- One Year Anniversary! - 30 April 2026
Approaching Infinity released 1 year ago!Thanks to everyone who helped make it such a success. And for those who haven't started their journey yet, I offer you 25% off for two weeks. I've long considered this game to be my life's work.My Star Wars, my Stellaris.I don't want to leave the universe I've created.And now I don't have to.The story continues:Approaching Infinity Survivors will tell the next part of the story. The Bankers were defeated, the Firax transcended, and the Unifiers have gone back to sleep. There's a power vacuum that everyone's scrambling to fill.But no one is waiting for you to "take your turn". They're coming whether you get out of the way or not. Upgrade your ship, crew, and weapons and try to survive.Wishlist it now!For now, enjoy Approaching Infinity.After 13 years of development, the universe is rich with experience and lore. There are hundreds of hours of cont…
- Major Update! - 7 March 2026
Largest post-launch update yet!The game has been stable for months and I've put that time to good use:New ShipsWhen the Shipyards DLC launched, I announced a contest to see who could come up with the best new ship idea. Entries were submitted using the build-sharing option and it ended December 31st. It's time to announce the winner:"XT" for the Smuggler!And honorable mention:"Roaringburn" for the (Bounty) Hunter!I altered both designs slightly and gave them unique artwork, but I believe they have the special spark their designers intended. I've contacted both Steam users to award them with keys for the new DLC.These 2 new ships are available now for all players, but they need to be unlocked like any other ship. Get the Smuggler by selling 500 illegal commodities in Limoquee space. The Bounty Hunter requires you to capture a criminal and rescue an animal from a cage. (Even if you've don…
- Controller Support Beta - 12 February 2026
Greetings Captains, Admiral IBOL here.I spent the holidays (and a lot of sick time) playing so many console games that I finally plugged a controller into my computer and, well, one thing led to another, I started detecting inputs and mapping control schemes, I printed out the command list and I, well you see... I GAVE APPROACHING INFINITYPARTIAL CONTROLLER SUPPORT!It's only in the beta branch for now, and it's only ever going to be "partial" in Steam's eyes, but you can do everything with a controller now, except enter text.There might be some edge cases to be found, like "the B button doesn't close this screen", but it's very playable. I played Caves of Qud because everyone raves about their controller support and that was, I think what finally pushed me over the edge. Here it is:(This can be found in-game under Help => Gamepad & Steam Deck, and a text version in Options => Gamepad &…
- Winter Sale and New DLC - 19 December 2025
Approaching Infinity is 25% off for the Steam Winter Sale. Explore an infinite procedural universe full of danger, aliens, loot, and lore. Play a min-maxing game of tactical supremacy or casually investigate space, planets, caves, shipwrecks, and temples. Pursue any of 10 different paths to game-ending victory or level up forever and break the game with your limitless skills. Trade, craft, mine, quest, rescue animals, host sight-seeing tours, or see what's on the other side of a black hole. Find a dead alien landing party and tell their people what happened. Kill pirates. Arrest pirates. Become a pirate. Salvage a shipwreck and make it your own. Convince alien cows to stop eating hamburgers... There's a lot to do.All the DLCs are discounted too:Shipyards:Classic Plus:Interface Expansion:The entire IBOLOGY catalog is on sale!There's even a bundle:I know you have a lot to choose from duri…
- Version 2.1.0b and the Shipyards DLC - 17 November 2025
In preparation for the launch of the new Shipyards DLC, I bring you fixes, changes, and new features. Please update to version 2.1.0b today!Shipyards DLCDesign your own starting ship! Spend points to assign stats like hull, speed, and cargo. Then assign weapons and devices from everything in the game. Start with 2 singularity launchers, a warp breach, and a quantum constrictor, or any crazy combo you can think of!All space stations will have 4 ships for sale instead of just one, and you can tow 5-deck shipwrecks in exchange for shipyard tokens that increase the number of points you have to spend on your next ship. Finally, the new Shipwright can upgrade your unique ship so you never have to part with it.Ship Design ContestUsing the Shipyards DLC, design the most interesting ship. But what's the most interesting ship? You decide. But I'm not looking for "best stat min-maxing"...I'm looki…
