On October 24th, Slitherine and CodeForce launched Distant Worlds 2: Return of the Shakturi, marking the debut of the first feature expansion for Distant Worlds 2. This release has been met with an overwhelmingly positive reception, reflecting the community's enthusiasm and excitement. On day one it had 100% of positive reviews, within a week, reviews have remained consistently high, up to 88%, and the ratings for the base game have risen to 76%.
Since the base game was released, performance and compatibility have improved thanks to numerous multi-threading optimizations, and both Artificial Intelligence and User Interface have progressed significantly. Slitherine released two Faction DLCs introducing the Ikkuro, Dhayut, Gizureans and Quameno. Also, the Return of the Shakturi expansion brings an Endgame Crisis storyline with a very dangerous new enemy along with Outposts, multi-empire Alliances and several new research areas.
In addition to the content from the three DLCs released so far, if a player who purchased Distant Worlds 2 on day one in March 2022 were to reinstall the game today, they would discover numerous new features and updates. We asked our developers at CodeForce to summarize them below:
- Much better economic, sustainability, and terraforming balance and scaling through the mid- and late-game.
- Greatly expanded and enhanced Hive mid-game threat, as well as improved Pirates in the early game.
- New repeatable, top-tier research projects to extend gameplay.
- Massively improved performance and compatibility.
- Major improvements to AI - including more detailed AI policies and improved automation and behavior for most areas of the game, especially fleets, ships, economic management, colonization, research, ship design, population management and diplomacy.
- Major User Interface improvements, ranging from new camera modes, map overlays and message centers (with far more message filters) to distance measurement tools, additional list multi-select capabilities, more hotkeys, a greatly improved Enemy Targets list, better text formatting for all messages, additional filters on various empire tabs, more tooltips guidance and better UI scaling.
- Expanded modding, including Steam Workshop support and an in-game Mod Manager, greatly improved mod loading and priority/conflict management.
- Improved per-Hull Ship Design with new Component Policies for ship design automation guidance, defined upgrade paths for each Ship Design and improved Fleet Templates to include per hull fleet definitions and more fleet management options.
- Much better Economic, Suitability and Terraforming balance and scaling through the mid and late games, including many improvements to resource logistics and private sector operations.
- Two faction refreshes for base game factions (Humans and Mortalen) to bring their gameplay up to the level of the DLC factions, with more on the way until all base game factions are updated (Zenox and Boskara are next)!
- Greatly expanded and improved Hive mid-game threat as well as improving Pirates in the early game, including adding a Pirate Cruiser!
- New Repeatable top tier Research Projects for continuing gameplay alongside other improvements, adjustments and rebalances to most of the research tree.
As noted by the prestigious Softpedia, the strength of Distant Worlds 2 lies in the ability to forge a vast intergalactic empire, giving the player the freedom to choose what aspects of their empire to control: “The game remains impressive when it comes to how much it simulates and how good it is at surfacing information while giving players ways to only deal with mechanics they care about”.
We’re thrilled by the warm reception of the expansion from fans, with thousands of visits to the Steam page and content creators from across the gaming world. Here are a few multilingual examples of how some of the top Twitch and YouTube creators in the strategy games niche have enjoyed Distant Worlds 2 and the new DLC.
Koinsky (series of 11 episodes) “Arachnid playthrough on HARD with the Return of the Shakturi DLC” (in French)
Canal do Void (series of 10 episodes) “Unintelligent and xenophobic insects” (In Portuguese)
Banlish “Oooh a good week starts!“
Cringer “Slitherine kind of day. More NEW DW2 DLC”
Nils “We conquer the galaxy in Distant Worlds 2 with the new add-on” (in German)
DasTactic “Distant Worlds 2 - Now it’s the time”
Tokshen “Time for more Distant Worlds 2 - playing as the Space Spiders!”
