Space Engineers 2 Alpha has officially launched on Steam Early Access!

27/01/2025

Hello, Engineers! 

The day has come – Space Engineers 2 Alpha has officially launched on Steam Early Access!

After months of anticipation and hard work, we’re excited to take this first step together. The thrilling journey of Space Engineers 2 starts now, and we invite you all to be part of it. The release of the Alpha and Vertical Slice1: Creative Mode is just the beginning – there’s so much more ahead!

We’re taking a unique approach to developing Space Engineers 2 with our Vertical Slice strategy. A Vertical Slice is a fully playable portion of the game that showcases specific core features and improvements implemented at production quality. It serves as a milestone in the game’s development, allowing us to focus on delivering polished gameplay in stages while more features are added in subsequent slices.

Vertical Slice 1: Creative Mode

You have now access to VS1: Creative Mode, our first vertical slice, featuring:

  • new 25cm unified grid system (no more small vs. large grids!)
  • new blueprint building (snap to grid, partial copy/paste, assign to toolbar)
  • grid undo/redo
  • enhanced creative mode with powerful building tools (new voxel hand, symmetry tools, line/plane building) and paint tool
  • grid speeds up to ~300 m/s 
  • safe speed system preventing damage under 20 m/s
  • new magboots with camera stabilization
  • new physics and dynamic fractures and debris for more realistic destruction
  • visual revolution thanks to ray tracing, global illumination, tessellated terrain, parallax mapping, sleek armor edges, and enhanced lighting
  • New VRAGE3 engine brings better performance and future optimization potential

Additional Vertical Slices will follow in the months after, each expanding the game’s features and content. This development process will continue over the next few years until we achieve our full vision for Space Engineers 2.

You can explore everything included in our full blog post or in the detailed Changelog.

Summarization