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Whether it's making honest-to-god computers out of Minecraft redstone or constructing elaborate rube-goldberg machines in Garry's Mod, it seems unavoidable that any given sandbox game will eventually add complex mechanical systems. Well, now we can add Astroneer to that lineup with this week's Automation update, which lets you sit back on your space lawnchair and let the game do all the busywork for you. Assuming,…
Astroneer’s Exploration Update blasts off with jetpacks and glowsticks
We didn't travel the stars just to be stuck on solid ground. Gravity has kept a tight leash on chunky space adventure Astroneer for too long, but that stops now. Alien nasties can't you when you're 30 feet in the air, but gravity sure can. You packed enough fuel to get down safely, right? Last night's update for the adorably brutal space survivor is all…
Astroneer celebrates Apollo 11 with a time-limited lunar mission
To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar mission, space science 'em up Astroneer has turned its attention a little closer to home in a big update and time-limited event. Available now and running until August 31st, System Era Softworks are sending players to the barren moon of Desolo to search for the NASA lunar lander. Players who discover the old relic will…
Feature: Jetpack joyride
Astroneer is reaching for the stars in its upcoming jetpack update
Space survival craft 'em ups can be pretty grim places, what with the lack of oxygen and constant threat of being eaten alive by the resident fauna and all that, but for some developers there's nowhere more hostile than the mothership from which they all originate. “Throw a dart on Steam,” says Joe Tirado, head communications honcho for Astroneer, “and you could probably hit a…
Feature: Survival-crafting game as an adventure playground
If Peggle-era PopCap (Gawd rest its consumed soul) had survived into the era of survival, I reckon they'd have made something a lot like Astroneer. Where other sci-fi don't-die-'em-ups are soundtracked by the angry buzz of e'er-encroaching death, Astroneer's is all endorphin-inducing rising notes, delightful popping noises and the happy whirr of toylike tractors. Slowly asphyxiating to death in an unforgiving alien wasteland has never…
Astroneer has finally escaped the gravitational pull of early access and launched in full. System Era Softworks's survival sandbox stands out from its often-bloody peers by being non-violent, cooperative and scientifically minded. Players aren't pioneers sent to tame foreign lands, but explorers, discovering new alien flora, fauna and environments. Launch has been accompanied by the game's biggest update yet, overhauling the entire seven-world solar system,…
Astroneer takes one giant leap out of early access on February 6th
Cute space survival sandbox Astroneer isn't far from the finish line, say developers System Era Softworks, it'll be bounding out of early access in just a few months - February 6th, specifically. The studio have some big plans for the release - the launch version will include a "new exploration-focused adventure", taking you to new planets full of interesting new things to poke around, or…
As the song goes, in space no-one can hear you party like it's one-hundred-and-ninety-nine. Which is a shame given update 199 for Astroneer [official site] contains a whole bundle of things. It's not content-heavy/content-at-all-y which I know is a source of frustration for people who are playing it through Early Access. For people like me who pop back in every few months it's fun to…
Astroneer's [official site] devs have published their game development roadmap. To be clear, there is no road and no map. It's actually a Trello board which explains they are prioritising things like dedicated servers for multiplayer and a new pass of the terrain in general. Fun fact: There is also no map and no road in Astroneer itself. Instead you drive your little rover over…
I'm trying to do that thing of staying away from an Early Access game I'm really into so I don't burn out on it before it gets to actual release form. Subnautica is in that bucket, as is Astroneer [official site], although I'm sorely tempted by the latter now I'm writing about exploding hydrazine cans and looking at screenshots as I read the latest patch.…
I did enjoy Pip's tour of her space base in Astroneer [official site] and I'm quite keen to see what she might do after the explore-a-craft-o-sandbox's recent bug early access update. It adds ways to paint terrain, see, along with new ways to shape it. And sure, I guess it overhauls the research system and fixes bugs and blah blah but the point is: spacepaints.…
Feature: Gives us the joy of exploring for ourselves
Tutorials are a lot like first dates. They’re awkward but necessary, can be a total waste of time, and sometimes there’s a lot more hand-holding than you’d like. It would be best for everyone if we just skipped all that uncomfortable small talk and went straight to the middle part. The good part. Unfortunately, you can’t have a good relationship without getting to know someone…
Feature: “Content doesn’t stand in the way of content.”
This is The Mechanic, where Alex Wiltshire invites developers to discuss the inner workings of their games. This time, Astroneer [official site].Astroneer is a space game about hoovering up alien materials with a magic gun and listening to them plop into your backpack. And in this Astroneer has cracked something very special in crafting and resource management: it’s actually fun. Developer System Era Software has…
Feature:
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time. (Apart from the next week and a half while we hide in Horace's warm, warm fur.)Normally when selecting games for HYP, I favour those that are at least a few years old, so that the suggestion comes as a greater surprise. But Astroneer…
Feature: About that fungus...
Astroneer [official site] is so lovely. It's a really pretty game with this fondness of geometry and at the moment, in its early access phase, it's forgiving enough that I can potter in my sleep-deprived state without getting confused. There are also ace caves to explore and weird plants and ribcages and hostile fungi to find. To explain what I've been up to in the…
Feature: Minecraftbut made good
I drive the short trip back to my base, park my truck close enough to one of the buildings for the cable to attach, and offload the red blob from the back of my buggy. It looks like a thorned vegetable and I plug it into my research station, which is receiving power via cables from the solar panel on the back of my truck.…
Astroneer [official site] caught my eye at... GDC? Yes, it was GDC, earlier this year. It's a kind of planetary potterer where you bimble around doing space exploration and terrain reshaping as you search for crafting/trading resources. I remember I rather liked the polygonal art style and figured I'd probably end up with a bulging screenshot folder when I got to playing it. It looks…
We have been cooing at Astroneer [official site] on and off for the past year, its colourful planets, bouncing astronauts and clicky base-building. And although we enjoyed footage of little men bounding across low-poly worlds together and carving out tunnels in the rock with some sort of futuristic matter displacer, we didn’t know exactly when it would come out. Well, we still don’t know. Not…
It's been nearly a year since I last posted about Astroneer, in which I purred with delight at its planetary landscapes, bouncy buggies and spaceships, and the terrain-deforming vaccuum that seems to fuel your creations. Development continues and last week's PAX West brought a short new video.
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Curse my rush to share pretty things. It was only a few days ago that I wrote a post about the attractive GIFs of Astroneer [official site], a game about surviving on another planet by building a base and deforming terrain. Had I know that a trailer would arrive by the end of the week, I might have resisted. Watch it below -
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