It's just that you can use the jetpack to augment your movement and your traversal around the world." It still means you have to worry about 'Astroneer things'. "Adding a jetpack to the game doesn't mean you can just fly around forever now and that it's a flying game. "This is actually good, though, because this is one of the trade-offs of using the jetpack," he explains. "Wait, I didn't get any oxygen, oh no!" he cries as he hurries back to the safety of his oxygen tether. You see, as Tirado hurls our space lad off the edge of a cliff into a huge underground biome littered with giant mushrooms sprouting out of the walls, he suddenly realises he didn't equip any oxygen tanks, giving our poor, flailing astronaut about a minute of airtime before he suffocates horribly. They've also been mindful to make sure the jetpack's newfound freedom doesn't change the way players already enjoy the game – a point driven home in my demo by a rather lethal, if happy, accident. Spencer did an amazing job testing it out, and now the actual engineering team is making sure it works in multiplayer and works with existing saves." We hooked it all up and then we had a prototype. And so, the thruster from the rocket was scaled down - the art's not final, by the way! - and then we asked how we could add thrust to the player. "Our art director was like, 'I'll just prototype a jetpack'. "We spent a lot of time last year building out the tools for the foundation of the game that allow us to do things like this," says Tirado.
#Astroneer steam rock update
Fortunately, the groundwork they'd laid during the game's development meant that, far from getting knocked off course and losing sight of their other update goals, they were able to get a prototype up and running in practically no time at all. Due to make landfall in an upcoming update, I went to see it in action while I was over at PAX East, where S the developers were demoing an early version of it to the public.Īs I watched my little rubber space man leap off into the unknown, I was surprised to learn the jetpack was actually a fan request rather than something System Era Softworks had planned for all along in their post-launch road map. It's supposed to be a very relaxing experience, and we actually found a place where people love that."Īnd soon, Astroneer will be evolving again (although not quite to the same extent as that journey from its original prototype) with the arrival of the long-awaited jetpack, or as developers System Era Softworks endearingly call it, the "EXO Dynamics Personal Mobility Object". But as we went further and further, we realised people wanted something that was different from a normal space game, and I think we pushed that all the way to the other side of the spectrum with an extremely whimsical, light-hearted, not very dangerous game. "If we'd done that, we would have ended up with an extremely dark and lonely game, which was actually the first prototype. "Early access was good because it allowed us to figure out our identity and not just throw all the money on one idea," Tirado continues. Originally, however, it was going to be a very different game indeed. It's partly why Astroneer adopted such a bright and bubbly exterior during its run in early access, he adds. “Throw a dart on Steam,” says Joe Tirado, head communications honcho for Astroneer, “and you could probably hit a bunch of other things ". 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.