Devlog: about the Lab

The next major update for Species: Unknown is planned for late January. We are currently in the final production phase, and we wanted to take some time to share an update on the development of the Lab.

This devlog is not an announcement of “final” features, but a progress update on what we are currently working on, with a particular focus on the Lab.

The goal is simple: to give you visibility into our work, without promising more than what our small team is actually able to deliver. There is still some development time ahead before January, and we prefer to use the coming weeks to ensure a stable, coherent update that lives up to your expectations, with a strong emphasis on testing.

Timeline and maturity

The Lab has been part of our workload for a long time, as it has always been included in our roadmap.

At this stage of development, the Lab is playable, and our focus is now on the quality of the final deliverable. We have communicated relatively little about the January major update so far, as we prefer to focus on the work itself first. As usual, this update will also include balance changes, bug fixes, and additional improvements.

Why does it take time?

We deliberately space major updates several months apart for a few reasons: we are a small team, we leave room for player feedback to influence updates (including regular ones), and we have also spent a significant amount of time balancing, adding content, and fixing issues in regular updates, which we aim to release roughly every two weeks.

Game development is not just about making things “work.” Beyond technical functionality, we also need to ensure the fun factor, and that always comes with its share of unpredictability.

Let’s talk about the Lab

Within the ship you already know, the Lab is the new playable area. You may have noticed that part of the ship was still inaccessible and even completely empty on the large map displayed in the HSS Hawking control room. This is the area we are currently working on.

The Lab acts as a new biome within the ship, much like the crew quarters or the engine room. It adds variety to the moments you experience during your missions, with interactions that are specific to this new zone.

From a lore perspective, the Lab is the heart of the ship, the HSS Hawking is, after all, a scientific vessel. In this new area, players will discover where the creature escaped from. The Lab was also designed following the same gameplay structure as the other zones: explore, unlock, react.

When designing the Lab, we started from our original concept, but we also expanded it based on what players enjoyed in previous areas, and in some cases, we even raised our initial ambitions.

While the Lab’s overall size is relatively comparable to other zones, it will likely feel larger due to greater visual variety. It will not be fully procedural, as that would require a fundamentally different technical approach. However, many of you enjoyed the reactor area and its environmental hazards, and this is something we chose to incorporate beyond our initial plans.

The team is not facing any major technical difficulties, although performance remains an important topic to monitor, especially in certain rooms you will discover. We are taking our time because there are many details, and details matter. You have appreciated this level of quality in the past.

Finally, we are deliberately sharing only a limited number of screenshots of the