Early Access Roadmap

Captains,

With Early Access underway, we want to share where Down With The Ship is headed next.

This roadmap is heavily shaped by your feedback. The main features listed here were among the most requested additions in our community poll, “What would you like us to add to Down with the Ship the most?”

The plan may still shift as we test, rebalance, and react to feedback, but this is the current direction.

June: 2v2 Co-op

Our next major target is 2v2 co-op.

The plan is to let two players team up and face another two-ship fleet, bringing a new layer of coordination, counterplay, and questionable decision-making to battles.

Expected focus:

• Team up with another player

• Fight in 2v2 ship battles

• Build around ally synergies

• Create new balance problems, probably caused by you

2v2 co-op is a major milestone for us because it expands the game from “my terrible ship versus your terrible ship” into “our terrible decisions, together.”

Q3: Bottomless Well

In Q3, we plan to add the Bottomless Well.

The Bottomless Well is intended as a long-term gold sink and progression layer. We want players to have more interesting things to do with their resources over time, especially after many runs.

Current direction:

• Spend excess gold on long-term progression

• Unlock epithets, titles, or cosmetic identity markers

• Add more goals outside a single run

• Give veteran players another place to pour their winnings

Q3: Starmap

Also planned for Q3 is the Starmap.

The Starmap is our next big step toward giving the galaxy more structure, persistence, and shared chaos. Instead of only moving from battle to battle, players will fight over a global map that is shared by everyone.

Current direction:

• A global Starmap for all players

• Hourly refreshes as pirates take and hold planets

• Sector modifiers that change the rules of engagement

• More strategic run planning

• Different routes, rewards, and risks

This is one of the most important additions on the path to 1.0. It should make each run feel more like part of a larger war rather than a sequence of isolated fights.

Q4: 1.0 Launch

Our current target for 1.0 is Q4.

The 1.0 launch is planned to include:

• Starmap fully integrated into the base game

• A new faction

• More content, balance, polish, and quality-of-life improvements

• A larger launch update built from Early Access feedback

At 1.0, we currently plan to raise the base game price from $14.99 to $19.99 USD. We will announce this well in advance before the increase happens.

Thank You

Early Access only works when players actually play, break things, complain constructively, and show us which parts of the game are secretly terrible or secretly great.

So far, your ships have been disgusting.

Please continue.

— Rok & Nate