Gratuitous Announcements: Gratuitous Space Battles 2

Gratuitous Space Battles was not a game of masterful tactics. It didn't allow damn fool gambits. GSB was won or lost long before then. GSB is played in the planning, the design and customisation of a huge space fleet and the careful behaviours you order them to follow. Once your ships are ready to launch, it could run the numbers and say if you won or lost, but that would be somewhat against the name. The eponymous space battles are gratuitous, with cruisers and fighters and lasers and missiles and drones and so many explosions for you to simply watch.

Expect more explosions, as sequel Gratuitous Space Battles 2 is now officially announced.

Creator Cliff Harris of one-man studio Positech has been posting about his progress with the sequel for months now on his devblog, just never formally 'announced' it, so this is a bit gratuitous really.

GSB2 will making all those battles even prettier. It's still 2D, but using new lighting and tricks to look less flat, and tarted up with flashier effects, zappier zapguns, more planety planets, and other stuff you might look at and comment "Hey, that's quite pretty." The battle view will support multiple monitors too, for people who want their entire field of view filled with spaceships and explosions.

Away from the pretty and towards the do-y, it'll bring refuelling for fighters, formation improvements, new ship types in destroyers, dreadnoughts, and gunships, and other things secret for now.

Positech plan to release GSB2 late this year or early next year. Click this for a 5138x1485 version: