Hades' Star Roadmap Update - December 2025
During 2025, Hades' Star completed its 8th year of global operations. Counting various pre-release betas and live tests, the game has existed in some form for more than a decade. Creating a game that can be viably supported for many years, decades if possible, was a clearly stated goal of mine from the beginning. It feels surreal that the goal has been so far accomplished - thank you to the countless players who have supported the game over the years and have made this possible.
For me personally, 2025 marked the end of several years of turbulent personal events and uncertainty. Throughout these challenges, I have reflected a lot on what motivates me, and what I personally want to be working on in the years ahead. These reflections led me exploring a lot of different areas, both inside and outside games. I realized I have not lost my passion for space games, and for a while had been considering a new space strategy game, focusing on Exploration, something Hades' Star touches on but does not properly expand on. As part of that new game, I asked for your feedback in this form. That feedback, other independent explorations, and getting back into Hades' Star as a player after a long break, have led me to decide to scrap my ideas for a new game. Exploration had been a core element of Hades' Star design from the very beginning, and there's no reason the game can't be expanded to fully meet the feeling of awe it gives very early players. Hades' Star is already a remarkable, unique space strategy game, and it can only become better by focusing and expanding on its existing strengths.
In short, I am very excited to be back working on Hades' Star full time, and can't wait to see what we can create together in the years ahead.
As you may have noticed during the last few months, major and minor updates are more frequent and are heavily influenced by player suggestions. We have prioritized many features that we would never have considered before, because they were advocated on, argued and voted on by many players. Going forward, this trend will be continuing and accelerating. Even when I want to pursue features I personally want to see in the game, that effort will still be heavily influenced by player feedback. The feature I want to put in the game may change a lot, or be abandoned, depending on the shape of that player feedback.
During 2026, we will be releasing the first new star type in Hades' Star since 2018. I previously was resisting the idea of new star types (i.e. see the previous roadmap from 2019). My thinking back then was that Hades' Star is primarily a mobile game, mobile games need simple rules that are quick to understand, and more star types would complicate this. I have since changed my mind. Hades' Star has succeeded because it found its audience, and that audience is certainly not casual. The game's audience thrives on understanding new systems, and the deep network of Corporations in game (and Discord servers outside the game) helps them explain those systems to new members. Avoiding deeper features early on was a mistake. Now, I will be focusing on implementing such deeper features on top of the very strong social foundations players have created around the game.
A star that all members of a Corporation can access has been a very popular suggestion since very early on. It is currently very high on the suggestions board on Discord. It makes sense that such a star should be the first new star type to make it into the game, now that the game's development is influenced a lot by player feedback. Understandably, the player feedback on what the star type should be (other than "all corporation mates can travel there") are all over the map. There have been however some common threads that I've identified below. Development will start from those common threads, and we will adjust as needed.
- Some players mentioned they'd be happy even with a system where they can socialize with corporation members, exchange artifacts and see where the flagships go when not in White Stars. These ideas can be the base for the new star type.
- Players are far more interested in PvE than PvP content. Red Star-style combat is by far the most popular in game. This is good, because the game cannot really afford more PvP modes, because of matchmaking and player population sizes. Going ahead, we will be focusing on PvE combat for this new star type, and probably all new content (improvements to Blue and White stars will still happen as needed).
- Players were most interested in a long term/season style star (i.e. see this poll). A star that lasts 1-3 months ("season"), with Corporation players trying to complete tasks during that time, is an interesting angle that will be explored.
What about after 2026? In the long run, I'd be excited to explore possibilities of putting open world, exploration elements in Hades' Star. You would too: In the form I linked at the beginning of this post, "Discovering unique planets and star systems" was the single most popular feature you'd want to see in a new game. I want to bring that experience in Hades' Star, in parallel to all the other activities you already enjoy in the game.
Some of the MMO ideas are being explored on this discord channel. I personally get excited about a large world that allows players to customize their ship, explore without limitations, and feel the same awe they do when they first see their original Yellow Star. A world where the stars, planets and other challenges you find are unique and unexpected, not procedural variations of the same thing, and not visible by browsing through the game files. Where the act of discovering and claiming a unique planet can be a source of pride for any player. I can't wait to explore these ideas in the years ahead.
Discussion and questions on anything mentioned in this post are welcome. I'll try to answer the most frequent questions if and when there's time. Comments on blogger are disabled, please visit this Discord channel to comment.
