The Astroneer release date has been moved into 2019 and a playable version of the exotic moon is available in the latest update according to a forum post on the game's official website.
Astoneer is a survival sandbox crafting game created by System Era Softworks. I know, I know - there are quite a few games in the genre. But Astroneer has done a lot of things right and the developers have been pretty decent at keeping it updated throughout its time in Steam Early Access. The game's rovers saw an overhaul and some follow-up fixes that fixed many of the problems with vehicles and more recent updates have added a lot more resources for players to get their hands on.
The game was originally planned to come out in December of 2018, but it seems that the Astroneer release date has been pushed back to next year. You can expect the game to launch on February 6, 2019. Take a look at the Astroneer Release Date trailer to see some of the cool new stuff in motion:
An extra six weeks or so are going to be used by the developers to round out the development of the game. Current work on preparation for 1.0 had eaten into the time they had budgeted for bug fixing, polish, and optimization. While the game is certainly playable on the development side of things, it doesn't run as smoothly as it could. System Era Softworks wants to put out the best product possible, so they ultimately decided to delay the release in order to do it right.
Aside from the release date news, Astroneer has also pushed an update today that adds a handful of new features. The first handy new addition is the Retro Suit. Players will now have a fifth choice when picking out which of the spacesuits they'd like to use to represent their character.
This new cosmetic choice is being made available to everyone who owns the game prior to its launch in February 2019. System Era Softworks has no plans to make it available after that point.
In addition, one of the new planets set to come next year is available a little early. The exotic moon was used as the testbed for many of the Terrain 2.0 features that are currently being worked on. (Be sure to pop on over to the game's development roadmap to see what else they have in store for the future!)
The exotic moon in this update is a fair bit different from the finished product. It's an earlier version of the planet than the one that is currently in the development branch. It's lacking several key elements of the gameplay loop and players are cautioned that they may encounter bugs.
To make things a bit easier, an "experimental development plinth" has been plopped down on the pink planet to provide players with any resource they'd need without much in the way of work. Players have also been awarded 100,000 Bytes so they don't have to worry too much about digging up tons of research in a brand new save file.
This update is pretty light as far as these things go. It mainly contains the Retro suit, a limited version of the exotic moon, and a handful of bug fixes. Be sure to read the patch notes for all the fine details!
If you don't yet own Astroneer, you can pick it up on sale over at Steam for $15.99 or your regional equivalent. You can also get it at full price at the Humble Store for PC or at the Microsoft Store for Windows & Xbox One at the regular price of $19.99. The game's price is going to increase to $29.99 on November 19, 2018. If you've been thinking about getting it, now might just be the time to do it! The new Astroneer release date is February 6, 2019.
Disclosure: TechRaptor participates in an affiliate-linking program that the Microsoft Store is a part of and Humble Bundle works with TechRaptor for affiliate partnership. TechRaptor earns a small commission off purchases made from some links in this article.
What do you think of the Astroneer release date being moved back? Would you have preferred to have an unoptimized game earlier or is it more important that it runs smoothly? Let us know in the comments below!
