Hard Space Shipbreaker is one of those Early Access games that I already felt was perfect from the moment it was released. After 25 hours of cutting steel and (carefully) dismantling nuclear reactors in a zero-G environment, I got more than I bargained for from Blackbird Interactive's unique space labor sim. [This fact became clear after hearing from the team about a major addition to the game tomorrow: the first act of a fully voiced campaign. This memorable "Salvage Your Future" patch will also feature a revamped difficulty system, more ship types, and revised progression. [Lead game designer Jennifer Schulte said, "This is our biggest update to date. 'It's very exciting for us. Game director Elliot Hudson said that "Salvage Your Future" aims to "completely reimagine the early stages of the game."

If you've played "Shipbreaker," you know that there is already a bit of a storyline at the beginning of the present. Having been accepted to work as a shipbreaker for the ruthless capitalist company LYNX, the player escapes from a planet devastated by climate change and begins working to pay off an initial debt of billions to the company. This debt serves as the overall goal to aim for, but the number is so outlandish that it seems more improbable than anything else. As of now, this opening is the only thing beyond the occasional voice log left on a dismantled ship.

How to relate the science fiction world of "Shipbreaker" to reality was a challenge for Blackbird in coming up with the story he wanted to tell. We're trying to be dystopian," he said. We're trying to be dystopian. It's getting harder and harder to satirize. But we're trying," Hudson said. [We read the news and talk about what it's like to live in a capitalist society today, what the effects are, how it affects labor and workers' rights. It affects the way we approach our games and our stories. We want to discuss how people should have a say in their future and how work relates to that."

Don't expect to be taken out of the action by dialogue wheels and the like; Blackbird wants to maintain the current uninterrupted pace of Shipbreaker. Full-voiced characters regularly talk to players over the radio while they are at work and send messages to the residential module between shifts.

Blackbird is also treating the story as part of the early access process. The first act will appear in tomorrow's early patch, with placeholder voices provided by Blackbird developers. Scheurle said, "We are, as always, eager to develop this with the community and see if the form of storytelling we have chosen works for them. If the community is satisfied with the story implementation, the placeholder voices will eventually be replaced by a "diverse cast" of professional actors.

And according to LYNX-Hudson, funny debts are "fundamental" to the campaign.

Gameplay-wise, Salvage Your Future is making significant changes to progression and difficulty. Currently, the ship's complexity is divided into easy, medium, and hard. Starting tomorrow, ships will instead be differentiated by "danger level," or how dangerous they are to work on. Scheurle said, "You decide what you want to play and what you want to work on."

The new distinction is closely tied to the new streamlined progression. According to Hudson, the requirements for moving up the certification levels have been simplified to be clearer and "more focused." This can be seen in the new work order system, which breaks away from the current model that requires only certain parts of the ship to be salvaged, such as computers and thrust engines.

"[The old work instructions] created a behavior of just hunting, pecking at certain objects, and then discarding or ignoring the rest of the ship. Cutters in the game talked about "using the whole buffalo," but that wasn't happening. Hudson hopes that this change will allow players to salvage the entire ship.

The ship itself has also been tweaked. "We realized that [the ships] could have different names, different roles, and still feel the same," Hudson said. Hudson hopes that the revamped ships will make each vessel feel like a distinct puzzle that can be mastered. "Industrial ships feel very different from transports, and civilian ships feel different from science ships," Hudson and Scheurle said, teasing a new Mackerel-class science ship coming in tomorrow's update that will feel "very different" from the others.

The new storyline and all the other cool stuff unfortunately means that the Salvage Your Future update will reset progression for all players. '"

"Also, too many things have changed and unfortunately we couldn't make them the same compatible.

Looking ahead to future updates, Blackbird also plans to add a new elemental hazard to ships: radiation. Developers are not yet ready to talk about how Shipbreaker will handle radiation, but Scheurle told me that radiation will interact with existing hazards (ice, fire, electricity). Apparently, radiation management will be a bit more complicated than shutting off fuel lines and getting out of the way of arc currents. Radiation is one example of how Blackbird hopes to make hazards more prominent in future updates, Scheurle added. Some of our hazards are a bit binary," he said. We want to have more intermediate hazards that are not immediately and completely catastrophic, but that we can take action on or have to be aware of."

In addition, Blackbird plans to rework the habitation module into a full 3D space, allowing players to walk around and "personalize" it (rather than just upgrading tools and reading text logs as usual). Acts 2 and 3 of the campaign story are also in the works. A year after its Early Access launch, "Shipbreaker" still has a lot of work left to do. "For us, it's still a fully working goal," Hudson said. Even if the date when "Shipbreaker" is "finished" is unclear, the arrival of the campaign seemed like a major turning point for the game.

The "Salvage Your Future" update will be released tomorrow, May 6. Until then, I suggest you say goodbye to your fully upgraded save files and prepare for a new era in Hardspace: Shipbreaker