eXoSpace Release in Early Access + Roadmap

2025-09-15

This morning, I pressed the big, scary "Release" button in Steamworks — and now eXoSpace is officially in Early Access! That means it’s time to share the plans for what’s coming next: the first official eXoSpace Roadmap.

The Coming Months

I chose to release eXoSpace in Early Access because I felt three major pieces were still missing from the game:

Happy Hunting

First of all, the current Bounty Hunt mode feels a bit unfinished. It needs more balancing and content: new encounters, a new sector, and a new boss. Speaking of bosses, they also need an overhaul to feel less "tanky" and more interesting.

In short, this phase is about finishing the Bounty Hunt mode.

Enter Arena

In addition to the Bounty Hunt and Sandbox modes, I believe an essential addition is an Arena mode. Here, players will design fleets of ships and pit them against other player-designed fleets (a kind of "asynchronous multiplayer"), as well as engage in challenges like wave survival. This means one key new feature will be player-designed Fleets: collections of ship designs with a name, description, and other properties.

Right now, it’s relatively easy to create an "overpowered" ship in the Sandbox, since there are no limits on size, cost, or modules. That doesn’t make for interesting tournaments or challenges. To fix this, I plan to add Doctrines. Simply put, these are sets of rules fleets must comply with. For example, a Doctrine might state that a fleet can cost no more than 10,000 metal, 30 antimatter, and 50 exotics, and may only use a defined list of modules.

This way, both battles and challenges can be tailored to specific Doctrines, which should make things far more balanced and interesting.

Smaller is Better

Another feature I’m really excited about is the addition of fighter craft — specifically player-designed fighter craft. This will take some work, but I believe it’ll be worth it. Fighters will use scaled-down versions of normal modules, with a limited set available. They won’t be controlled like normal ships, but instead will function somewhere between missiles and ships: receiving simple commands such as "attack" or "dock."

Here’s how I envision the workflow for fighters:

• Add a hangar module to your ship design.
• Select the hangar, then choose an existing fighter design or create a new one.
• The hangar determines how many fighters you can field and what they cost.
• When piloting a ship with hangars, you can launch fighters and order them to attack or defend.
• Fighters will slowly rebuild over time when destroyed.

That's it fow now, back to marketing and development!