Field Manual

This is the mandatory pre-read. Load this file first, every session. It gives working fluency across the whole game plus routing into the 20 detail docs and the install reference. When a number here disagrees with a detail doc, trust the detail doc -- each was individually fact-checked against live sources; this master is a synthesis layer. When a detail doc disagrees with docs/ref/shadow-install.md on install / engine / save facts, trust the install reference (it is first-hand).

What This Corpus Is#

A knowledge corpus about StarRupture, Creepy Jar's first-person survival / base-building / factory-automation / base-defense game set on the planet Arcadia-7 under the unstable star Ruptura. Its first purpose is playthrough companionship -- answering Robert's questions on progression, recipes, the base model, logistics, power/cooling, defense, the Rupture cycle and the world, with numbers that are correct for 0.2.8 -- and pair-planning his "Praxis" save (51 h in, see Robert's Baseline). The second purpose is tooling: a save reader + progression tracker and a base/factory planning tool hosted at rupture.salvo.host (plan starrupture-site); the corpus carries the save format (doc 20), the planner data appendix (doc 17) and the identifier registry precisely so those can be built on verified ground. The third purpose is mod development (doc 15) -- with a legal caveat, see Modding.

How a session should use it. Read this master for orientation and the cheat-sheet numbers; route into the specific detail doc via the Doc Index at the bottom for any answer that must be exact or complete. Do not answer version-sensitive questions from memory -- this is an Early Access title that changed materially at Update 1 and whose community sources are largely stale; open the doc. Every detail doc carries a ## Gaps & Unverified section and tags claims [confirmed] (official or wiki + second source), [reported] (single source), [inferred] or UNVERIFIED; carry those tags into answers. On any conflict between a doc and a live source, flag "Documentation drift detected:", verify, then update the doc (never silently).

Reliability model. 20 docs, 11,747 lines, written by an Opus research swarm (one agent per domain) and fact-checked by one verifier per doc: 384 load-bearing claims re-checked, 274 corrections applied, 244 items left explicitly UNVERIFIED. The corpus's weakness is not missing domains but missing numbers: build costs, footprints, turret/weapon stats, per-building cooling, drone/rail capacities and the asset-id-to-display-name map are unpublished anywhere public and wait on a datamine of pakchunk0-Windows.utoc (.locres string tables + DA_* / CR_* payloads). The first-hand save analysis (doc 20) closed several of those gaps from Robert's own save.

The Game in One Page#

Premise. You are one of four convicts (Engineer, Soldier, Medic/Biologist, Scientist/Physicist -- cosmetic and voice only in 0.2.8) shipped to Arcadia-7, a penal-labour resource colony worked on behalf of Earth's mega-corporations. The planet orbits Ruptura, a star that periodically detonates a planet-wide Fire Wave (the "Rupture"; internal system name EnviroWave) that incinerates everything outdoors, after which the surface regrows. You serve five corporations (plus a tutorial "Training Corporation"), each with its own reputation ladder: Selenian (mining/smelting), Moon Energy (power/scanning/research), Clever Robotics (drones/logistics), Griffits Blue (military), Future Health Solutions (habitat/medical/food/chemistry). The hostile fauna are the Vermin; base attacks pour out of Monoliths (internal AlienObelisk); the story climax is the Forgotten Engine, a derelict terraforming megamachine.

The loop. Explore between waves -> hand-gather and mine -> build a Base Core + sealed Habitat -> automate extraction and crafting on drone rails (there are no conveyor belts) -> export goods to corporations via Orbital Cargo Launchers and convert valuables to Data Points at the Analyzing Station -> buy corporation levels (licences) and then Recipe Station recipes -> loot abandoned bases for Blueprint items that gate most recipes -> upgrade the Base Core (which triggers a Monolith attack) -> defend with turrets -> expand across outposts -> raid the Forgotten Engine.

Win condition. There is no ending in 0.2.8. The Forgotten Engine raid (mission 13, World Engine Program) is the Early Access content end; completing it removes the map's radiation border and opens the outer region. Endgame, a Frost Wave, a new biome, more story and achievements are 1.0 roadmap items (store banner: "Leaving Early Access: 2027").

Shape of the game. Single handcrafted World Partition map (ChimeraMain, not procedural, fixed start at the Orbital Lander). PC/Steam only (app 1631270), $19.99 ($15.99 sale), 12 languages (English audio), single-player + online co-op up to 4 players + an experimental Windows dedicated server (app 3809400). No controller support, no difficulty settings, no creative mode, no achievements (all roadmap). Reception: Steam "Very Positive" (~81-82% of 6.8k-13k reviews depending on language filter), 500k copies in 11 days, peak 42,864 CCU at launch, ~1.8k peak in August 2026.

StarRupture vs Satisfactory -- the differences that change every plan#

System Map#

How they interlock. Extraction feeds Production over drone rails, which also carry the power that every building draws from a grid with no storage; every placed structure also spends the owning Base Core's cooling capacity, which is the budget that actually runs out first. Production's outputs go three ways: back into buildings (materials), up the corporations (exports -> levels -> licences) and into the Analyzing Station (Data Points -> recipes). Upgrading a Base Core buys cooling headroom and triggers a Monolith attack, so Defense scales with base growth. The Rupture is the master clock that everything else is scheduled around.

The Rupture (Fire Wave) -- the master clock#

Survival kit doctrine: always carry 1 Meteor Heart + 100 Basic Building Material so a warning far from home is survivable with a pocket Base Core + Habitat + Airlock.

The Base Model#

Base Core#

* Any cost quoted in Quartz Building Material (QBM) is pre-Update-1: Update 1 removed Quartz as a building material (Quartz Ore became the Development Station currency; old QBM recycles losslessly). Treat QBM prices as stale until re-verified.

Habitat, stability, placement#

• The Habitat is a hard gate: the Analyzing Station, Recipe Station, Corporate Terminal, Equipment Upgrade Station, Food Station and Development Station must be placed inside one. Small Habitat costs 5 cooling, Large Habitat 20.
• Stability is a real saved budget: base platforms are sources (Strength 100), connecting platforms cost 10 and decay strength by 10 per hop; machine costs: Base Core 30, Drone Junction 15, Solar/Exporter/Redistributor 60, Crafter 70, Smelter 80, Furnace 90 (first-hand, doc 20). Community rules: supports every ~4-5 tiles, pillars ~3 high, ~4 pillars max, pillars do not chain unless the upper one sits on a supported platform. Hotfix 0.2.5 decreased platform stability cost -- pre-May-2026 stability spreadsheets are wrong.
• Footprints come from a packaged set of 25 modular foundation sizes (1x1 .. 9x12, orientation explicit: 3x4 != 4x3). Measured: Fabricator 3x3 (alt 4x4), Furnace 3x4, Fabricator v.2 4x4, Furnace v.2 4x5, Base Core 4x4. Since 0.2.3 a Foundation Platform auto-spawns under a building -- reserve it.
• Placement runs on 17 typed placing-condition classes and 11 typed sockets (BSD_Ore/GasOre/SulphurOre/GoethiteOre/MagicOilOre/Geothermal/DroneRail/ZipRail/Zipline/JunctionTop/Ramp) -- extractor-to-deposit compatibility is a typed matrix. Exclusion zones are first-class (BP_BuildingExcluder).
• Build keys (KBM only; no controller support): B build menu, C Building Drone camera (Clever Robotics L4), RMB place / hold for multi-place, wheel = height, Y height lock, R rotate, F deconstruct, Q cancel, H MedTool, M map. Materials come out of the player's inventory (no construction-bot delivery). Deconstruction refunds 100%; whole-base deconstruct exists; no relocation tool, no undo; build time is undocumented.
• v.1 -> v.2 building upgrades go through the Development Station (Moon Energy L5, inside a Habitat, paid in Quartz Ore); 15 upgrade paths ship (BR_*); rails upgrade in place.

Logistics -- drone rails#

Production -- machines, resources, recipes#

Machines (power / cooling / cost / unlock)#

Unmapped in every public source (shipped classes): CRC_Synthetizer(Tier2), CRC_Burner, CRC_MaterialCrafter, CRC_WaveSmelter, CRC_WaveFreezer, CRC_DroneAssembler; Cooler (Active/Passive) assets exist (the "Cooler / Cooling Tower" players cite as the overheating fix). Full table with confidence codes: doc 17 §2-5.

Resources#

The core recipe spine (base machines, 0.2.8; rate = items/min)#

Throughput math (in-game UI): (items per cycle / cycle seconds) x 60; a cycle consumes and emits as one batch; the items/min display itself is an Update 2 feature. Tier-2 machines (CR_*_v2) are not speed multipliers -- they take different inputs (Goethite Ingot enters Tube/Glass/Chemicals; Wolfram Powder enters Wolfram Plate) and reshape the chain upstream; Glass v.2 is a trap (same 20/min, 2.5x power). Ore purity is implemented as 27 separate recipe assets (3 ores x 3 purities x 3 drills) -- a planner picks a recipe per node, never forks the item graph. The community dataset's "tier" column is a UI grouping, not a dependency order (doc 17 §6.5). 75 of the 237 shipped CR_* recipes are publicly documented.

