A new Jump Space update is calling me back. The co-op space FPS made waves in last year’s summer Steam Next Fest, reaching half a million players (under its former name of ‘Jump Ship’). Since its launch in September, developer Keepsake Games has been steering it through early access, and it’s getting ready to unleash the game’s biggest update yet. The overhaul introduces a new player spacecraft, more weapons, and a heap of core system upgrades, and you can try it out right now on the experimental branch.
The likes of Far Far West might have snatched my attention in the field of raucous co-op games of late, but I’m certainly happy to have a reason to return to Jump Space. If you missed it at launch, the general gist is that you (and your friends) drop into missions where you blast across planets and through bases filled with enemy hordes, Helldivers style, snatching up all manner of gear and supplies along the way. Rather than simply returning to a menu between runs, however, you actually fly your ship across the stars to your next goal, in true No Man’s Sky fashion.
It’s a winning formula, and Keepsake Games has been cooking up some pretty serious upgrades over the past few months that it’s now pushed into testing. The biggest is the introduction of a new player ship, the Hammerhead. This veritable tank of a spacecraft is beefier and hardier than the Catamaran, albeit a little slower as a result. While there are no pilot weapons, it boasts four gunner stations and four special weapon slots. The update also includes two more of these – the Vulcan minigun and Thunderhead cannon – for you to play with. There’s also a nice new wall in the hangar to manage all your ship components.
Speaking of weapons, there are two more that you can use when on foot: a minigun and an SMG variant. Loot has also been pretty dramatically reworked across the board, with guns now featuring varying rarities and a range of random modules that they can drop with. Upgrade points can be spent to customize which of these you enable, giving you more control over your loadout. Eagle-eyed Jump Space veterans will notice that you can now see the full stats for all player and ship weapons, making comparisons much easier.
One of the most common gripes highlighted by Keepsake is players asking for ways to save their best guns; this isn’t a hardcore, Tarkov-style extraction shooter, and losing gear can knock the wind out of your sails. To fix this, you can now store a number of found weapons to a personal blueprints list, which allows you to reprint them as many times as you want from the Assembler. You can also make ‘loan copies’ for your friends, although they can’t keep these permanently, or scan them to turn into their own blueprints.
The ship health system has also been redesigned, and all hostile crafts have been rebalanced. Keepsake is keen to know if it this new approach feels too easy or hard to keep your vehicle alive across different difficulties. During interstellar combat, enemy ships will now pull off evasive maneuvers and dodges to try and avoid your fire. Helpfully, there’s a new targeting guide to help you learn where you should aim in order to land those juicy critical hits.
The Jump Space summer update is live now on the experimental branch. You can access it via your Steam Library by right-clicking on the game, heading to the properties menu, and selecting ‘game versions and betas.’ Note that the beta build uses a separate save that should not impact your main playthrough, although you may wish to make a backup to be on the safe side. The team says it hopes to bring the update to the live version of the game by the end of June, providing everything goes smoothly.
Along with the other systems mentioned above, Keepsake has introduced the ability to hot-join missions in progress, as well as instant rejoining after a player disconnects during a round. It’s particularly keen to put this through its paces, “so please stress test late joining and disconnects with your friends as much as you can.”
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