EVERSPACE™

ROCKFISH Games, the Hamburg-based studio that built the original EVERSPACE as a roguelike spaceship shooter, pivoted decisively with EVERSPACE 2 toward an open-world action RPG in space. The result, released April 6, 2023, drops the permadeath structure entirely in favor of a persistent campaign centered on Adam, a clone pilot trying to carve out an independent life inside the Demilitarized Zone of Cluster 34, a contested region pulled apart by colonial forces, warlords, cultists, and alien aggressors.

The game is built around handcrafted locations rather than procedural generation—more than 100 distinct areas spread across seven star systems, each hiding secrets, environmental puzzles, salvageable wrecks, and loot caches that reward thorough exploration over speed-running. The main campaign runs roughly 30 hours; completionists chasing every side mission, challenge, and hidden treasure can expect over 90 hours of content.

Combat is real-time and fully three-dimensional, demanding active maneuvering—dodging, dashing, and boosting—against enemy types that scale from drones and fighters up to heavy bombers, capital vessels, and ancient guardian enemies. The loadout system is the primary axis of player expression: ships are divided into distinct classes, each combinable with weapons, modules, devices, and perks that can be freely swapped or rebuilt. Traders allow players to acquire upgraded ship models or cycle through alternatives held in storage, making ship collection a practical part of the build system rather than cosmetic variety. Companions gathered through the story each contribute upgradable perks and appear during missions, adding a party-management layer to what is otherwise a solo cockpit experience.

EVERSPACE 2 entered Steam Early Access before its 2023 release and continued receiving substantial updates afterward. The most significant post-launch addition was Wrath of the Ancients, a paid expansion that released in May 2025 and introduced ancient temple locations alongside new enemy types; it subsequently won a Best Audio DCP Award in April 2026. Ongoing patch work through mid-2025 addressed platform support including a macOS branch, and the game expanded to Xbox with a Free Play Days weekend in late 2025. ROCKFISH also released a crossover bundle with Hardspace: Shipbreaker, reflecting active commercial maintenance well past the original launch window.

The distinction from conventional roguelikes in the directory is worth naming plainly: EVERSPACE 2 carries none of the run-reset structure of its predecessor. Death is not a mechanic the game is built around. What it shares with the genre is a density of loot variation and the build-experimentation habit that comes with it—a player can spend hours rearranging modules and perks to match a specific ship class against a specific class of enemy without touching the story at all.