Power & Cooling Cheat Sheet#

• No energy storage exists ("Battery" / "Accumulator" are crafting items). No fuel-burning generator is live content (CombustionPowerGenerator ships as an asset only). Electrical deficit behaviour is undocumented; the documented failure mode is thermal.
• Cooling cost and MW are independent: Smelter 3 cool / 5 MW, He-3 Extractor 60 / 15, Assembler 150 / 60, Compounder 150 / 60, Refinery 60 / 40, Constructorizer 40 / 80, Pyro Forge 35 / 60, Laser Drill 20 / 5, Furnace 8 / 20, Fabricator 5 / 10, Ore Excavator 3 / 5, OCL 5 / 10, Storage Depot v.1 5 / 5, Small Habitat 5, Large Habitat 20. Track both budgets.
• MW per cooling point (the community's power argument): Wind v1 10.0, Chemical 4.5, Solar v2 4.0, Solar v1 2.0 -> Wind v1 spam beats Solar v2 on heat; post-Update-1 veterans replaced turbine farms with cooler farms.
• Building heat is transient (CurrentHeat 0 on every entity between waves) -- per-building heat output and Cooler capacity need a mid-wave save to measure.

Progression Skeleton#

Three currencies and two purchases per unlock#

Unlocking anything takes two purchases: a corporation level at the Corporate Terminal grants the licence, then the Recipe Station (Moon Energy L2, 100 BBM, inside a Habitat) converts it into a craftable recipe for Data Points + bulk items (IBM = 1,000 BBM + 100 Glass + 100 Inductor + 100 Ti Housing + 300 DP; Power Cell = 400 Electronics + 400 Chemicals + 1,000 DP) -- and most recipes additionally require a Blueprint item looted from abandoned bases (92 *Blueprint item classes ship; Robert's save: 15 unlocked / 140 locked). Ruin looting is a production activity.

Corporations (the real tech tree)#

Shared level cost ladder (all five real corporations): L2 200 · L3 1,500 · L4 6,400 · L5 17,600 · L6 37,800 · L7 69,700 · L8 116,000 · L9 179,400 · L10 262,600 · L11 368,300 · L12 499,200 · L13 658,300 (cumulative 2.22 M); L14-15 undocumented. The two critical early gates: Moon Energy L2 (Recipe Station) and Future Health L4 (LEM Station); third: Clever L4 (Building Drone). Update 1 reset every corporation to L1 (progress refunded as Data Points) and raised the caps from 11/11/13 -- any corporation table from January-March 2026 is stale.

Character progression#

Three XP skills (Combat, Survival, Movement), designed for 100 but capped at 45 in EA, giving 3 of a planned 6 LEM (Limbic Enhancement Membrane) slots each; ~27 LEM augments in Lesser/Standard/Greater ranks, colour-matched to slots, equipped at the LEM Station (e.g. Greater Lifegiver +40 max HP, Endurancegiver +50% stamina, Shieldgiver +shield). No suit, armour or backpack progression exists.

Run shape and missions#

Missions 1-12 are tutorial (exact 0.2.8 save match: mission 4 = 12 / 12 / 120, mission 12 = 20 Titanium Bars = Training L5). Objective progress is a delta (currentValue - initialValue >= conditionValue). Commissions never expire or reroll; they refresh on level-up ("select a new commission in the OCL after every level up"). Community run length: 20-30 h core, ~40 h relaxed, 60-80+ h for all EA content.

Survival & Combat Brief#

World in Brief#

• Arcadia-7: one handcrafted map, fixed start at the Orbital Lander with Wolfram and Titanium deposits outside the pod and a pond to the north; the early expansion axis is N / NE. No official size; pre-Update-1 only ~20-30% was reachable; the map UI unlocks at Moon Energy L3; no minimap; fog of war clears by walking and by Geo Scanners (fixed antennas: charge 60-180 s, fail distance 150 m, 2-8 scheduled Vermin spawners, reveal ~350 m radius; Robert has encountered 20).
• Biomes are unnamed in any official source -- fan-site names (Starting Plains, Fungal Forest, Volcanic Biome, Crystal Caverns) are suspected fabrications.
• Abandoned bases are the lore and blueprint surface (pre-Update-1 roster of 7 holding 11 blueprints): Purple Haze (Tubes, Rotor), Lemon Souls / Griffith's Research Outpost (Stator), Grey Owl (Stabilizer), Mythic Cry (Synthetic Silicon), Starry Night (Electronics), Spored Rock (Chemical), Redleaf (Electromagnetic Coil, Hardening Agent, Valve, Turbine -- four keycards); plus Copperfield, Next Step (IRO-SO joint outpost) and the Lander. Update 1 moved the Forgotten Engine's blueprints elsewhere and added an uncatalogued outer region behind the radiation border (new bases, antennas, caves, Powerium and Goethite).
• Caves: 100+, sealed by vines, open for minutes after a Rupture, the only source of Quartz Ore and Glowcap; shoot the heart by the entrance if vines regrow while you are inside.
• Lore: the four convicts have names and crimes (Samuel Khumalo the Biologist, Chris Bonnet the Scientist, Maeve Caliente the Engineer, Han Nergui the Soldier); "IRO" is an unexplained Earth-side organisation; the Monoliths, the Vermin's origin and Ruptura's cycle are unexplained; narrative arrives via the 13-mission chain, audiologs, datapads, voiced contextual dialogue, terminals and StoryBits -- their text is undocumented anywhere public (extractable from .locres).

Strategy Doctrine (what the mechanics reward)#

Multiplayer in Brief#

4 players (host + 3), listen server from the client or the experimental dedicated server (StarRuptureServerEOS.exe -Log -port=7777, DSSettings.txt JSON with SessionName, SaveGameInterval 300 s, StartNewGame, LoadSavedGame, SaveGameName; same save format). EOS SDK 1.17 + Steamworks for identity; no crossplay, no host migration, no server browser (manual IP + join password), no admin commands documented; the dedicated server pauses when empty (0.2.2). Progression (corporations, recipes, waves) is session-scoped; inventory and slot unlocks are per player. Known pain: ~5-hour geometry desync, single-digit FPS on large contiguous platforms, ~5-minute rollbacks on disconnect. Doc 14.

Modding & Technical in Brief#

UE 5.6.1 custom build; game module Chimera (Cr*) on Creepy Jar's Auraris (Au*) plugins, GAS for abilities, Mass Entity for enemies and buildings; single unsigned IoStore chunk (38 GB .ucas, encryption expected absent), full 2.5 GB PDB shipped, no anti-cheat. Community stack: Nexus Mods (~150 mods; no Workshop), UE4SS repack for 0.2.8, AlienXAXS StarRupture-ModLoader (dwmapi.dll proxy -- conflicts with UE4SS's proxy) + Plugin SDK, pak/utoc mods in Content\Paks\, ini console variables via [SystemSettings] in GameUserSettings.ini, loose-pak .locres layering works (Ukrainian translation). Save tools: Chr0nos save editor (its migrate command deletes gameVersion -- never run it on a 0.2.8 save), adubry75 GUI editor, AlienX's StarRupture Utilities (converter, browser editor, 2 GB save patcher, drone-corruption fixer). Legal caveat: Creepy Jar ships a game EULA that expressly prohibits modification, derivative works, data-extraction tooling and reverse engineering (doc 15 §EULA) -- plan mod/datamine work with that on the table. Docs 15, 20, ref/shadow-install.md; the curated mod set actually installed on Praxis and the numbers it changes: doc 21 (v1.0.1).

Tooling Landscape (and our niche)#

Our unoccupied ground (doc 16): save-file import (no planner reads a .sav), build-id-stamped data provenance, a repeatable datamine covering all 237 recipes, enviro-wave- and defence-aware planning, blueprint gating driven by the save, drone-rail geometry.

Development History in 10 Lines#

1. Creepy Jar S.A., Warsaw (Green Hell, 12 M copies), WSE-listed (CRJ); revealed as "Chimera" at the summer 2023 PC Gaming Show, renamed StarRupture 2023-12-19 (codename survives in every asset path).
2. Gameplay trailer 2025-01-27 with an "Autumn 2025" window; single-player playtest 2025-07-29 -> 08-11 (158k participants, 92% positive); co-op playtest 2025-12-03 -> 12-08.
3. Delayed 2025-08-18 to Early Access 2026-01-06, hit exactly; 500k copies in 11 days, 935k wishlists, #2 global bestseller.
4. Hotfixes 0.1.1 (01-09), 0.1.2 (01-16), 0.1.3 (01-30); a second "0.1.3" Technical Hotfix (03-25) blocked PTB saves.
5. Public Test Branch 2026-03-25 -> 04-09; Update 1 (0.2.0) 2026-04-09: bigger map beyond the radiation border, Powerium + Goethite, Zipline, Development Station, Recycler, 9 new buildings, 6 v.2 buildings, wildlife (Vulpir, Coralion, Skylisk), 40+ items, progression rollback (all corporations to L1), one-to-one Cargo Dispatcher, Quartz no longer a building material, weapons lost on death, Teleporter moved to a corporation reward.
6. Hotfixes 0.2.1 (04-16) ... 0.2.5 (05-18: autosave interval, lower platform stability cost) ... 0.2.8 (06-17: RTX 40/50 exit crash) -- 66+ days with no patch since.
7. Branch model is event-driven: a PTB per major update, torn down at release; only public exists now.
8. Dev Blogs (June, August 2026) preview Update 2: copy buildings with parameters, Drone Roundabout overhaul, multi-deconstruct, items/min in crafting UI, Add Pillars, search bars, custom map names, Abandoned Base completion status -- none shipped.
9. EA roadmap (2026-01-08): wildlife, custom game modes, new travel, codex, controller support, bigger map, more corporation levels/weapons/resources/buildings, dedicated servers, accessibility; 1.0 (2027): Frost Wave, new biome, endgame, more story, achievements.
10. The install's 2026-08-16 depot timestamp is a local re-download, not a new build (SteamCMD shows buildid 23761620 pushed 2026-06-17).

