Hi Spacers!
October is here, which means one thing for us: SPIEL Essen is just around the corner. So, before we get into today's main topic, we'll give you the full rundown of what we're bringing to Essen, what you'll be able to play at our booth, and what else we've got planned for the show.
Then we're heading back aboard the Shepherd for a proper look at the Spacers. We'll go through Starting Classes, Spacer Sheets, and progression, see what happens when your crew moves on to Special Classes, and finally show you something we've been promising to talk about for a while: Custom Spacers. And those, as you'll see, are our first step towards another topic we'll be covering in one of the future updates: Custom Campaigns. Quite a bit to get through, so let's get started!
SPIEL Essen 2026: Come Find Us!
SPIEL Essen is just around the corner, and we're getting ready to invade Hall 4! You'll find us at Booth 4E200, surrounded by board games, miniatures, merch, and enough Polish sweets to keep everyone going for four days.
We've got quite a bit planned this year, starting with a nearly TWO-METER-TALL Titan X! Yes, we're bringing a giant Titan X to Essen, and you'll be able to take photos with it. We'll also have a display packed with miniatures, including some familiar things and a few things you'll definitely want to see up close.
We'll be bringing a selection of miniatures, the Titan X and Ser Sonch busts, and plenty of merch, including t-shirts and bags. If you've had your eye on something from our store, this might be a good opportunity to pick it up in person. We'll also have some new items available during the show.
And naturally, we're bringing the games, both for you to buy and try out!
Throughout the event, we'll be running demos of Enormity, Aeon Trespass: Twelve Sins of Herakles, and Kingdoms Forlorn. Now, a little warning for those of you planning to try Enormity: WE HAVE ONE DEMO SPOT LEFT. Just one. Every other slot has already been booked, so if you've been thinking about signing up, this is your final call!
There's still a little more room for AT:TSoH and KF, although we'd recommend booking those in advance as well. You can reserve your demo HERE, and we'll also be taking sign-ups at the booth for any remaining available slots.
Even if you're not joining us for a demo, please come and say hello! We'll have some fun activities at the booth, free pins to give away, and Polish sweets with every purchase. And if you've ever wanted to meet the people responsible for putting your Spacers through all that misery, several of them will be there throughout the show.
We're looking forward to meeting you, catching up with familiar faces, and finally showing you some of the things we've been working on in person.
See you at Booth 4E200, Spacers! And remember, the Titan X is waiting for you.
Spacer Classes
Time to talk about the people you'll be sending into the unknown. And, hopefully, bringing back in one piece.
Today’s spotlight is all about Spacer classes. We'll take a look at your starting team, their abilities, and how they develop throughout the campaign. We'll also be getting to Specialized Classes and, finally, something you've been asking us about for quite some time: Custom Spacers. More on those later, as they'll lead us into our upcoming updates on Custom Campaigns.
Starting Classes
Every Spacer aboard the Shepherd has their own set of skills and abilities, which you'll put to use throughout the campaign. Additionally, as the characters gain Experience, they become more and more capable of survival on the Shepherd. This means that you'll be able to develop the Spacers as you progress through the story: unlock new abilities, gain new skills, and eventually gain access to more advanced Classes your Spacers can specialize in.
You'll begin with four Starting Classes: Ops, Security, Engineering, or Science. Each class comes with two playable characters, giving you eight Spacers to choose from.
Each Spacer has their own name background, starting Spec cards, and unique abilities, most of which you'll unlock as you progress. They also have a personal Reconciliation story chain that unfolds alongside the main campaign, with new chapters unlocked through their Inner Dark track (I'll tell you more about that below).
Let's take a closer look at the Class cards themselves.
Each Spacer has a Class card that slots into their Rubicon Connector. On the front, you'll find their portrait and name, class designation, five Skills (Intelligence, Fitness, Presence, Judgment, and Willpower), and four abilities. You'll also find their Rubicon bonuses and a list of their starting Spec cards along the bottom of the card.
Here's Aubrey Van Visser, one of our Science Spacers, to help us explain.
Spacer Sheets
While each Spacer is essentially represented by their Class card, there are two more components that, together with the Class card, make up the full character: a Rubicon Connector and a Spacer Sheet. Let’s focus on the latter.
Much like the Campaign Sheet tracks the state of your campaign, the Spacer Sheet keeps a record of everything happening to a particular Spacer. And over the course of a campaign quite a lot can happen to them.
The top of the Sheet is where you'll record the basics: your Spacer's details, current values of their five Skills, and Experience points they’ve gained. The sheet allows you to keep track of both the Experience the Spacer has currently available and their overall Experience progress.
As your Spacer develops, you'll use the sheet to record their unlocked Masteries, Spec cards, and additional bonuses, along with any unusual boons, penalties, or other effects they pick up along the way. Underneath, you will find two statistics that deserve a little more attention: Inner Dark and Transcendence.
Inner Dark represents something rather unpleasant growing inside your Spacer. As it increases, it can trigger new parts of their personal Reconciliation story. Let it reach its limit of 10, however, and things get considerably more dangerous: the next time that Spacer dies, it's permanent. No more reprinting.
Transcendence works rather differently. It represents your Spacer's connection to and understanding of the cosmic powers that rule the Universe. It can help with transcending into Antinomies and comes into play during various events. But there's a limit here too. Go beyond 5 and your Spacer ascends to a higher state of being, disappears to parts unknown, or whatever else may have happened to them. Mechanically, they're treated as having suffered a True Death at the end of the current Phase.