- Shipyards DLC Beta Test - 5 November 2025
The Shipyards DLC is coming Nov. 17th:And you can test one of its major features right now:Design Your Own Starting Ship!Spend points to assign stats. Extra hull or super speed? 3 weapons, long-range sensors, or an extra million credits? There's no charisma, so what's *your* dump-stat? Oh wait, there's "Rep Boost"... Then choose from 34 new ship pictures, and assign any combination of weapons and devices you want!This is a limited-time beta with some special conditions: You have to start a new game.It won't affect your existing saves.The games won't be playable once this beta test ends.It also doesn't include other features from the DLC, like the Shipwright or multiple ships for sale in station shipyards. It's just to test out the ship-building aspect. I'd like your feedback. How does it feel? Are there too many design points or too few? What's the best design you can come up with?This…
- New Features For All Players - 11 October 2025
Greetings space captains. Today version 2.0.20c1 is released for all players. I hope it will be the stable standard while I plan out the next few months of continued development.So what do you get in 2.0.20c1?Builds & Creature CagesI talked about these at length in the last beta update but they apply to everyone now. Suffice to say you can take creatures from cages on shipwrecks and sell them to stations or release them into the wild. And you have new options for managing your ship components, devices, and away team load-outs. New Game Start Options ("Mods")"Cheats" are out, "Mods" are in!When starting a new game, cheats are now called mods (because some of them are actually harder), and starting with asteroid bases has been moved to this screen.But we also have 3 totally new options:Random RacesEver notice that you always encounter the same few factions in the early game, but the Firax…
- Autumn Sale 20% Off - 29 September 2025
It's time, Captain. The infinite galaxy awaits!But what is your mission?Planetary exploration?Bounty hunting?Asteroid mining?Trading?Salvaging shipwrecks?Recovering powerful alien artifacts?Destroying the galaxy?!Avenging your ancestors?Tourism??Animal rescue?Cure diseases?Help aliens?Become a master craftsman?Solve ancient mysteries?Kill lots of aliens?Choose any or none* or just make up your own goals. *Note: killing aliens isn't really optional... **OK, maybe, MAYBE, with the right set of skills you could retire without ever killing a single alien, but I doubt it...If you grew up with Kirk, Picard, Adama, or Sheridan, then these are the droids you're looking for.But don't just take my word for it, here are just 3 of the hundreds of overwhelmingly positive reviews from players like you:
- Builds Beta, Creature Cages - 27 September 2025
Beta 2.0.19F+3Everything you're about to see is in the "betafromnowon" branch, but should reach all players within a week, as long as everything checks out. Anyone can play the beta branch, and it won't break your saves.BuildsLast week, someone here on Steam mentioned have switchable device load-outs. I had tried that over a year ago and ran into problems, but my mind was in the right place now: I came up with a new approach, worked 8 hours straight, and got it. I spent the rest of the week testing it. It's in beta now.Builds are permanently unlocked once you reach sector 10+ in your current game, or if you've ever reached sector 100+. This is to avoid confusion for new players, since there's already so much to learn.There are 9 "build" buttons in total: 3 for ship components (weapons, defenses, engines, etc), 3 for ship devices, and 3 for away team gear. This allows for maximum customi…
- New Quests, Items, and Locations... and... PLAYABLE! - 19 September 2025
Greetings space captains! Development continues, 12 years and counting.PLAYABLE!Approaching Infinity has been found to be "playable" on the Steam Deck.You may have already known that, since there are thousands of deck player-hours... But do you know there's a "Big Text" option (options => Text/buttons => Big Text) that makes text bigger? Mostly for the deck players but anyone can use it ;)The Steam Team has given me a list of requirements needed to get it up to "Verified", but I honestly doubt that AGK is up to the task of fulfilling all of them.New QuestsS.O.S. beacons can now give "rare plant" quests, where you need to find 2 different kinds of rare plant (which are now detectable from scans).Beacons can also give "Merc needs a gun" quests. I urge you to read these if you get them. This is great for players who like crafting, because you can usually build what they need...There's a ne…