Robert's Baseline (save Praxis, 2026-08-23 -- AutoSave213, pre-mod) -- refresh at every playthrough session#

The snapshot was taken with the game closed and Steam Cloud disabled (2026-08-23). Reads only while the game runs -- never write into the save directory while it runs.

Stale-Value Warnings (read before quoting a number)#

Doc Index#

Glossary#

StarRupture is Creepy Jar's first-person, open-world survival factory-builder, set on the alien planet Arcadia-7 under the unstable star Ruptura. The player is one of four convict-specialists dropped onto the surface to strip-mine it for five off-world megacorporations, building automated production chains whose output is fired into orbit via Cargo Dispatchers in exchange for Data Points, corporate reputation and new technology. What makes the game structurally distinct from every other factory game is the title mechanic: on a roughly 50-55-minute cycle the Ruptura star erupts and a Fire Wave / Rupture sterilises the planet's surface, killing anything not sealed inside a Habitat and then letting the whole biosphere regrow -- so exploration, harvesting and combat all run on a hard countdown while the base itself must be built to survive the burn. It launched into Steam Early Access on 2026-01-06 at $19.99 (launch discount $15.99), sits at "Very Positive" on Steam, and is targeting a 1.0 release in 2027. This document is the orientation layer for the rest of the corpus; per-system depth (buildings, recipes, corporations, enemies, waves) lives in the sibling docs.

Confidence labels used below: [confirmed] = official source, or wiki plus a second independent source, or first-hand from the local install. [reported] = single non-official source. [inferred] = deduced from evidence, stated as such. UNVERIFIED = could not be established; also listed under Gaps.

1. Premise, setting and framing#

Narrative delivery. There is no cutscene-driven campaign. Story is environmental and epistolary: abandoned bases overrun by aliens, caves that are only enterable during certain phases of the wave cycle, dead colonists, and written plus audio logs left by earlier expeditions are the primary lore vectors [reported] (multiple guides; audiolog subtitles were explicitly patched in Hotfix 0.1.2). Corporate mission/contract text ("commissions") supplies the rest. The install corroborates this: Content/Chimera/Items/StoryBits, AbandonedBases/AbandonedBase, Caves, ContextualDialog plugin, GameSubtitles, and an encyclopediaEntriesStatusData block in the save.

The Forgotten Engine. A large late-game structure/objective referred to as the Forgotten Engine exists in the build and on the roadmap [confirmed] -- roadmap lists "forgotten engine" under New Content; the install has Content/Chimera/Buildings/ForgottenEngine (2,076 assets, the single largest building folder), a ForgottenEngine.umap, a MegamachinesSubsystem with forgotten_Engine: Inactive in the save, a Supporter Pack avatar "ForottenEngine" [sic] and soundtrack track 13 "The Forgotten Engine". Its in-game role and activation requirements are UNVERIFIED from web sources.

Tone and presentation. Corporate-dystopian sci-fi played fairly straight, with dry corporate-onboarding humour in the mission and UI text [reported]. Visually it is a high-fidelity UE5 alien world -- volumetric skies, weather, dense procedural foliage, and a signature orange/ash "burn" palette during the Fire Wave; press and player reviews consistently single out the visuals as a strength even where they criticise the systems [confirmed] (Steam reviews, ScreenHype, NeonLightsMedia, buttonmusher). Supporter-Pack soundtrack titles trace the intended arc: The Rupture -> Welcome to Arcadia-7 -> The Long Shift -> Efficiency -> Expansion -> Optimalization -> Ashfall -> Planet Regrowth -> Outreach -> Time to Fight -> The Vermin -> Conflict -> The Forgotten Engine -> Core Under Attack.

2. Core gameplay loop#

The loop is described by reviewers as a "loop within a loop": a fast wave-cycle loop nested inside a slow corporate-progression loop [reported] (buttonmusher, 25 hours with StarRupture).

Outer loop (progression):

1. Explore between Ruptures -- surface POIs, abandoned bases, caves, wrecks; loot blueprint items and resources.
2. Extract -- place Mechanical Drills / Laser Drills on ore nodes, extractors on gas, acid, sulphur, water and deuterium sources.
3. Build & automate -- foundations/platforms with a stability budget, then smelting, furnace, crafting, assembly, refining, chemical-processing and synthesis stations, wired for power and connected by drone rails. (Caution: the station names used across this corpus -- Smelter, Furnace, Crafter, Assembler, Refinery, Chemical Processor, Synthetizer -- are the packaged CRC_* asset identifiers, not confirmed in-game display names. Names visible in Update 1 coverage include Ore Excavator, Laser Drill, Orbital Cargo Launcher, Compounder, Fabricator, Constructorizer, Facturer, Pyro Forge, Chemical Generator, Oil Extractor, Recycler, with v.2 higher tiers -- so the two vocabularies do not line up one-to-one. Resolving the map requires the .locres string tables.) [confirmed] for the display names listed -- Update 1 coverage (v0.2.0)
4. Export -- feed Cargo Dispatchers / Orbital Cargo Launchers, one bound to each corporation, with the items that corporation currently demands.
5. Research / unlock -- exports and analysed items yield Data Points; the Analyzer converts found items into Data Points, and the Research Lab / Corporate Terminal spends them on recipes, buildings and upgrades. Corporation levels and reputation gate tiers of tech; many recipes are additionally gated behind physical blueprint items looted in the world.
6. Defend -- once the Base Core is upgraded, alien attack waves target the base; turrets (Tier 1/2), decoys, walls and manual combat hold them off.
7. Expand -- new zones, new resources, second and third base sites, then the endgame structures.

[confirmed] for the export->Data Point->unlock chain (buttonmusher; corporation guides; Update 1 notes about Data Point redistribution). Corroborated first-hand by the save schema: CrCorporationsOwner holds per-corporation level, reputation, researchPointsTier1/2 and a global dataPoints counter; CrCraftingRecipeOwner holds unlockedRecipes[] plus lockedRecipes{} mapping each locked recipe to the blueprint items required to unlock it -- direct confirmation of item-gated recipe unlocks.

Inner loop (the Rupture cycle): reported timings, [reported] (ClawsomeGamer, GamerHour and community guides; the game itself surfaces a countdown and the community has published timer mods):

Version caution: wave cadence and the exact phase split are balance values and have been touched by patches (e.g. Hotfix 0.2.5 changed autosave interval options and stability costs; 0.2.1 fixed co-op stability "when the Fire Wave hits"). Treat the table as 0.2.x-era community measurement, not a datasheet. The install's EnviroWaveTimer save block exposes the real tunables -- waveSpeed, preWaveDuration, fire-wave / burning / fading fadeout durations, moon-phase growback and regrowth -- and EnviroWaveEffects exposes the per-wave flags sulfurActive, enemySpawnersActive, evaporateWater, hidePoisonIvy, hideAggressivePlant. Extracting the shipped defaults from those assets is a datamine task, not a web-research one (see Gaps).

Wave count is persistent progression. The save's numWaves counter (44 in the reference playthrough at ~51 h) and waveStagesToRespondTo on gatherables show that wave index is a first-class world-state variable, not just a timer [confirmed, first-hand].

3. How the four genres are blended#

Logistics model -- the key structural difference. StarRupture has no conveyor belts. Items move on drone rails: you build rail segments, junctions and lanes between buildings, and transport drones fly item requests along them. The network is demand-driven (pull) -- consumers request, the logistics subsystem dispatches -- rather than the push-belt model of Factorio/Satisfactory [confirmed] -- community consensus on Steam discussions ("rail system which uses PULL demand instead of the PUSH belt system"), corroborated by the save's CrLogisticsLineFragment, CrLogisticsRequestSubsystem, logisticsRequestSubsystemState, RequestOptions / RequestContainer / Intersection / AgentFragment and BP_Drone_Transporter / BP_RailDroneBase assets. Additional drone types shipped: Harvester, Maintenance, and a player/building drone. Ziplines were added in Update 1 for player traversal (CrZiplineSubsystem, ZiplineArm, Zipline building) [confirmed].

4. Camera, control model and moment-to-moment feel#

5. Release status, build and platform facts (0.2.8, 2026-08-22)#

5.1 Identity#

5.2 Published version history (Early Access)#

Non-patch news since: Base Building Basics: Part 2 video guide (Jun 25), Developer Blog: June 2026 (Jun 19) and Developer Blog: August 2026 (Aug 5). [confirmed] -- Steam news listing.

Announced but NOT in 0.2.8 (from the two dev blogs -- do not present these as current features): copying building parameters between buildings, drone roundabout overhaul, multi-deconstruct, crafting info shown as items/minute, build-mode "Add Pillars" with automatic pillar height adjustment, building search bar, custom names shown on the map, abandoned-base completion guides.

