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Cosmoteer: Starship Architect & Commander News

What is Cosmoteer?

Cosmoteer is a starship design, simulation, and battle game that is already played by thousands every week. The "Demo" on Steam is actually the full game as it currently exists with no restrictions, and it will keep working even after the Steam Games Festival is over.



You build your ships by placing individual modules onto a grid—weapons, shields, engines, reactors, crew's quarters, and more! Few restrictions and no pre-defined, creativity-limiting hull shapes mean you can create almost any ship you can imagine.



Every starship is operated by a crew numbering from half-a-dozen to hundreds—sometimes more than a thousand—of individually-simulated people. Crew not only operate the ship's controls, but they also carry supplies such as ammunition and power batteries to weapons and systems. When a weapon wants to shoot, the crew go pick up ammo or batteries at an ammo factory or reactor and bring them to the weapon—all simulated in real-time.



Every ship is part of a 2D physics simulation, and the position and orientation of its thrusters realistically affect its movement. Weapons also obey the laws of physics; whether or not a cannon or laser hits an enemy depends not on a dice roll but upon the trajectory of the shot and the size and speed of the enemy. Damage is tracked module-by-module, each module can be individually targeted & destroyed, and ships can break apart into multiple pieces when their connecting modules are destroyed—each of which can still function independently if it has the necessary modules.



The current game modes include "Bounty Hunter" where you battle enemy A.I. ships to earn money, a creative mode where you can build whatever you want either by yourself or online with friends, and several different PvP modes where you can test your design and piloting skills online against other players.

Cosmoteer is being developed by Walt Destler (a.k.a. Walternate Realities) with an anticipated release in late 2020 or early 2021.

Ask the Cosmoteer dev anything on our Discord!

As part of the Steam Games Festival, I will be holding an AMA ("ask me anything") session on the Cosmoteer discord server on Saturday, June 20th at 10:00 AM PDT (5:00 PM / 17:00 GMT). I'll hang around for at least an hour, maybe longer if the questions keep coming!

To join in and ask me anything you want, join our Discord server and then head to the #ask-walt channel. (You will need to read the #rules channel and follow the instructions in there before you can post.)

Even if you can't make the scheduled AMA session, I am still often in the Discord answering questions, so drop by anytime!

Ask the Cosmoteer dev anything on our Discord!

As part of the Steam Games Festival, I will be holding an AMA ("ask me anything") session on the Cosmoteer discord server on Saturday, June 13th at 10:00 AM PDT (5:00 PM / 17:00 GMT). I'll hang around for at least an hour, maybe longer if the questions keep coming!

To join in and ask me anything you want, join our Discord server and then head to the #ask-walt channel. (You will need to read the #rules channel and follow the instructions in there before you can post.)

Even if you can't make the scheduled AMA session, I am still often in the Discord answering questions, so drop by anytime!

Nimbatus - The Space Drone Constructor has launched out of Early Access!

Hey Cosmoteers! I want to let you know that my friends at Stray Fawn Studio have just launched their own game, Nimbatus - The Space Drone Constructor out of Early Access on Steam! It is currently available to purchase for 25% off for a limited time. If you love Cosmoteer, then I think there's a great chance you'll love Nimbatus as well! The devs of Nimbatus have been a great help to me during the development of Cosmoteer, so any support you can give them in return would be greatly appreciated by both them and me. :)

Plans for the future of Cosmoteer

Greetings Cosmoteers!

I want to bring you up-to-speed on my plans for Cosmoteer from now until it launches on Steam Early Access. I wrote a long forum post detailing those plans which I encourage you to read, but here's the TL;DR version:
  • There won't be any major updates for a while because I'm focused on creating a new singleplayer campaign mode.
  • I have hired an artist (longtime Cosmoteer modder "Kroom") to improve Cosmoteer's graphics. Check out a sample of his new graphics below!
  • The recent 0.15.6 update will likely be the last major "free forever" update. Future major updates will require you to buy the game on Steam. (But any version you've already downloaded will keep working.)
  • There will probably be a free BETA before Cosmoteer launches on Steam Early Access. Keep an eye out for news about that, hopefully later this year!


In the meantime, I hope you will keep enjoying the free version of Cosmoteer!