- Disease Cures & Cryptid Hunt - 29 August 2025
Hail space captains!Work continues, and it's equal parts bug fixes, player suggestions, and crazy developer tangents...One of the biggest complaints of the past few months is diseases. They're supposed to be terrible, but it turns out they're UN-FUN, and that's not cool. They make some players feel like they just had to wait hundreds of turns for symptoms to show up or get better. So I've made some changes.Disease CuresThe virologist skill (science officer) has always existed, and it does work to cure your diseases over time. But there has never been any indication of when that would happen (and that's because it has always been like a 1% chance per turn. nobody knew when it would happen!)Now that skill (and the "Immunization Station" and "Med lab" devices) actively work to cure your diseases, and you get a read-out right on screen of their progress, it's displayed in the status icon as…
- Freezing, Features, and Fixes - 15 August 2025
FreezingCryo weapons now have a base 25% chance to freeze enemies! Anything that resists cryo is immune to this effect, and so are all creatures on frozen planets. The Transmutor skill "Elemental Trigger" adds 33% chance per level. Hitting frozen enemies with smashing/blunt , sonic, or explosive does double damage ;)Have fun with this one!InjuriesWe're not waiting for the end of away missions anymore...There are a lot of changes for this:Injuries immediately disable passive skills.Injury over 25 disables active (cyber) skills too.Minor injuries heal 1 per turn (or more with skills/powers/devices), but...Injuries over 150 do not heal on their own!Injuries of 100 or more slow the away team by 25, and 350+ slows the away team by 60!Injuries greater than 250 get worse every turn! (They heal naturally on the ship.)Max injury is 500Regenerate power (and med kits) speed up the healing of these…
- Cryo-Chamber For Everyone! - 1 August 2025
Things have been great since the official launch back in April, the game hit "overwhelmingly positive" and I've enjoyed having a stable build up for the past month. But it's time for some updates! Everything here is released for all players today in version 2.0.16c (now 'd', see below).The Cryo-ChamberWhen there are 14 different officer classes (including the new alien officers) to choose from, and only 6 officer slots, it can be hard to decide who to have on your team. In the past, you had to dismiss an officer to hire someone new. That changes now with...The Cryo-Chamber!It needs to be unlocked through a quest chain, and it'll be easier if you have asteroid bases unlocked... Anyway, once you have 5 or 6 officers, if you touch a cryo-tube in a cave or shipwreck, one of your officers will come up with a brilliant idea... and the quest for the cryo-chamber will begin.It's optional, of co…
- Update #169 - 2 July 2025
After a week at the beach, and before 4th of July, I addressed some issues, added some features, and tweaked some numbers. This is released for everyone, version 2.0.14a:Fixes:I fixed a lot of issues with mutated diseases. Sorry about all that!I fixed a bug where scanning or boarding certain syndicate shipwrecks caused a hang / crash.I put in more checks to auto-complete the quest in sector 7.I fixed a visual bug in classic UI mode when exiting stations.Changes:The captain's log no longer auto-formats your messages with capitals and lowercase letters.Bandit machines (slot machines) now payout stacks of Commodities instead of just 1, and they only give certain Commodities.Bandit machines can now pay out consumables (like squik poison and porta-doors).Banker Soldier attack range increased to 7.Ship classes that don't allow built-in devices (like the cruiser) will no longer show built-in s…
- Cryo-Chamber Beta - 20 June 2025
Now that there are 14 officer classes but only room for 6 at a time, I'm finally experimenting with a long-time player request: a place to "drop off" your officers so you can hire someone with a certain set of skills...The Cryo-Chamber!For now, it will have no cost. In the future there will be quests to obtain it and freeze/thaw costs in essences every time you use it (ice to freeze and heat to thaw).If you want to play around with the cryo-chamber, make sure you have the latest version (2.0.13e) and enter the code "Cryo-Chamber". It unlocks on a per-run basis. Remember: it's free right now for testing but that won't last forever.You can still only hire one of the new "alien division" officers at a time. You can't cheat with the cryo-chamber. Death or dismissal are your only chances to get another.FixesI fixed a serious bug that made the final monk quest un-complete-able!I fixed a bug w…
