Space Engineers Devs Announce Medieval Engineers

While Space Engineers is still in Early Access, developers Keen Software House are looking for more engineering opportunities. Today they announced Medieval Engineers. Given that I used to cheekily describe Space Engineers as "a Minecraftbut in space," I don't know where this leaves me. Medieval engineers in their leather aprons will dig and landscape, of course, but it'll also have mechanical gadgets, and physics-based building and destruction with structural integrity. You can design siege engines to smash your mate's castle, for starters. Come watch that in the trailer.

Medieval Engineers is another sandbox build 'em up, but this time tied to realities of the fifth to fifteenth centuries. Space rockets are out, for starters, but you can make a nice windmill or a trebuchet. Engineering looks pretty freeform, rather than following blueprints, and I'm sure we'll see some delightful self-destroying machines.

Medieval Engineers shouldn't affect ongoing work on Space Engineers, Keen Software founder Marek Rosa has said in a blog post. He explains that they've hired new folks, and are actually planning to bring bits from Medieval over to Space. They're looking at taking its structural integrity system, mechanical blocks, physically-based rendering, and more into Space. The two will feed each other tech and ideas.

Keen plan to launch Medieval Engineers onto Steam Early Access this year. The initial release is likely to be a single-player 'creative' mode sandbox with Steam Workshop support. Multiplayer, survival mode, and all that Minecraftbut jazz are planned for later.