Cosmoteer: Starship Architect and Commander is a popular space-themed strategy game developed by Walternate Realities and led by a sole developer. As an indie game that has been developed and iterated on for the past 20 years by one person, Cosmoteer has already garnered a large dedicated following—especially after its early access release on Steam. One of the game's best aspects is the developer's ability to smartly iterate on Cosmoteer with fast hotfix patches, quality-of-life features, and new content. Of course, with Walternate Realities' small size, it's hard even for the developer to know when the roadmap's most significant content ambitions will be completed.
Among the features that players have been requesting the most is the ability to launch fighter craft from carriers and to board other ships with a crew, potentially boarding another player's ship in Cosmoteer's PvP. These features are certainly on the developer's roadmap and are expected to be added to the game at some point in the future, per the roadmap's disclaimer. However, the developer was hesitant to provide a specific timeline for implementing these updates, stating that they prefer not to make predictions as they may end up being incorrect.
Cosmoteer's Continued Support Bodes Well For The Developer's Ambitions
Walternate Realities has recently announced its future content plans in an interview, revealing that they are most excited to add robot hinge joints to ships. This new feature will allow players to transform the shape of their ships into different configurations and is expected to significantly expand the strategic possibilities of ship design and add a new level of depth to Cosmoteer's impressive pixel-art gameplay.
"The thing that excites me the most is I really want to add robot hinge joints to ships so that you can make ships that transform their shape into other configurations. I'm really excited to do that because I think it will blow open the strategic possibilities of what you can build."
In addition to those major updates, Walternate Realities has already released small patches on a regular basis to fix bugs and make minor quality-of-life improvements—a trait shared by some of the best indie games in 2022. These updates already include added U.I. Scale options and the ability to disable the restoration of camera zoom when exiting certain screens. The developer has also released a "Huge Crews" built-in mod patch for Career mode, increasing the maximum crew size to 100,000 regardless of fame for those who want to really expand the scope of their spacecraft.
How Cosmoteer's Success Gives Walternate Realities Some Leeway With the Roadmap
Despite the lack of a clear timeline for implementing these updates, the developer has assured players that they will eventually see them added to the game—an impressive feat even among similar successful first-game indie developers. This is partly due to the financial success of Cosmoteer, which has allowed Walternate Realities to continue working on the game without fear of running out of resources. This is ideal because Cosmoteer's immediate success means there is less pressure on Walt to put out new content to meet someone else's deadlines or ambitions.
"Honestly, I deliberately did not put dates or time frames on my road map because I'll probably be wrong. And so they will happen when they happen. Fortunately, Cosmoteer has done really well financially, so I'm not about to run out of money or starve to death or anything like that."
Overall, it seems that the future of Cosmoteer is bright, with exciting new updates and features on the horizon that could rival the complexity and scope of similar indie darling Dwarf Fortress. Players can rest assured that they will eventually experience the transformative power of Walternate Realities' future content plans, regardless of how long it takes the developer to bring those plans to fruition. Until then, fans of the game can continue to enjoy the existing content and look forward to what Cosmoteer's expansive future holds.
Cosmoteer: Starship Architect and Commander is available now on Steam Early Access.