Greetings to everyone who gives even the tiniest bit of a damn about our little bearded brainchild.
If you read the headline, you’ve probably already guessed that we’re announcing the launch of Early Access this August! And if you didn’t read it - we’re announcing the launch of Early Access this August! Hooray!
To celebrate this announcement, we even cobbled together a small trailer, which we showed at IGN Live:
Besides the wonderfully pointless trailer, we’ve also prepared a video showing the first 15 minutes of the game. We’ll be sharing it with you very soon, but for now it’s waiting for its big moment - which, translated into human language, means “we’re trying to squeeze it into some event or another.”
Fair warning: if you hate spoilers, feel free to skip it. They’re minor, but it is the actual beginning of the game. If your memory is anything like ours - less of a feature and more of an urban legend - then feel free not to skip it.
Those of you who played the demo will probably notice a few changes, because almost nothing from it is staying. Even the kid with the coffinbots, has vanished somewhere... But don’t worry, they’ll be back. Someday.
Anyway, trailers are trailers, but what’s actually going on with development right now? At the moment, the project is in the early polishing stage. The whole foundation for launch is in place, and it works - powered by profanity and tears, obviously.
On top of the technical side, there are still plenty of visual tweaks, localization, sound work, and all the other joys of game development ahead of us, but... the light at the end of the tunnel is already shining!
Of course, without your support, comments, reviews, ideas, and lovingly written insult emails, we would have withered away by now. So thank you, comrades, for sticking with us all this time! Where would we be without our cosmonauts...
And this is where we should point out that Early Access is launching first and foremost for the people who love Breathedge 2 and are waiting for it just as much as we are. Our entire team, in full and with full responsibility, hereby honestly declares:
if you want a complete game with perfect balance, zero rough edges, and one hundred million hours of content, then Early Access is NOT FOR YOU!
But if, like us, you enjoy diving into projects before they’ve even fully been invented, aren’t afraid of possible bugs, don’t mind that the game won’t be complete from start to finish yet, and want to take part in its development, share ideas, and become pioneers of this deranged little corner of space - then Early Access is for you.
Just like with the first game, Early Access will start at the lowest price, and that price may increase with major updates until it reaches the final price at full release.
A few words about Early Access. What is it, and what should you expect from it?
As we’ve done before, we try to treat Early Access like a release. It should be as polished, fleshed-out, debugged, and optimized as possible - or, more precisely, that should apply to the part of the game you’re getting. The main difference between Early Access and the release version should be the amount of available content, not the fact that it’s some graphically miserable 10 FPS craft project. It’ll be 12 FPS! Guaranteed!*
*Guarantee only applies to the developers’ own PCs.
At the same time, new content will be added as large new sections of the game, rather than by constantly reworking what’s already there. This isn’t a huge, half-empty location that we’ll gradually fill in later, but more like the opening chapter of a big adventure - one that, more or less, will remain what it is all the way up to the release version.
In terms of scope, Breathedge 2’s Early Access will be significantly larger than the Early Access launch of the first Breathedge. We’d say it’s getting close to the size of the first two chapters, maybe even three, but that would be pure guesswork and also a lie. The comparison isn’t quite fair yet, because several major mechanics are still missing - base building, for example, or personal transport.
Early Access will include all the core basic mechanics of playing as the Man in open space: looting, crafting, repairing, DIY, armor, combat, eating, breathing, equipment, questing, collectible hunting, achievements, dragging objects around, yanking things out, tearing things off, opening things, pulling things, dying an agonizing death by suffocation, and so on. Everything that was in the demo, plus a generous extra heap on top.
Unlike the first three chapters of the original game, the abundance of mechanics, quests, and interesting locations won’t be smeared across a dozen cubic kilometers of nothingness, but concentrated in a smaller, much denser area to explore. Sure, we enjoyed putting a weight on the W key and going to sleep between quest markers in Breathedge, but apparently that might not be peak gameplay.
The Early Access story will cover the beginning of the crew’s adventures after surviving the crash of the Liner Without a Name and defeating the Mother Station. If you haven’t played the first game, don’t worry - everything will be equally confusing for everyone. We’re trying to make the story stand on its own, while gradually introducing the lore and the world of the game more deeply than we did in the first part.
Those who did finish the first Breathedge will simply understand a little more and notice a few extra details. And, of course, we couldn’t resist throwing in some references. Yes, yes, we’re naughty like that.
But what about base building, the ship, planets, exploding galaxies, and battles on giant robot unicorns? All of that is coming! Just not today, as they say.
This is probably a good time to talk about where the project goes from here. We already have quite a lot prepared for future updates, and work on the first post-Early Access update is already quietly underway. It’s going to be a big one: personal transport, both small and large, the next helping of lore and quests, the next part of the location - or even locations - the Man’s progression, new NPCs, and a whole pack of extremely important mechanics.
We’ll try to update Breathedge 2 as often, and as generously, as possible, while also avoiding the classic “see you in several years” approach to updates. All the long work we’ve already done should help with that.
At the same time, it’s very important to us not to murder your save files. We’re doing our best to avoid wipes, so those who start playing in Early Access won’t have to replay everything from scratch twenty times.
Of course, we’ll be keeping a close eye on your feedback, social media posts, and Early Access reviews, and we’ll try to stay as open as possible to everyone who wants to help improve or change the game. We do have our own unshakable vision for the project, but we’re never against adding something wonderful that was born in the heads of creative people.
We’ll also keep releasing short videos with mechanics and gameplay moments as development goes on, so you can quickly contribute your authoritative “Yuck!”, which we will then steal and present as our own genius. Everything exactly as Early Access intended. Yes, yes.
As for base building, that deserves its own little mention.
Since we don’t want to make throwaway checkbox mechanics just so we can proudly say “look, we’re like Subnautica too!!1,” we’re giving base building special attention. We’ve mentioned it before, but it’s constantly stuck in a sort of “production variable,” where we sit around furrowing our brows and trying to remember what we even wanted from base building in the first place, and why the hell we need it at all.
So. Building your own base, separate structures, and planetary gameplay are currently planned for the second major update of the project. First comes Early Access, then the first major update, and only then the second one! An important clarification of this highly complex mathematical formula... So if you’re waiting for the game ONLY because of base building, consider this your advance warning.
We once mentioned that we dream of making a fashionable, beautiful roadmap for the project. Well, we’re still dreaming. But feel free to quote this news post later when we start playing dumb and arguing that we never said anything, and in fact have no idea what Breathedge 2 is, or what base building even means.
So there: we said it, and we know. Yep.
So there you have it.
And now, in keeping with our kind and utterly unnecessary tradition, we invite you to visit our social media pages. They’re all listed somewhere below, or on the main page - including our main way of communicating with players: Discord.
And, as tradition also demands, there’s the important email channel. That works too, yep: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
And of course, add Breathedge 2 to your wishlist, even if you don’t want to.
Out of spite.