Space Engineers 2 News

Space Engineers 2 Dev Diary: January 1, 2026

Happy New Year, Engineers!

We are always trying to automate the more mundane tasks in our workflow and make our development pipeline faster and more reliable. Tools like this help us spend less time on repetitive manual work and more time on actual game design and content.

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Here we can see a sneak peek of our new Blender tool, which allows us to quickly generate fracture pieces for our blocks. This tool will help us speed up our workflow while maintaining consistent fracture quality across all block types.

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Creating fractures is not a simple boolean operation. It requires several steps in geometry generation, material assignment, and clean mesh separation. In the video, you can see that every time the mesh is split along an edge, we generate an additional edge with the same material as the top layer.

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The inner split uses a special damaged material with parallax mapping and shelf shadows, giving fractures more depth and a more believable broken look. This kind of automation saves a lot of time, especially as the number of blocks grows, and it lets us keep the visual quality high even when producing a large number of fracture variants.

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[h3]VS3 - Byblos WIP[/h3]

Planet Byblos will not be only a water world - it will be a world of fire and ice. The planet will push the survival experience in two extreme directions. On one side freezing temperatures and the cold depths beneath the waves. On the other side, volcanic activity that breaks the endless water surface, carving underwater channels and creating sharp, scattered islands all across the planet.

These contrasts make Byblos feel unpredictable. The meeting point of boiling heat and freezing water creates a world that is far more than just an ocean planet. It is a place shaped by constant tension between elements, with terrain that tells the story of eruptions, flows, collapses, and glacial erosion. And this is only the rough beginning of what we want to build on Byblos.

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Question to you: How do you like the planet Byblos so far?

Full Blog Post: https://blog.marekrosa.org/2026/01/my-review-of-2025-plans-for-2026/

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🗺️ Roadmap: https://2.spaceengineersgame.com/roadmap-2/#current
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📫 Newsletter: https://www.keenswh.com/newsletter
➡️ Connect and find us on your platform of choice: https://www.keenswh.com/connect/

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1133870/announcements/detail/526487474953782825 https://steamcommunity.com/games/1133870/announcements/detail/526488109198606675 https://steamcommunity.com/games/1133870/announcements/detail/526487474953782823

Space Engineers 2 Dev Diary: December 25, 2025

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all of you, Engineers!

As we reach the end of the year, I want to thank every one of you for being part of this journey. Your feedback, your builds, your videos, and your enthusiasm are what keep this project alive.

Developing Space Engineers 2 in such an open way is challenging, but your support makes it worth it. I hope the holidays bring you peace, joy, and some time to relax.

We have a lot of exciting things ahead, and I cannot wait to share them with you.

We have been running some wild tests with our volumetric clouds. Our clouds are fully 3D formations that react to light, cast shadows, respect biome patterns, and change with the time of day.

Flying through them or watching them roll across the horizon completely transforms how the planets feel. What you see here is just us playing with the system, pushing it, breaking it, and experimenting to understand how far we can take this new layer of atmosphere.

[h3]Laser antenna – from concept art to finished block.[/h3]
Let me take you on a quick journey through SE2 block creation.

The process always starts with a simple black and white sketch to lock down the basic shapes and silhouette. Once we are happy with the form, our artists begin playing with colors, materials, and paneling to find a visual language that fits the rest of the SE2 block family. After that comes a series of iterations, refining details, proportions, and functionality until the design finally feels right.

When the final sketch is approved, the block moves into 3D modeling, where all the shapes become real geometry. And from there, it is on the way to the VRAGE3 Editor. This is the moment where concept art stops being a drawing and starts becoming something you can build, place, and engineer within the game.

The Passage set of blocks is getting its turn as well. These blocks may look simple at first glance, but they are an important part of how players shape the interiors of their ships and stations. Passages define the flow of movement, the rhythm of corridors, and the way spaces feel when you walk through them. Our goal is to make them clean, practical, and modular, so you can build interior layouts that feel functional and believable.

And thanks to our 25cm unified grid system you can add any details you want!

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Question to you: Cloud planets – yes or no?

Full Blog Post: https://blog.marekrosa.org/2025/12/mareks-dev-diary-december-25-2025/

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1133870/announcements/detail/582781208710088583 https://steamcommunity.com/games/1133870/announcements/detail/626690914537964566 https://steamcommunity.com/games/1133870/announcements/detail/626690914537963591

Space Engineers 2: Obliviara Sector Released!

Hello, Engineers!

