Satellite Reign, the Kickstarted spiritual successor to classic Bullfrog title Syndicate, has just released a big update on Steam Early Access that doubles the size of the playable world.
After the EA FPS sullied the good name of Syndicate, a bunch of developers behind the original titles got together to form 5 Lives Studios. Their Kickstarter was a huge success and now the developer have been slowly updating the title since releasing it on Steam Early Access in December 2014. This release is the biggest yet and adds a load of improvements including a brand new district to the game, the Industrial District, that as mentioned basically doubles the available playable size of the game.
Full details on all the additions in this update are below:
Industrial District
Introducing the Industrial District! This is primarily the turf of the Uzy Korporatsiya, or Uzy Korp, a Russian-based organisation. They control the city’s imports, exports, and are big on armour manufacturing, so you’ll want to keep your plasma weapons handy.
New Factions
New corporations now patrol the streets and compounds of the city. The previously mentioned Uzy Korp are located throughout the Industrial District, as well as in the compounds operated by their subsidiaries in Downtown, such as Ronin Industries.
The Eternals make their first appearance as well. A corporation born from a religious movement, they own and operate the City Surveillance Authority, and can be found patrolling their respective compounds.
New User Interface
While it’s still very much a work in progress, you’re going to see some big improvements in the UI, both visually and functionally. The in-game HUD is being revamped, and the menus have been overhauled as well. There’s still more to go, but it’s already looking great!
Streaming System
With the introduction of a new district, and wanting to have a full city without any loading screens, we’ve now got a system to stream the world into memory dynamically. Again, it’s still a work in progress, but it has come with some nice benefits, including reduced GPU memory usage.
New Civilian System
You’ll likely notice more people wandering around the city now. This is thanks to a completely new approach to populating the city. Previously, there were lots of people in memory, but they were often outside of the actual gameplay area. Now, there are people to be found all over!
New Tactical Opportunities
You’ll now have new tools at your disposal to break your way into the various compounds throughout the city. The Hardwire ability allows for more of a brute-force approach to getting through security.
Ventilation systems can also now be exploited by your agents as a new way to sneak around. But, make sure you’ve evacuated any noxious fumes they might be funnelling.
Updates to OpenGL mode
Various bugs in OpenGL mode have been fixed, which should hopefully make things easier on our Mac and Linux users.</b>