5.3 Price and discounts#

5.4 System requirements (Steam store, unchanged as of 0.2.8)#

Actual installed size on 2026-08-22: 44.0 GB (214 files) for the base game plus 1.95 GB for the Supporter Pack [confirmed, first-hand]. The build ships DLSS + Frame Generation + Reflex (NVIDIA Streamline), AMD FSR (FidelityFX SDK, FSR 4 licence present) and AMD Anti-Lag 2, an ONNX/DirectML runtime, and D3D12 with the Agility SDK -- i.e. DirectX 12, upscaler-first [confirmed, first-hand] from the plugin and licence manifest.

5.5 Steam Deck / Linux#

5.6 Supported languages (12, Steam store)#

English, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean, French, Spanish, German, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Thai. [confirmed] -- Steam store. Full-audio vs subtitle-only split per language is UNVERIFIED; the build ships 71 .locres string tables and dedicated subtitle plugins (GameSubtitles), and Hotfix 0.1.3 explicitly fixed Chinese tutorial text, implying text localisation with English VO [inferred].

6. Game modes, settings and saves#

6.1 Modes#

6.2 Difficulty and custom settings#

There is no documented in-game difficulty preset selector (Easy/Normal/Hard) in single-player as of 0.2.8; "custom game modes with adjustable difficulty" sits on the roadmap as an unshipped mid-EA feature [confirmed] -- roadmap. Difficulty tuning that is documented comes from dedicated-server configuration: third-party host guides describe a Difficulty value plus multiplier keys in Game.ini -- DifficultyMultiplier (0.5 easier / 2.0 harder enemy waves), DamageTakenMultiplier, EnemyDamageMultiplier, ResourceGatherMultiplier, CraftingTimeMultiplier, BuildingCostMultiplier [reported -- server-host vendor documentation only, several of these pages are SEO-generated and none is an official Creepy Jar source; treat key names as unconfirmed]. Community threads about the game being "too easy" or waves being "an interruption rather than a challenge" indicate players had no first-class difficulty slider to reach for [reported] -- Steam General Discussions.

Graphics/gameplay options that are confirmed to exist (first-hand from GameUserSettings.ini, section [/Script/Chimera.CrGameUserSettings], settings Version=5): resolution + fullscreen mode, per-group scalability 0-3 (Epic), resolution scale, UpscalerMode / DLSSMode / UpscaleQuality, frame generation toggle, anti-aliasing mode, FOV slider (FOVValue, 100 in the reference config), motion blur toggle, Landscape Nanite tessellation toggle, frame-rate limit, low-latency mode, sprint toggle, ControllerPlatform. Accessibility items (text sizing, key rebinding) were roadmap items; Enhanced Input user settings are persisted (EnhancedInputUserSettings.sav), so key rebinding exists in some form [inferred, first-hand].

6.3 Save system#

This is the single most valuable technical fact for the project's save-reading track; the full itemData subsystem map is in docs/ref/shadow-install.md section 6.1.

7. Playtest and demo history#

How the playtest differed from the shipped EA game [reported] -- playtest coverage:

Release slip: Early Access was originally signposted for fall/late 2025, then dated and shipped 2026-01-06 [confirmed].

8. Reception#

8.1 Steam (as of 2026-08-22, version 0.2.8)#

8.2 Press#

Metacritic shows no Metascore (still "pending" on 2026-08-22, with 6 critic entries listed, 4 of them carrying a score -- so the 4-review threshold is met but the Metascore has not been generated; the reason is not stated by Metacritic). Individual verdicts [confirmed] -- Metacritic listing:

Review dates (Metacritic, 2026-08-22): HardZone 2026-03-20, Screen Hype 2026-03-19, GamingBolt 2026-01-07, Gamersky 2026-01-05, Try Hard Guides 2026-01-04, GameSpace 2025-07-30. Every critic entry predates Update 1 (2026-04-09); none of them describes the 0.2.x game.

Other coverage in the corpus's evidence set: NGOHQ review (2026-01-13), NeonLightsMedia "A Beautiful, Broken Factory Builder", TheReviewGeek "big ideas and big problems", an IGN-framed summary reporting 7.5/10 as an aggregate-style verdict [reported -- the 7.5 figure comes from an aggregator site, not from a fetched IGN page; treat as unconfirmed].

8.3 Recurring praise#

• The Rupture/Fire Wave concept -- near-universally cited as the game's best idea; it injects real tension into a genre that normally has none.
• Visual quality and the alien-world art direction.
• The tech/corporation progression loop described as genuinely addictive.
• The pull-based drone rail network is preferred by a section of players over push-belt logistics.
• Systems integration: reviewers concede every individual pillar is beaten by a specialist competitor, but praise how tightly the pillars feed each other.

8.4 Recurring criticism#

• Missing quality-of-life: no recipe copy/paste between buildings (until the announced Aug 2026 feature), no mass deconstruct, manual walk-and-click recipe setting, no items/minute readout.
• Build-mode clunk: buggy placement, difficulty building vertically, stability system friction.
• UI and tutorial: the tutorial is widely called near-useless; UI readability was patched repeatedly (0.1.2, 0.1.3).
• Technical instability: the entire 0.1.x-0.2.x patch stream is dominated by crash fixes (co-op, deconstruction, large bases, dedicated servers, RTX 40/50 exit crash).
• Solo pacing is slow and repetitive relative to co-op.
• Wave fatigue: a vocal thread argues the Rupture becomes "an interruption rather than a challenge" once you have a safe base; others ask for the frequency to be reduced or varied.
• Combat depth lags the other pillars.

Community-consensus items above are drawn from Steam General Discussions threads including "My 15 hours in STAR RUPTURE: an honest review of frustration, potential, and a technical nightmare", "Some feedback and why i'll stop playing for now", "Rupture Waves Become an Interruption Rather Than a Challenge", "game feels depressingly too easy all of a sudden", and "The main differences between StarRupture and Satisfactory" [reported -- labelled community consensus, threads named].

8.5 Concurrent players (SteamCharts, retrieved 2026-08-22)#

Update 1 is the only month-over-month gain in the series -- a clean signal that major content updates, not hotfixes, move this game's population.

9. Early Access roadmap (published 2026-01-06, no dates attached)#

Creepy Jar shipped the roadmap alongside the EA launch and explicitly stated "there is no specific timeline for any of this" [confirmed].

Delivered against this so far: dedicated servers (shipped), map expansion + wildlife + resources + ziplines (Update 1), cargo network rework (Update 1). Still outstanding at 0.2.8: custom difficulty modes, codex, full controller support, travel mode, frost wave, endgame, achievements.

10. Orientation: how StarRupture differs from its neighbours#

Structural/mechanical differences only.

One-line orientation: StarRupture is the survival-factory hybrid whose defining variable is time inside a repeating extinction cycle -- everything else (pull-based drone logistics, corporate multi-buyer research, base defense) is downstream of designing around a planet that burns to the ground every hour.

11. Ecosystem notes relevant to this project#

• Modding: a Nexus Mods section for StarRupture exists and is active (e.g. "AlienX's Rupture Timer", mod id 144) [reported], UNVERIFIED -- nexusmods.com returns 403 to automated fetch, so neither the section's existence nor the mod count was re-confirmed on 2026-08-22. The install is unusually mod-friendly: unsigned, unencrypted-by-expectation IoStore containers, full PDB debug symbols shipped (2.51 GB), no anti-cheat, and dedicated-server scaffolding. See docs/ref/shadow-install.md section 9.
• Community wikis: starrupture.wiki.gg exists but is thin (81 articles on 2026-08-22, sections: Characters, Buildings, Corporations, Weapons, Items, Game Mechanics). A Fandom wiki (starrupture.fandom.com) also exists, and an unofficial utilities wiki (wiki.starrupture-utilities.com) covers dedicated-server config. There is no dominant, complete community wiki for this game -- a large share of top search results are SEO/AI-generated guide farms. Cross-check anything sourced from them; several such sites (starrupture.org, supercraft.host) are paywalled or unfetchable.
• Official channels: Steam news is the authoritative patch channel; starrupture-game.com is stale (still presents the game as pre-release/wishlist); Creepy Jar also posts to Discord, Facebook, X and Instagram.

