device: Sensor Relay
• Added new ship colors
• Added VR support for Oculus Rift and HTC Vive
• Added option to switch Yaw and Roll mapping for controller

Tweaks

• Removed scanning probes from the game.
• Added “radar memory”: scanned objects will now remain on the HUD indefinitely
• Increased spawn chance of comm hubs
• Changed “Low Profile” glyph negative effect: Instead of increased jump cooldown there is now a jump suppressor in every location
• Changed “Predetermination” glyph positive effect: Instead of no jump suppressors G&B and Okkar are now hostile to each other
• Decreased “Bullseye” glyph shield regeneration percentage from 20% to 10%
• Increased “Leech” glyph hull hitpoints regeneration from 10 HP to 20 HP per kill
• Changed “Devastator” subroutine values from 50% / 30% to 40% / 40%
• Gunship turret kills and player drone kills will now reset the kill timer while using the Berzerker glyph
• Spawn superior loot with high enhanced weapons chance behind locked doors of derelict colonial stations
• Give a credits bonus for each sector reached
• Show total cost of perks with sub levels and credits already spent on level
• Added more codex entries
• Added illustrations to codex entries
• Okkar Interceptors will now occasionally use teleporters
• Replace Gatling Turret with Front Shield Generator in Gunship Loadout C
• Reduced energy consumption of some weapon mods
• Reduced energy consumption of device mods
• Reduced Damage Booster bonus
• Reduced Shield Booster Mk2 and Mk3 bonus
• Damage Limiter consumable reduction is now calculated separately after armor damage reduction instead of adding it to the armor damage reduction
• Increased Missile Defense System duration
• Balanced Ancient “Teleporter” alien: Less damage but better accuracy
• Set maximum number of ARC-9000s per secondary slot from 2 to 1
• Further increased Time Extender cooldown durations
• Increased speed at which plasma is collected in plasma fields
• Decreased Ancient Weapon damage bonus
• Increased Nano Injector repair amount to match the required Nano Bots
• Grey Goos are no longer affected by ARC-9000
• Performance optimizations, especially on medium and low settings
• Prevent black holes from spawning close to ancient structures
• Do not show missile lock warnings if Beeline enhancement is installed
• Increased Flak Cannon 5-5 damage
• Increased Sensor Drone hitpoints
• Increased Elite Access Key drop chance from 40% to 75%
• Made a few UI changes to the cockpit displays
• Changed spacing, colors and positions of a few UI elements
• Added run duration to hall of fame

Bug Fixes

• Fixed Splitter Glyph not forcing a start with only one empty secondary weapon slot when having loadout B or C selected
• Fixed Equalizer Glyph not affecting Health after very first jump (start of game) and after using jump gates
• Fixed Leech Glyph not regenerating hull hitpoints when destroying turrets
• Fixed Bullseye Glyph falsely recharging the shield when hitting non-NPC objects
• Fixed splitted “Ancient Friends” being hostile and damaging the player
• Fixed tooltips showing on locked ships loadouts
• Fixed some navigation issues in setup screen
• Fixed being able to escape from system map before jumping away by pressing next/previous tab
• Fixed large ships (e.g. Okkar Corvettes) receiving huge amounts of collision damage
• Fixed “Colonial Interceptor” always being displayed in end of run screen, even if Colonial Scout or Colonial Gunship were chosen
• Fixed visual upgrades for ships getting mixed up
• Fixed spread mod not affecting energy
• Fixed charge duration of weapons which was affected by energy consumption reduction
• Fixed Corrosion Missiles stop doing damage if Outlaw Drone Carrier brings up shield
• Fixed ship geometry not being hidden in 1st person no-cockpit view when playing with a high FOV
• Fixed freighter jump charge effect not being displayed

So, what are your thoughts about Everspace? Plan on giving the game a try? Did you play the game during its early access period? Let us know in the comments section below and, as always, stay tuned to DFTG for all the latest gaming and entertainment news! Don’t forget to follow Don’t Feed the Gamers on Twitter for our 24/7 news feed!