Welcome to the Obliviara Sector - a forgotten region at the very edge of the Almagest system. Beyond this point lies only the cold emptiness of space and endless asteroid fields.

Colonization efforts in this remote sector has been extra challenging. Wrecks, outposts and forgotten machinery offer new salvage opportunities for those bold enough to explore. Keep your eyes open for new contracts. And with them, whispers of rich loot... Consider it an early Christmas present!

Some engineers thrive in the quiet. Others go mad. Prove you can persist - even out here, where the Almagest stars feel so far away.

Obliviara Sector unlocked for travel (requires 100% colonization of Verdure and Kemik)
2 New Contracts

Bugfixes & Improvements

When offline, a generic message is displayed before opening any screen

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https://steamcommunity.com/games/1133870/announcements/detail/526487474953782823 https://steamcommunity.com/games/1133870/announcements/detail/526488109198606694 https://steamcommunity.com/games/1133870/announcements/detail/490459397404754361

Space Engineers 2 Dev Diary: December 18, 2025

Please join us Monday, December 22 for the release of Obliviara Sector to the Almagest System!

🚀 Monday, December 22, 6 PM UTC
🛰️ YouTube: https://youtube.com/user/SpaceEngineersGame
🛰️ Twitch: https://twitch.tv/keencommunitynetwork

**Story Spoilers!**

Our story has already begun – you have met the two brothers, Miro and Ivan. On their journey through the Almagest system they will cross paths with many different characters. Some of them will be friendly, others… not so much.

This is one of the friendly ones I personally am looking forward to meeting – Aya, a member of the Astronaut Without Borders (AWB) faction.

[h3]VS3 – Water[/h3]
The vertical slice 3 “Water” is not only about volumetric, planetary scale water. The update will also need a lot of blocks and supporting features to make real water gameplay possible.

Without them, the water would be just an interesting physics gimmick. We have many gameplay designs that involve water – and our Art team is already on the task. Here are some of the recent concepts I had the pleasure to review.

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What more can I show you? Maybe a small sneak peek at a unique backpack for a future story character:

And here is a behind the scenes video from the basic rigging of another story character.

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Question to you: What water-adjacent features would you like to see?

Full Blog Post: https://blog.marekrosa.org/2025/12/mareks-dev-diary-december-18-2025/

Space Engineers 2: Hotfix 2.0.2.47

[h2]Hotfix 2.0.2.47 has been released![/h2]

➡️ Changelog: https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers2/pc/announcement/space-engineers-2-alpha-vs-2-planets-survival-foundations
🛠️ Support Portal: https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers2/pc
🛰️ Discord: https://discord.gg/keenswh

Features

Opening the Debug Menu now shows a warning and marks your save as modified, with tagged saves showing a warning before loading.

Stability

Fixed a crash that could happen when flying close to the ground in the Survival scenario on AMD graphics cards.
Fixed an issue with GPU crashes caused by the SLUG shader by updating it to the latest version.
Fixed a memory issue related to voxels to improve game stability and prevent crashes.
Fixed an issue where the game would crash when Connector blocks tried to align or connect, especially after destruction or removal of grids.

Functional

Fixed an issue where AMD graphics drivers were not detected correctly, improving compatibility for players using AMD GPUs.

Render

Fixed an issue where in-game menus could become slow to open after playing for a long time.

Please keep in mind that VS2 is still an Early Access and Alpha version of Space Engineers 2. We are planning daily hotfixes after the initial release.

Starting with this release, we will always keep previous versions of the game available after major updates. This means you can return to an earlier version at any time and, for example, save your blueprints or creations. You will find these builds in the Steam Beta tab.
We also want to be upfront about one important thing. We already know that water will be such a monumental change for the game that you will need to start a new save when VS3 arrives. We try to minimize situations like this, but during the alpha stage of development they are sometimes unavoidable.
Planet modding is not fully supported at this stage of development - we will bring you modding support for planets at later stages!
Customizable Controls are coming in VS2.2!
In rare cases, Procedural Voxel Generation may cause a Contract grid to spawn inside a voxel area. If this happens, you will need to start a new map.
Tutorial Contracts can be broken by not following the task sequence; this will be reworked and mitigated in the future updates.

Thank you for helping us make the game better!

Image Credits: Sunset by (_KsR_)

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1133870/announcements/detail/490459397404754361 https://steamcommunity.com/games/1133870/announcements/detail/526487474953782821 https://steamcommunity.com/games/1133870/announcements/detail/526487474953782814