Gaps & Unverified#

Not established / could not be confirmed:

1. Exact Rupture phase durations as shipped in 0.2.8. The 2 min warning / 90 s burn / ~50-55 min cycle figures are community measurements from guide sites, not official values, and the wave system is explicitly tunable (waveSpeed, preWaveDuration, fadeouts). Resolve by datamining Content/Chimera/EnviroWave or by reading a live EnviroWaveTimer save block.
2. Version numbers between 0.1.3 (Feb 2) and Update 1 (Apr 9). No 0.1.4/0.1.5 patch note surfaced; either none exists or it is unindexed.
3. The internal version number that Update 1 shipped as. Inferred to be 0.2.0 from the 0.2.1 hotfix that followed six days later; not directly confirmed.
4. Why the local depot content is dated 2026-08-16 while the newest published version is 0.2.8 (Jun 17). Most likely simply the install date of a fresh download of the unchanged live build; a silent Steam build push cannot be ruled out. SteamDB (which would settle this) returns 403 to automated fetches.
5. Official Steam Deck Verified tier. Only the ProtonDB "Playable" aggregate and a hands-on were obtainable; the store page does not display a Deck badge.
6. Full-audio vs subtitles-only breakdown per supported language.
7. Console (PS5/Xbox) plans. One SEO article title claims to cover a console release; no Creepy Jar statement was found. Treat consoles as not announced.
8. In-game difficulty/custom-settings keys. The DifficultyMultiplier / DamageTakenMultiplier / ResourceGatherMultiplier / CraftingTimeMultiplier / BuildingCostMultiplier names come solely from commercial server-host documentation of varying trustworthiness; none is an official source and several such pages appear machine-generated. No official single-player difficulty selector exists in 0.2.8 (roadmap lists it as future).
9. Prisoner IDs only (B1690 / P0212 / E4101 / S8466) still rest on a single guide site -- the four names are now corroborated by a second independent guide (BisectHosting), which also pairs them Biologist / Scientist / Engineer / Soldier and states character choice is purely cosmetic. Note the remaining terminology clash: the wiki.gg class list is Scientist/Engineer/Soldier/Medic, the packaged professions are PD_Engineer/PD_Medic/PD_Scientist/PD_Soldier, and the Supporter Pack avatars are Biologist/Engineer/Physicist/Soldier. Which labels the game shows in 0.2.8 is unresolved.
10. The Forgotten Engine's actual in-game function, activation requirements and whether it is reachable in 0.2.8 (the reference save reports it Inactive).
11. ~~Co-op playtest dates on app 3837830.~~ RESOLVED 2026-08-22: 2025-12-03 to 2025-12-08, sign-ups from 2025-11-24 (Worthplaying). Remaining unknown: whether that test used a separate build branch from the single-player playtest.
12. Whether a Steam Next Fest demo ever ran. No evidence found either way; the answer is probably "no, only the 2025 playtests", but this is an argument from absence.

13. Exact Update 1 full patch-note text. Steam news article bodies are not fetchable by this toolchain (the page returns only chrome); Update 1 contents above are reconstructed from the Steam news index plus press coverage (Massively OP, The Escapist, BisectHosting, XP Gained). SteamDB's copy of the notes is 403-blocked.

14. The CRC_* asset-identifier -> in-game display-name map for production stations. Update 1 coverage supplies display names (Ore Excavator, Orbital Cargo Launcher, Compounder, Fabricator, Constructorizer, Facturer, Pyro Forge, Chemical Generator, Oil Extractor, Recycler) that do not line up one-to-one with the packaged CRC_* list (Smelter, Furnace, Crafter, Assembler, Refinery, Pressurizer, Synthetizer ...). Any doc in this corpus using the asset names as if they were UI names is UNVERIFIED on naming. Resolve via the .locres string tables.

15. ProtonDB aggregate and Nexus Mods scene size. The "Playable" rating and the Nexus mod listing could not be re-fetched on 2026-08-22 (protondb.com renders client-side; nexusmods.com returns 403 to automated fetch). Both remain UNVERIFIED single-source [reported] claims.

Where sources disagree:

• Review scores. Metacritic shows no Metascore with 6 listed critics (70-80 range); a third-party aggregator page reports a "7.5/10" IGN-framed verdict. The Metacritic listing is the one to trust; the 7.5 is unconfirmed.
• Class naming (Medic vs Biologist, Scientist vs Physicist) -- see gap 9.
• Current price. Steambase reports $19.99 with no active August sale; deal-aggregator snippets quote $15.99 "currently". The Steam store page fetched on 2026-08-22 shows $19.99 -- that is the current figure; $15.99 is the recurring sale price and the historical low.
• Site reliability. starrupture.org, starrupturehub.com, starrupture.net, starrupturewiki.com, xmodhub.com and similar were treated as low-trust and used only for corroboration, never as sole sources for a number. supercraft.host was not fetched (known tarpit).

Deliberately out of scope here (covered by sibling corpus docs): the building catalog, recipe numbers and rates, corporation level requirements, enemy roster and stats, map/biome/resource-node geography, weapon stats, and the save-schema field map.

Sources#

All accessed 2026-08-22.

Ground truth (first-hand): - C:/star-rupture/docs/ref/shadow-install.md -- local install inventory: appmanifest 1631270, build string, UE 5.6.1, content manifest, save format, config, logs

Official: - https://store.steampowered.com/app/1631270/StarRupture/ -- Steam store page: description, EA statement, price, reviews, sysreqs, languages, features - https://steamcommunity.com/app/1631270/allnews/ -- Steam news/announcement index: patch versions and dates, dev blogs - https://starrupture-game.com/ -- official site (stale) - https://starrupture-game.com/steam-playtest-coming-july-29th/ -- official playtest announcement (via search index)

Community wikis: - https://starrupture.wiki.gg/ -- wiki.gg main page (81 articles, class list, sections) - https://starrupture.fandom.com/wiki/StarRupture_Wiki -- Fandom wiki (existence/scope check) - https://wiki.starrupture-utilities.com/en/dedicated-server/configuration -- unofficial utilities wiki, dedicated-server config (page body not retrievable)

Press, reviews and aggregation: - https://www.metacritic.com/game/starrupture/ -- critic list and scores - https://buttonmusher.substack.com/p/25-hours-with-starrupture -- long-form hands-on: loop structure, corporations, analysis/recipe stations, tower-defense layer, comparisons - https://www.thesixthaxis.com/2026/01/06/starrupture-roadmap-released-as-game-launches-into-early-access-today/ -- full EA roadmap, launch price - https://worthplaying.com/article/2026/1/6/news/148595-starrupture-available-on-steam-early-access-development-roadmap-revealed-trailer/ -- EA launch + roadmap - https://gamedaily.com/news/starrupture-sets-early-access-landing-for-january-6-2026 -- EA date set, slip from 2025 - https://massivelyop.com/2026/04/10/co-op-builder-sandbox-starrupture-expands-early-access-with-a-bigger-map-wildlife-and-ziplines/ -- Update 1 content - https://www.escapistmagazine.com/news-starruptures-first-major-update-launches-public-test-branch/ -- Update 1 public test branch - https://xpgained.co.uk/patch-notes/starrupture-update-1-changes-overview-patch-notes-10th-april-2026 -- Update 1 patch-note summary - https://www.bisecthosting.com/blog/starrupture-update-1-release-date-patch-notes-new-content-zipline-pois-map-locations -- Update 1 details (Powerium, Goethite, ziplines, wildlife) - https://www.screenhype.co.uk/starrupture-review-a-world-that-wasnt-ready/ -- critical review - https://www.neonlightsmedia.com/blog/starrupture-early-access-review -- critical review - https://www.thereviewgeek.com/starrupture-gamereview/ -- critical review - https://www.ngohq.com/2026/01/13/starrupture-review/ -- launch-window review - https://steamdeckhq.com/news/starrupture-surprisingly-playable-steam-deck/ -- Steam Deck hands-on - https://www.protondb.com/app/1631270 -- Proton/Deck aggregate rating

Playtest history: - https://www.gamestic.nl/2025/07/14/starrupture-invites-players-to-its-first-closed-playtest-running-july-29-31-on-steam/ - https://www.gamestic.nl/2025/07/31/starrupture-single-player-playtest-extended-to-august-4/ - https://butwhytho.net/2025/07/starrupture-closed-playtest-sign-ups/ - https://nevermoreniche.com/2025/08/03/starruptures-open-playtest-welcomes-all-survivalists-until-august-4/ - https://roundtablecoop.com/reviews/starrupture-single-player-playtest-first-impressions/ - https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/3837830/view/539998273834844424 -- co-op playtest known issues (app 3837830) - https://worthplaying.com/article/2025/11/24/news/148321-starrupture-co-op-playtest-next-week-accepting-sign-ups-trailer/ -- co-op playtest dates (Dec 3-8, 2025), 4-player co-op, pre-EA framing - https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1631270/view/539986853961402192 -- "Playtest Extended! Again! Play up to August 11th" - https://www.bisecthosting.com/blog/starrupture-beginners-guide-characters-unlocks-corporations-commissions-tips-tricks -- second source for the four character names/classes, corporation display names, wave warning stages

Data / market: - https://steamcharts.com/app/1631270 -- concurrent player history - https://steambase.io/games/starrupture/price -- price and discount history - https://isthereanydeal.com/game/starrupture/history/ -- price history (body not retrievable) - https://gg.deals/game/starrupture/ -- discount corroboration, DLC/bundle listings - https://steamdb.info/app/1631270/patchnotes/ and https://steamdb.info/patchnotes/22674441/ -- 403 to automated fetch; used only via search-result snippets for build ids and dates

Community consensus (threads named in section 8): - https://steamcommunity.com/app/1631270/discussions/0/579397732059331328/ -- "The main differences between StarRupture and Satisfactory." - https://steamcommunity.com/app/1631270/discussions/0/604163148655836546/ -- "My 15 hours in STAR RUPTURE..." - https://steamcommunity.com/app/1631270/discussions/0/695375725078795437/ -- "Some feedback and why i'll stop playing for now" - https://steamcommunity.com/app/1631270/discussions/0/695375795020959706/ -- "Rupture Waves Become an Interruption Rather Than a Challenge" - https://steamcommunity.com/app/1631270/discussions/0/742664495215733914/ -- "game feels depressingly too easy all of a sudden" - https://forum.quartertothree.com/t/starrupture-satisfactory-and-starship-troopers-plus-ruptures/165205 -- comparison discussion

