Hardspace: Shipbreaker launches out of early access and onto Game Pass in May

rockpapershotgun.com:

The excellent ship-dissecting salvage game Hardspace: Shipbreaker will hit version 1.0 and launch out of early access on the 24th of May, the makers announced today. And oooh it'll come to Game Pass the same day. It has been a cracking game even in early access, a satisfying first-person simulation of carefully cutting up junk spaceships with industrial lasers for maximum profit and minimum workplace injury.

Hardspace: Shipbreaker launched into early access in June 2020. At the time, Steve Hogarty's Hardspace: Shipbreaker early access review called it a "brilliant and therapeutic space simulation", saying it "speaks to the part of your brain that, when sufficiently bored, wants to very carefully take something apart until every bit is laid out neatly in front of you". Sin Vega had a lot of praise too.

The big content blast of the version 1.0 update will be the third and final act of the story campaign. It'll tweak plenty more too, mind. Other changes coming including the option to save mid-salvage and return later, improved performance and stability, tweaks to progression, the economy, and upgrades, and Steam doodads like cheevos and trading cards and emoticons. Slightly less welcome will be one final progress reset.

We've had some good chats with the devs across early access too. Alex Wiltshire talked with them about the work behind its cutting. And Edwin Evans-Thirlwell recently talked about the labour politics of both the game and its makers, after Blackbird Interactive announced they were switching to a four-day working week.

Hardspace: Shipbreaker will launch in full on Steam on May 24th. It'll also come to Windows Store at that point, being added to PC Game Pass. Console versions will follow.