Finally, a good chunk of the Spacer Sheet is dedicated to Spacer progression. You'll use the progression paths here to mark the nodes your Spacer has unlocked, first for their Starting Class, and later for their Specialized Class.
And that's a good moment to talk about how those paths actually work.
Spacer Progression
Now, if you've been wondering what’s on the back of your Class card is, here's your answer.
Throughout the campaign, your Spacers gain Experience, which you'll be able to spend on unlocking the progression nodes during the Safe House Phase. Every Spacer has their own progression tree, with different paths and upgrades available to them.
You'll begin with the leftmost node, gradually unlocking the nodes connected to those you've already purchased. Each has its own Experience cost, and once you've unlocked it, you'll record the corresponding upgrade on your Spacer Sheet.
Since we've already met Aubrey, let's see how she develops throughout the campaign.
Aubrey's progression starts with a simple upgrade: spend 1 Experience to raise her Willpower by 1. From there, her progression tree splits into two branches, each with its own upgrades to pursue.
The upper branch allows her to unlock her Proficiency ability, improve her Judgment, and gain an Adrenaline boost at the start of each run. Further along, she can upgrade her Desperate Measures or Think on Your Feet Spec cards and unlock additional abilities.
The lower branch offers a different selection of upgrades. Aubrey can improve her Rush Spec card, gain the ability to ignore the first instance of digitification, raise her Intelligence, and eventually unlock an entirely new Spec card, Self-Regulating Movement. She can then upgrade that card or acquire the Pistol Supporter Weapon mastery.
These are just some of the upgrades you'll encounter. Progression trees also contain Limit nodes, which grant bonuses to specific limits, and other upgrades specific to a given Spacer.
You'll notice that Aubrey's upper branches eventually lead to a Specialization node. This final node remains locked until you've built the required Facility in your Safe House, after which you'll be able to spend Experience to unlock it.
And that brings us to Specialized Classes…
Specialized Classes
Once your Spacer has unlocked Specialization it's time for a promotion!
You'll be able to replace their Starting Class card with one of two Specialized Class cards belonging to the same Class. For our friend Aubrey, that means choosing between Cryptozoologist and Nuclear Physicist.
Before making the switch, you'll also get to choose one ability from your previous Class to carry over. Simply take the corresponding ability sticker and place it on your new Specialized Class card, in the space previously occupied by your Spacer's portrait.
The Specialized Class card has a familiar layout, with a few changes. Your Spacer keeps the Skills they've developed so far, which are recorded on their Spacer Sheet, and their chosen ability now occupies the portrait space.
Let's say Aubrey decides to become a Cryptozoologist. She'll receive a new progression tree, with another set of upgrades to unlock as she gains Experience.
Her new progression tree begins with an Intelligence upgrade before splitting into two branches. Along the upper branch, Aubrey can unlock her new Class abilities, choosing to develop her Wild or Synergy ability. Further upgrades will improve her Fitness, grant her additional Adrenaline at the start of each run, and eventually unlock the Piercing Shot Weapon mastery.
The lower branch gives her access to two new Spec cards, Studied Attack and Organizational Procedure, both of which can be upgraded further. She can also unlock the Anomalous Seeker Scan mastery and improve her Willpower.
Both branches eventually lead to Retirement, which Aubrey can unlock by spending another 5 Experience. There's also an additional upgrade that grants her Transcendence.
Custom Spacers
And finally, something many of you have been asking about for quite some time: Custom Spacers!
Sooner or later, you might find yourself running rather short on Spacers. Perhaps they've all retired. Perhaps they've met considerably less pleasant ends. Whatever the reason, you'll eventually have the option to create your own Spacers.
Custom Spacers allow you to build your own characters without choosing one of the existing Class cards. You can give them names, determine their starting Skills and Abilities, and create different combinations of upgrades through their progression trees.
They don't have personal Reconciliation stories, but you'll have considerably more freedom when putting them together.
So, how does it work?
Each Custom Spacer is assembled from three mini cards, which together contain the same information as a regular Class card, apart from an official character name. The cards are divided into three decks, marked I, II, and III.
During character creation, you'll draw two cards from deck I and choose one to keep. You'll then repeat the process with decks II and III, ending up with three cards that form your new Spacer.
Each deck determines a different part of your character. Deck I provides your Spacer's portrait and starting Skills. Deck II determines their Starting and Proficiency abilities, while deck III provides their Synergy and Wild abilities.
Once you've made your selections, slot the three cards into your Rubicon Connector in the order I, II, III. Your new Spacer is ready!
And what about progression?
Turn your three mini cards over, and you'll find that each contains a different section of your Spacer's progression tree. The three sections combine to form a complete progression path, so your choices during character creation will also determine which upgrades you'll have access to later.
You might end up with a combination of Skills, abilities, and progression paths quite different from those of the original eight Spacers. And since you're choosing from different cards each time, there's plenty of room to experiment with new combinations.
Custom Spacers gain Experience and purchase upgrades in the same way as regular Spacers. When they're ready to specialize, they'll also be able to choose a Specialized Class card, following the same rules we've covered above.
And there's a reason we're introducing Custom Spacers now. They'll also be part of Custom Campaigns, which we'll be covering in a future update. We've got quite a bit to tell you about those, so we'll save the details for another time!
And that's it for today, Spacers! And to the one person who manages to grab that last Enormity demo slot: congratulations. You’ve made it. See you in Essen!