Guides used for mechanics corroboration (low-trust tier, corroborated where possible): - https://clawsomegamer.com/how-long-between-ruptures-in-starrupture/ -- wave cycle timings - https://gamerhour.net/guides/star-rupture-how-to-know-when-a-wave-is-coming/ -- wave warning - https://techraptor.net/gaming/guides/starrupture-starter-guide -- beginner loop - https://www.playerauctions.com/starrupture-guide/tips-guides/all-characters-and-the-best-ones-to-pick/ -- character roster - https://www.thegamer.com/starrupture-multiplayer-server-host-guide/ -- co-op/dedicated server - https://www.nexusmods.com/starrupture/mods/144 -- modding scene existence

StarRupture is the second original IP from Creepy Jar S.A., the Warsaw studio behind Green Hell. It was revealed at the summer 2023 PC Gaming Show under the working title Chimera, renamed to StarRupture in December 2023, playtested twice in 2025 (single-player in July/August, co-op in December), delayed out of an "Autumn 2025" window, and launched into Steam Early Access on 6 January 2026 at $15.99 launch / $19.99 standard. It sold 500,000 copies in 11 days and turned Creepy Jar's Q1 2026 into a record quarter. One major content patch has shipped since — Update 1 on 9 April 2026, preceded by a Public Test Branch — followed by eight numbered hotfixes ending at 0.2.8. The studio communicates through Steam news (monthly Developer Blogs plus patch notes), YouTube video devlogs, a 25k-member Discord, and a Zendesk-style support portal; the public tone is a running in-fiction bit where Creepy Jar addresses players as "Convicts" of the Claywood Corporation's Argos Program. Everything below is dated and labelled (confirmed) / (reported) / (inferred) / UNVERIFIED.

1. Creepy Jar: studio profile#

1.1 Management Board (all board members are also shareholders)#

Source: creepyjar.com Management page (confirmed). Supervisory Board members were not retrievable from the pages fetched — see Gaps.

1.2 Named StarRupture developers appearing in public material#

Only surnames for Kacper / Bozhena / Julek / Basia / Ola / Kamil are unpublished (UNVERIFIED).

2. The Green Hell lineage and commercial track record#

Green Hell is the reference point for essentially every StarRupture decision — the Early Access model, the free-update cadence, the community-feedback ethos, and the "longseller" commercial thesis all come from it.

Sales milestones as publicly announced (cross-platform unless noted). Note that the studio's own "About us" page is stale at 4.5M while investor communications had passed 12M — treat the site copy as out of date:

Metacritic for Green Hell: 78 (PC), 78 (PS4), 84 (Xbox One) (confirmed, Wikipedia).

3. Stock-exchange listing and financials#

Reported results (all PLN; Q1/H1 2026 figures are preliminary/estimated company releases, not audited reports — the full H1 2026 report was scheduled for 2026-09-28, i.e. after this document's anchor date):

StarRupture unit sales (gross, PC/Steam unless noted):

Executive quotes on the launch: Grzegorz Piekart — "These results, in particular in terms of revenues and the number of players, significantly exceeded our expectations." Krzysztof Kwiatek — "We have a good game and a great basis to move on… early access is an important moment for our productions, but it is still only the beginning." Kwiatek frames the goal as building "longsellers that generate interest for years", explicitly benchmarking StarRupture's engagement against Green Hell.

4. From Chimera to StarRupture#

• Summer 2023 — reveal as "Chimera" at the PC Gaming Show. Creepy Jar's own wording: "Earlier this year, as part of the summer edition of the PC Gaming Show, we revealed our next game — a unique mix of base building, exploration, resource management, and combat on an alien planet torn by a catastrophic cycle of destruction caused by its life-giving star." (confirmed, Steam news 2023-12-19). The PC Gaming Show summer 2023 edition took place 2023-06-11 (inferred; the exact reveal date is not stated in first-party material).
• 2023-12-19 — rename to StarRupture, announced with the first video devlog. Reason given: the mythological connotations of "Chimera" did not fit the sci-fi world. Kwiatek: "We wanted to come up with a new title that more accurately described the dangerous sci-fi world we're creating." The new name derives from rupture (a break/disturbance) and from the planet's star, Ruptura (confirmed).
• Codename survives in the shipped build. The game's C++ module is Chimera, the class prefix is Cr, and ~95,568 of 107,681 packaged assets live under StarRupture/Content/Chimera/ — the working title is baked into the source tree. The Perforce project codename is separately Earth20 (++Earth20+Release-CU1-CL-121391). (confirmed, local install; ties directly to docs/ref/shadow-install.md §2/§5.)

5. Full dated timeline#

All dates are the publication date (UTC) of the first-party announcement unless noted. Steam news dates were read from the Steam Web API (ISteamNews/GetNewsForApp, appid 1631270) rather than from rendered pages, so they are exact.

Platform announcements: StarRupture is Windows-only and no console or Mac/Linux version has been announced (confirmed — Steam appdetails platforms: {windows: true, mac: false, linux: false}; no console announcement exists in any first-party post). This is a deliberate contrast with Green Hell, which went multi-platform only after 1.0.

6. Trailers, showcases and videos#

Every first-party video embedded in a Steam announcement, with its YouTube id (ids extracted from the announcement bodies; they are the canonical handles for this material).

Also present in Developer Update posts as short clips: 2KHEPrC0fgI, SX5A063JKb4, UifkRFNJkIY, rQ3ctvERoBE, BQPeJ5GA1VQ, Cmrn3g9vWjA, drHTvpOcDWk, _VbihKJ9hvM, clLJORAYHo8, k7UCYRMWVMU, rlJIHzTo4U4, uewUxd3RKTM, uqi4n2vD6Wo.

The Supporter Pack soundtrack's bonus tracks 15–19 are named after the trailers — Reveal, Gameplay, Playtest, Release Date, Gameplay Reveal — which corroborates this trailer set (confirmed, local install §8).

Showcase appearances: the only confirmed industry-showcase appearance is the PC Gaming Show, summer 2023 (as Chimera). Searching Gamescom / Opening Night Live / Future Games Show 2024–2025 coverage found no StarRupture segment; treat "no other showcase appearances" as UNVERIFIED absence, not a confirmed one.

7. Playtests and demos#

There has never been a public Steam demo. There were two closed-then-opened Steam Playtests (Steam's "Request Access" mechanism), plus one Public Test Branch.

Feedback for both playtests was collected via Google Forms (forms.gle/WXi4ACxAakzCfozA6 for single-player, forms.gle/ycR9pEo7Z5cwHmeM8 for co-op, forms.gle/cQUSsspCV9yczWxKA for the PTB) plus Discord and [email protected] (confirmed).

8. Release windows and why they changed#

Reason given for the 2025 delay (the only release-window slip): "We know you will need to wait a little bit longer than you originally anticipated to set foot on the Arcadia-7 planet surface, but the extra time means more polish, more improvements, and more reasons for you to enjoy StarRupture when it launches on Steam early next year." — Creepy Jar, 2025-08-18 (confirmed). Press framed it as a "surprise delay after huge playtest" (PCGamesN, 2025-08-18), i.e. the delay landed a week after the extended single-player playtest closed, which strongly implies playtest feedback drove it (inferred — the studio never says so explicitly).

9. The Early Access plan (verbatim from the Steam store page)#

The store page's Early Access block is the studio's binding public statement of the EA plan. Read as of 2026-08-22; the banner reads "Leaving Early Access: 2027".

Tension to note: "about a year from initial release" (Jan 2026 → ~Jan 2027) and the store banner "Leaving Early Access: 2027" are consistent, but with only one content update shipped in the first 7.5 months and no Update 2 date, the one-year target looks unlikely. That is analysis, not a sourced statement — the studio has not revised the EA duration publicly (confirmed as of 2026-08-22).

9.1 The Early Access Roadmap (published 2026-01-08)#

The roadmap itself is published as images inside the Steam post, so the categories below come from press transcription (bisecthosting, GameWatcher, thephrasemaker) — reported, cross-checked across three outlets. The post contains no dates and no update numbering; the only textual hint in the post is a snowflake emoji next to "something big for the 1.0 launch", which the transcriptions resolve to the Frost Wave.

How it has changed: no revised roadmap image has been published since 2026-01-08 (confirmed — no roadmap post appears in the Steam news feed after that date). Delivery against it so far: wildlife, new travel mechanic (Zipline), expanded map, new corporation levels, new resources, new buildings, new story elements → shipped in Update 1. Dedicated servers shipped at launch but remain flagged experimental. Custom Game Mode is the Game Director's stated next priority (see §11) but has not shipped. Codex/encyclopedia, controller support, cargo rework and achievements remain outstanding as of 0.2.8.

Pricing intentions: launch discount $15.99 / €15.99 / £13.59 / 51.99 zł; standard $19.99 / €19.99 / £16.99 / 64.99 zł, which is the live price on 2026-08-22 (confirmed via Steam store API). A paid Supporter Pack DLC (app 4167250) sells alongside it — in-game bonus items, 240+ page artbook, soundtrack, wallpapers/poster/avatars — as does a standalone Original Soundtrack DLC (app 3795340, $1.99, released 2026-01-06). No price increase has been enacted so far (confirmed via the Steam appdetails API on 2026-08-22: initial = final = $19.99, discount 0%).

10. Update and hotfix history#

Fifteen public builds between launch and the anchor date. Version numbers are the studio's own except where marked inferred.

Cadence read: 6–15 days between hotfixes during the post-Update-1 stabilisation run (April–June), then a hard stop — 66 days with no build as of 2026-08-22, consistent with the team being heads-down on Update 2.

10.1 Update 1 contents (2026-04-09)#

Announced content (confirmed, first-party patch notes). Display names below are Creepy Jar's, not asset identifiers:

The disruptive part — "Progression Rollback": all Corporation Levels reset to Level 1 and prior progress was refunded as Data Points to redistribute in the Corporate Terminal. Already-built buildings kept working but had to be re-unlocked before being rebuildable. Mechanics previously free at game start (Walkway, Dash) moved behind Corporation Levels. The Pistol stopped being a Corporation Level reward and became craftable at the Equipment Upgrade Station — and is now lost on death along with other carried weapons. This is the single largest save-affecting change in the game's history and is why 0.2.2 and 0.2.4 both carry rollback-related fixes. (confirmed)

11. Stated design goals and influences#

Sources: the Game Director interview (TheGamer, Jan 2026), the store EA Q&A, and first-party dev posts. Quotes are Michał Stawicki (Game Director) unless noted.

• Three pillars, stated since 2024: base-building, exploration, combat — "StarRupture has three main gameplay pillars — base-building, exploration, and combat" (Gameplay Reveal post, 2024-08-28). Survival elements sit under those rather than beside them.
• Inventing a world vs researching one. The explicit contrast with Green Hell: Green Hell was built on real-life Amazon references and research; StarRupture had to invent everything. "Its potential and ideas are limitless, not bound by the principles of the world around us." The team therefore imposed deliberate creative constraints to keep the fiction coherent.
• The star event is the organising principle, not a set-piece. The planet's cyclical incineration is the design anchor: "The base principle and constant question of 'how the planet and life would adapt to it' allowed us to create a coherent ecosystem." Everything — foliage regrowth, water replenishment, gatherable respawn, enemy behaviour, base cooling — is derived from that question. The Feb 2026 dev blog puts it in-world: "despite the danger and catastrophic waves of fire, nature finds its way. The foliage is regrowing, the water replenishes, and the planet rises from its ashes."
• A Frost Wave is the planned 1.0 counterpart to the Fire Wave (roadmap + interview).
• Automation without conveyor belts — deliberately. StarRupture rejects the belt paradigm for a pull-based drone rail network, described as the product of roughly three years of iteration. The rationale is accessibility: many players "like the fantasy of building a huge factory" but don't "have the time or headspace for that". Stawicki says future updates will serve both the minimalists and "fans of chaotic rail spaghetti". Devlog #2 (2024) had already put Lead Programmer Julek on the drone automation system as a headline feature, and Concept Designer Kacper on the electric-conductivity power model — so both the drone logistics and the power system are presented as bespoke rather than genre-standard.
• Balancing survival / automation / defense is being handed to the player. The stated next design priority after Early Access launch is a Custom Game Mode letting players dial the emphasis between factory-building and combat, ahead of major content additions. That is the studio's own answer to the "is this a factory game or a shooter" tension.
• UE5 with restraint. The team uses Nanite and Lumen global illumination; Stawicki's caveat: "Great power comes great responsibility… it's easy to become mesmerized and overlook hidden costs."
• Community-as-collaborator, inherited from Green Hell. Store page: "we are huge advocates of working along with the Community to create the best gaming experience which — as a result — is almost tailor-made to our Players." The company's stated commercial goal is the same: longsellers, supported by regular free content, exactly the Green Hell playbook.
• Iceland as the visual reference for a landscape in a death/rebirth cycle (Environment Showcase, 2024-07-24).
• What the studio does not say: no first-party statement was found comparing StarRupture to Satisfactory or Factorio, naming influences by title, or discussing mod support. Press comparisons to Satisfactory / Factorio / No Man's Sky are journalists', not the developers' (see Gaps).

12. Devlog and communication culture#

12.1 Channels#

12.2 Cadence#

• Monthly-ish dev diary. Titled "Developer Update: <Month> '25" through 2025, renamed "Developer Blog: <Month> 2026" from Feb 2026. Actual publication months: 2025-04, 05, 06, 09, 10, 11; 2026-02, 03, 06, 08. Gaps: July–August 2025 (playtest ran instead), December 2025 (co-op playtest + launch run-up), April–May 2026 (Update 1 + hotfix storm), July 2026. So: nominally monthly, in practice ~10 posts in 17 months, with the gaps falling wherever a playtest, launch or patch run consumed the month.
• Patch notes are always full and public, posted as Steam announcements with the version in the title, split under fixed headers (Quality of Life · Crashes & Performance issues · Multiplayer issues · Dedicated Servers · Building · Other) and closed with a standing thank-you + support-page link.
• Video explainers accompany big changes — Update 1 got both a launch trailer and a separate "Changes Overview" explainer with the script reproduced in text for readers, which is an unusually accessible habit.
• Date discipline: the studio's explicit position is to withhold dates until close to ship. Update 1's date was announced two days before its own release-date post's target (posted 2026-04-07 for a 2026-04-09 launch), and the March 2026 dev blog said outright "we will not share the release date of the first content update with you just yet."

12.3 Recurring bits, in-jokes and house style#

13. Branch model, build ids, feedback and bug handling#

13.1 Branches#

So the branch model is event-driven, not standing: there is no permanent experimental/beta branch — a PTB is stood up for a major update and torn down when it ships. Manual save backup instructions were published with the PTB (Steam/userdata/<id>/1631270/remote/Saved/SaveGames, which matches the save path documented in docs/ref/shadow-install.md §4).

13.2 Related Steam apps#

13.3 How feedback and bugs are handled#

• Formal intake is the Zendesk-style support portal at creepyjar.theymes.com/hc/en/starrupture — every patch-note post ends with a link to it, and it also hosts troubleshooting/how-to KB articles.
• In-client telemetry: a StarRupture Crash Reporter feeds crash prioritisation directly — 0.2.4's notes say it fixed "the two most common crashes reported to us during recent days via the StarRupture Crash Reporter", and 0.2.7 added a response window to that tool that suggests self-troubleshooting steps.
• Named informal surfaces: the Steam forum, Discord, and the official Reddit are all credited by name in Update 1's notes as the sources of "a multitude of fixes and improvements".
• Structured surveys: Google Forms questionnaires for both playtests and for the PTB.
• Transparency artefact: a public "Known issues" post published on launch day (2026-01-06) enumerating the top launch-blocking bugs.
• Community friction point: the Feb 2026 Steam thread "Hey Creepy Jar devs, PLEASE give us more info on the patch timing!" (2026-02-24/25) shows the recurring complaint — players wanted a coarse quarter-level ETA to decide whether to restart saves, and read "really soon" / "very, very soon" as evasive. Adam_CJ replied that they would give advance notice nearer the date. Consensus in that thread also flags late-game performance/lag and broken multi-rails. Label this community consensus, single named thread, not a measured fact.

14. Community wikis and third-party resources — currency assessment#

No wiki is official or developer-endorsed (confirmed: no first-party post links a wiki; the launch-week Steam thread "Wiki & Guides" found only near-empty wikis). Four candidates exist and none is confidently current for 0.2.8:

Other community tooling seen in passing: a "Star Rupture Build Planner" by Rizaleous (itch.io) with its own Discord, and starrupture.site guide hub. For this project's purposes the local install's derived catalogs (docs/ref/shadow-install.md §5) are a more reliable identifier source than any of these wikis.

15. Reconciliation with the local install (ground truth)#

Gaps & Unverified#

Not established / not found: - Community manager names. No first-party or press source names a StarRupture community manager. The only public-facing staff handle found is the Steam forum account Adam_CJ (mapped to Adam Magdziak, Product Marketing Manager, by inference from devlog credits). Discord staff rosters were not retrievable. - Supervisory Board membership — the creepyjar.com IR sub-pages for it were not reached. - Surnames for the devlog-credited staff (Kacper, Bozhena, Julek, Basia, Ola, Kamil). - Exact reveal date of Chimera at the 2023 PC Gaming Show; first-party material says only "summer edition of the PC Gaming Show" in 2023 (the show was 2023-06-11 — inferred, not sourced here). - When the Steam store page first went live. The earliest evidence is the first Steam announcement on app 1631270, 2023-12-19; whether the page existed under the Chimera name before that is UNVERIFIED (SteamDB, which would settle it, is behind Cloudflare and was abandoned per fetch rules). - Co-op playtest participation numbers (the single-player figures were published; the December 2025 co-op figures were not). - Update 1's own version number. No first-party post states "0.2.0"; it is inferred from the following hotfix being 0.2.1. - Update 2 scope, name, version number and date. Only feature teases exist (June + August 2026 dev blogs): copying buildings with parameters, copy/paste parameters across buildings, Drone Roundabout overhaul, multi-deconstruct, deconstructing buildings without platforms, crafting rates shown as items/minute, "Add Pillars" building mode toggle, automatic pillar height adjustment, search bar in Buildings & Storages, custom Teleporter/Base Core names on the map, Abandoned Base completion status on HUD/map, Corporation-Level item requirements in the Corporate Terminal. All are labelled work-in-progress by the studio. - Zipline unlock point and mechanics. First-party Update 1 copy lists only "New Feature – Zipline"; the claim that it unlocks at the Corporate Terminal and behaves like a player-carrying Drone Rail is UNVERIFIED against any first-party or press source. - Total item count of the Steam news feed (~75) — the Web API payload could not be paged in full; the 24 newest items were re-verified individually. - Mod support. No first-party statement on mods, modding tools, or Workshop was found. The install's shipped PDB and unsigned IoStore containers are a technical affordance, not a stated policy. - Console / Mac / Linux. No announcement exists. Absence is UNVERIFIED rather than a confirmed "never". - Showcase appearances beyond the 2023 PC Gaming Show — searches of Gamescom ONL / Future Games Show 2024–2025 coverage found nothing, but this is an unproven negative. - Reddit subreddit size and thread-level consensus — reddit.com returned 403 to every fetch attempt and was abandoned; the Reddit-sourced claims here come via Creepy Jar's own references to "our official Reddit". - Current Green Hell total as of Aug 2026 (latest datapoint is 12M in May 2026). - Fandom and starrupture-utilities wiki currency were not assessed.

