After more than a year in Early Access, Hostile Lands has officially reached version 1.0 on Steam.
Perceiving Light’s bullet hell roguelite first arrived in May 2025, and the full release now comes with 36 playable crew members, more than 60 weapons, extra bosses, new endings, companion pets, and a Hostility system that makes rescuing everyone a little more complicated than simply finding them and heading home.
The idea is simple. Your crew has been scattered across a hostile alien planet, and you need to bring them back one by one. The problem is that every successful rescue raises the Hostility level. Enemies get stronger, later runs get more dangerous, and the closer you get to saving everyone, the more the planet seems determined to stop you.
First, Find Everyone
Things go wrong almost immediately. Your ship crashes, your crew ends up spread across different regions, and you’re left trying to track them down while the local wildlife, bandits, and bosses make it clear they’d rather you didn’t.
Each run sends you out looking for stranded crew members before trying to reach an escape pod with everyone still in one piece. That means fighting through plenty of enemies, but Hostile Lands isn’t just about finding the biggest gun and hoping for the best. The screen can fill with bullets very quickly, so movement matters. Your dodge roll gives you a brief moment of invincibility, which sounds generous until you realize just how much the game expects you to use it.
Learn the timing and you can slip straight through attacks. Get it wrong and you’ll probably be seeing the start of another run sooner than planned.
The People You Rescue Join the Fight
Bringing somebody home does more than move the rescue mission forward. It unlocks them as a playable character. There are 36 crew members in the full game, each with their own abilities, strengths, and weaknesses. So rescuing everyone also means gradually building a much larger character roster and finding out who actually suits the way you like to play.
The same goes for weapons. More than 60 can appear during runs, giving you plenty of room to experiment with different loadouts as the Hostility level climbs. Permanent upgrades help between attempts too, but they won’t do everything for you.
You still need to aim properly, learn enemy attacks, and yes, you still need to stop standing in the bullets. Some problems can’t be solved with a bigger stat number.
Early Access Added a Lot
When Hostile Lands first entered Early Access, it was always meant to grow with player feedback. Over the following year, Perceiving Light added more characters, weapons, enemies, bosses, and areas, gradually building toward the full release that’s available now.
Version 1.0 brings the crew total to 36, pushes the weapon count past 60, and adds more bosses and endings to work toward. There are companion pets too.
I’m not saying a cute pet makes getting stranded on a planet full of monsters better, but it probably doesn’t hurt.
Collectors have plenty to keep them busy as well. Weapon and crew indexes track what you’ve found, while 96 Steam achievements are waiting for anyone who sees a giant checklist and immediately decides it must be completed.
You know who you are.
You Can Bring Backup
If the rescue mission sounds like a lot for one person, you can bring somebody else along.
Hostile Lands supports two-player local co-op, with Steam Remote Play Together letting you team up even if you’re not sitting in the same room.
Whether that makes all those bullets easier to deal with is another question.
At the very least, it gives you someone else to argue with when a perfectly good run falls apart.
Hostile Lands launched version 1.0 on PC via Steam on September 25th. There’s still a free demo available, and the full game currently has a 40% launch discount running until October 9th.
Rescuing 36 scattered crew members sounds difficult enough, but doing it while each successful rescue makes the next trip more dangerous makes it much more challenging.