The developers over at Keen Software House, who created the very well-known sandbox builder Space Engineers, are about to release the second installment in the franchise. The sequel, named Space Engineers 2, promises to provide players with a more in-depth and realistic building system.

After leaving Earth, you are put into cryosleep for about 10 thousand years until you arrive in the mysterious Almagest system. Now that you are here, you get to explore and build as much as you want. On early access release, the only game mode available will be the creative mode, so building will be the main focus until later updates. You will be able to shape any creation on a 25 cm grid system, so everything snaps together.

One of the brand-new features in the sequel is the undo and redo buttons. If you make any mistakes or just do not like how your build is turning out, you simply hit the assigned key, and it will rip the blocks out of existence or pop them back in. When you are happy with what you created and need to copy it, for example, if you are working on a larger-scale structure, you will now have the ability to select a region and save it into your blueprint menu. Next, all you need to do is assign it to your hotbar, and you can paste it anywhere in space. Once you are done with the outline, you can go and finish it up with the finer details, adding more voxels and other various shapes. To spice things up, the developers added a paint tool to easily switch between colors. And do not worry, if you do not like what you ended up making, you can always destroy it with a laser.

As stated before, this is just what the launch version of Space Engineers 2 offers, which is very similar to what the prequel had upon release. However, we were not left in the dark, as the developers posted a roadmap of what we can expect in the coming three years.

Besides refining and improving the current mechanics, one of the first additions they want to include is the ability to upload your blueprints to the Steam Workshop so you can share them with others or download other people’s builds. This is only the beginning of the player-driven content, as they will follow this up with full mod support. After these are done and people can create whatever they want, the team will focus on adding more planets to explore and the second game mode, survival, which will add a progression system to the game and different challenges to stay alive. New types of creations are going to be possible after they add lakes to planets, as you will be able to build ships, submarines, and more. To finish off the early access, they want to add NPCs you can interact with, a story to follow, and what is probably on most people’s wishlist: multiplayer.

Space Engineers 2 is available for pre-order and will launch in early access on Steam on January 27th.

Will you play the game at launch or wait until more updates? Let me know in the comments.