- 4 New Officer Classes! - 13 June 2025
Sure sure, we already hit 2.0 and full release. But after 12 years, I CAN'T STOP! So here are 4 new officer classes you can unlock, and these are *special*. This is so exciting for me! I haven't designed new classes from scratch since the very beginning:And they're not human!Well, the Pirate might be, but barely. And the others, definitely not. That means they can't use human cyber-skills. And that means that their skills need to be really awesome. Well they are!The Pirate Buccaneer is all about illegal activity, like counterfeiting, extortion, and smuggling.The Gruff Hunt-Leader carries a variety of ammo types and can tame predators.The Limoquee Marshal can instantly arrest pirates, mercs, and syndicate members.The Sigorn Quartermaster helps you store more of everything and get better prices for trades. But their best ability might be charging in to attack from 3 tiles away!How did I c…
- 2.0.10 , New DLC , TBT Fest - 2 June 2025
One Month After Release After 12 years, I don't know how to stop. This is my "Star Wars", my "Stellaris". My game's universe is always on my mind. What stories can I tell? What features can I offer? And there's another important question I must ask: How can I continue living my life as an indie game developer?! Getting to 500 Steam reviews and hitting "overwhelmingly positive" would help greatly. We're almost there. But that's something I can't directly control. I plan to strike a balance between continuing free updates and paid DLCs, for as long as you continue to reward my hard work ;) There have been a lot of additions, fixes, and changes over the last month, but first: TBT Fest! Approaching Infinity is finally part of Turn Based Fest! This week-long event features over 400 turn-based games and is brought to you from the same people who host Turn Based Thursday on Twitter and Bluesky…
- 2.0.02 - 7 May 2025
It's been a week since launch and I'm still hard at work to bring you new features and fixes. As I said, I don't intend to stop ːsteamthumbsupː so let's take a look at what I've done so far. All these changes are released for all players. Real Time Events => Turn-Based Over the years I've had a few complaints about the rare real-time effects (like amnesia and explosive decompression). I stand by those choices. But I also tend to provide cheats and settings that allow people to turn off certain things that would otherwise be deal-breakers for them. So: If you don't like the real-time events, go into Settings > Misc, and all the way at the bottom you will be able to turn off real time events. They'll still do things (lose a turn, or move you a space, etc.) , but it's less out-of-control. It's turn-based! Hull Shears Plus Having 2 sources of hull shears (device, wreck tech skill, artifacts…
- Star-trekking sandbox roguelike Approaching Infinity launches after more than 12 years in development - 4 May 2025
Us old-school rogue-likers are eating good. It feels like we've barely had time to digest the fantastic 'final' version of Caves Of Qud (there's more coming, of course), and already we've got another massive indie roguelike passion project to dive into. Approaching Infinity by micro-indie outfit Ibology has been in development for over twelve years now. It's a massive turn-based sandbox heavily inspired by classic Star Trek, and now freshly launched out of early access after many an update... Read more.
- Steam Deck Compatibility - 29 April 2025
As a solo indie PC developer, I don't focus on handheld gaming... But I know lots of you do! ːsteamhappyː The good news is ːsteamhappyː Many people already enjoy Approaching Infinity on the Steam Deck. It's definitely playable. And there are a few control schemes out there designed by the community. ːsteamsadː But the bad new is ːsteamsadː Due to the language the game is written in, Approaching Infinity will probably never receive the coveted "Verified" rating by Steam. AND I don't even have a button on my Steam page to submit it for their testing, it hasn't reached their "certain automated heuristics" threshold yet... If you're really concerned, try the free demo. It's basically the full game with some limitations. Anyone who has or knows of a good control scheme, please share here.
