Astroneer now lets you kickflip across planets on hoverboards

The latest update makes the game 20% more radical and 43% more sick

News by Craig Pearson Contributor

Published on June 23, 2021

I might have to return to Astroneer. I played it a lot when it was first released, but drifted away like George Clooney in the movie Gravity. What’s grabbing my attention now, a whole two years after the initial release? They just added hoverboards in a new update. I will now return to it, also like George Clooney in the movie Gravity, but without the terrible twist.

The Jet Powered update adds a brace of new drivery doodads to the space exploration sim. The hoverboard interests me because my overriding memory of Astroneer is of a lot of wandering back and forth between resources and my base. I don’t know if they added anything in the meantime to speed up that process, but it doesn’t matter now. That hoverboard will do me just fine. I’ll be like Marty McFly in the far future of 2015.

They’ve also added a VTOL, which enables the player to steadily float above a planet on the hunt for resources. My other memory of Astroneer is that the vehicle movement was dangerously unstable, so this also prods my buttons. It’s like they made an update just for me. I’m downloading it on Steam right now to check it out again.

There are new missions to take explorers out to moons and planets, and the usual update tweaks. I particularly like the levelling block, which lets you create flatter surfaces. That seems very useful in the context of the bobbly planetoids.

The update is live now, and if I can tear myself away from Phantom Abyss, I’ll give Astroneer a play tonight.