House Of The Dying Sun Blasts Off

There is a space fight up on Steam
They call the Dying Sun
It's been the ruin of many a poor boy
And god, I know Adam's one

"Everything looks and feels as good as I'd expect from a big studio release, but in reality this is a game doing a lot with a lot, at least when it comes to the combat," he said after playing House of the Dying Sun [official site] when it hit Steam Early Access in June. If you rathered waiting for the finished game, hey: HotDS has hit version 1.0, and properly launched overnight.

House of the Dying Sun, to briefly recap, is a space shooter about hunting the lords who betrayed your dying empire. Across a string of campaign scenarios, you pit your fleet against theirs, hopping into the cockpit of an interceptor while issuing orders to your pals. You earn upgrades across the campaign and... it all looks very pretty:

Over those five months on Early Access, Marauder Interactive boshed in a daily challenge mode with procedurally-generated waves of enemies, improved the AI, tweaked balance, fixed bugs, and so on.

This week's v1.0 update has brought a new difficulty mode, Dragon Difficulty, where you only ever get fighters - no capital ships. Marauder say it "tests your interceptor piloting to the fullest. You will be required to truly understand your loadout, your enemies' loadouts, and the parameters of the mission." Also new with Dragon are two electronic warfare ships: warp-jamming interdictors and weapon-jamming frigates.

House of the Dying Sun is £13.49/17,99€/$17.99 on Steam. It does support Vive and Rift cybergoggles too, if you have a pair of goggs and think you can stomach space combat. But no, HOTAS gear is not officially supported; it may work but the game's made for gamepads or keyboard and mouse. Do read what Adam made of the initial Early Access version, as he did have some reservations and I'm not sure they're all resolved.