Sources disagree: - Founding year: creepyjar.com says 2016; several company databases (The Org, Tracxn) say 2017. Use 2016 (first-party). - Green Hell cumulative sales in Jan 2026: "over 9 million" (Alinea Analytics) vs "passed 10 million" (ixbt.games). Both are third-party; the studio's own site is stale at 4.5M. The 12M figure (May 2026) supersedes both. - Headcount: 63 (2025-09-30) vs 52 (2026-04-30) from the same aggregator — either genuine attrition after launch or a change in reporting basis. Unresolved. - Wildlife spelling: the Feb 2026 dev blog writes "Corallion"; the Update 1 patch notes write "Coralion". Patch notes are the later source. - Steam review split: the store page (English filter) shows Very Positive, 82% of 6,759; the all-languages API shows 13,219 reviews, 10,688 positive / 2,531 negative = 80.9%, "Very Positive" (review_score 8), with Recent: Mostly Positive, 79% of 189 (last 30 days). Use the all-languages figure. All numbers are 2026-08-22 snapshots and will drift.

Explicitly absent systems (stated, not padded): StarRupture has no public demo (only two time-boxed Steam Playtests), no standing experimental/beta branch (PTB is stood up per major update), no achievements (roadmapped for 1.0), and no announced console version.

Sources#

All accessed 2026-08-22.

First-party — Steam - Steam Web API news feed for appid 1631270 (75 items, 2023-12-19 → 2026-08-05, exact UTC timestamps and full post bodies): https://api.steampowered.com/ISteamNews/GetNewsForApp/v2/?appid=1631270&count=100&format=json - Steam news hub (human-readable index of the same posts): https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1631270 - Steam store page, incl. the Early Access Q&A block and "Leaving Early Access: 2027": https://store.steampowered.com/app/1631270/StarRupture/ - Steam store appdetails API (developer/publisher, release date, languages, platforms, categories, price): https://store.steampowered.com/api/appdetails?appids=1631270&cc=us&l=english - Steam review summary API (all languages): https://store.steampowered.com/appreviews/1631270?json=1&language=all&purchase_type=all - Public SteamCMD app-info (branch list, buildid, depots, homepage, DLC list): https://api.steamcmd.net/v1/info/1631270 - Supporter Pack DLC store page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4167250/StarRupture__Supporter_Pack/

First-party — studio and game sites - https://starrupture-game.com/ (official channels, press kit) - https://creepyjar.com/en/about-us/ - https://creepyjar.com/en/company/ - https://creepyjar.com/en/__trashed-5/ (Management Board profiles) - https://creepyjar.com/en/creepy-jar-investor-relations/ - https://creepyjar.com/en/new-name-starrupture/ (Chimera → StarRupture rename) - https://creepyjar.theymes.com/hc/en/starrupture/articles/setting-up-a-star-rupture-dedicated-server-experimental-feature-using-the-steam-app-34 (dedicated server, app id 3809400) - Discord invite metadata API for the official server: https://discord.com/api/v10/invites/starrupture?with_counts=true

Interviews and press - TheGamer — Game Director Michał Stawicki interview: https://www.thegamer.com/starrupture-developer-interview-michal-stawicki-roadmap-ue5-green-hell-early-access/ - GamesMarket — "Creepy Jar's StarRupture Significantly Exceeds Expectations": https://www.gamesmarket.global/creepy-jars-starrupture-significantly-exceeds-expectations/ - Strefa Inwestorów — sales, roadmap and executive commentary: https://strefainwestorow.pl/gaming/creepyjar-starrupture-sprzedaz-wyniki-roadmapa - BisectHosting — Early Access roadmap transcription: https://www.bisecthosting.com/blog/starrupture-roadmap-2026-updates-features-content-fixes - GameWatcher — roadmap coverage: https://www.gamewatcher.com/news/StarRupture-early-access-roadmap-2025 - Worthplaying — "'StarRupture' Has Sold over 500k Steam Early Access Copies In Two Weeks": https://worthplaying.com/article/2026/1/20/news/148736-starrupture-has-sold-over-500k-steam-early-access-copies-in-two-weeks/ - Worthplaying — "'Green Hell' Reaches 12 Million Copies Sold": https://worthplaying.com/article/2026/5/4/news/149773-green-hell-reaches-12-million-copies-sold/ - ad-hoc-news — preliminary Q1 2026 results: https://www.ad-hoc-news.de/boerse/news/ueberblick/creepy-jar-s-a-stock-plcrepy00019-preliminary-q1-2026-results-show/69345788 - StockWatch.pl — Q1 2026 record results: https://www.stockwatch.pl/wiadomosci/creepy-jar-rekordowe-wyniki-i-kwartal-2026-starrupture,akcje,373335 - Inwestycje.pl — preliminary H1 2026 (PLN 34.2 m net, PLN 36.5 m EBIT): https://inwestycje.pl/gaming/creepy-jar-mial-wstepnie-342-mln-zl-zysku-netto-365-mln-zl-zysku-ebit-w-i-pol-2026/ - Bankier.pl — H1 2026 estimate and cash position: https://www.bankier.pl/wiadomosc/Creepy-Jar-szacuje-zysk-netto-w-I-polroczu-26-na-34-2-mln-zl-zysku-netto-o-311-proc-wiecej-rdr-9181411.html - intellinews — Creepy Jar moves to the WSE main market: https://www.intellinews.com/gaming-company-creepy-jar-moves-to-warsaw-stock-exchange-s-main-market-207651/ - stockanalysis.com — WSE:CRJ statistics and employee counts: https://stockanalysis.com/quote/wse/CRJ/statistics/ · https://stockanalysis.com/quote/wse/CRJ/employees/ - Wikipedia — Green Hell (video game): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Hell_(video_game) - Saving Content — StarRupture reveal / UE5: https://www.savingcontent.com/2023/12/19/green-hell-developers-announce-their-next-project-starrupture-being-built-on-unreal-engine-5/ - Saving Content — Early Access date announcement: https://www.savingcontent.com/2025/08/18/starrupture-the-sci-fi-survival-game-from-creepy-jar-launches-into-steam-early-access-on-january-6th-2026/ - ixbt.games — Green Hell past 10 million (Jan 2026): https://ixbt.games/en/news/2026/01/14/vyzivanie-green-hell-preodolelo-otmetku-v-10-mln-kopii.html - GamingShogun — playtest extension opened to everyone: https://gamingshogun.com/2025/07/31/creepy-jar-extends-starrupture-single-player-playtest-to-aug-4-and-opens-it-to-everyone/ - Massively Overpowered — Update 1 coverage: https://massivelyop.com/2026/04/10/co-op-builder-sandbox-starrupture-expands-early-access-with-a-bigger-map-wildlife-and-ziplines/

Community - Steam discussion — "Hey Creepy Jar devs, PLEASE give us more info on the patch timing!": https://steamcommunity.com/app/1631270/discussions/0/764059964738124614/ - Steam discussion — "Wiki & Guides": https://steamcommunity.com/app/1631270/discussions/0/684116375920399115/ - https://starrupture.wiki.gg/wiki/Star_Rupture_Wiki (stale, playtest-era) - https://starrupture.wiki/ (community database / planner / map)

Local ground truth - C:/star-rupture/docs/ref/shadow-install.md — first-hand install, engine, save-format and content-catalog inventory (2026-08-22)

Abandoned per fetch rules (blocked / 403 / Cloudflare): steamdb.info, reddit.com, techraptor.net, nichegamer.com, gamegrin.com.

StarRupture (Creepy Jar, Steam app 1631270) entered Early Access on 2026-01-06 at build 0.1.0 and has shipped thirteen further public patch-notes builds since: three hotfixes plus a technical hotfix on the 0.1.x line, one major content release (UPDATE 1, 2026-04-09, the 0.2.x line), and eight hotfixes 0.2.1 through 0.2.8. Two additional builds existed only as opt-in Public Test Branch (PTB) builds and never reached the Default branch under their own version number -- they are listed in the ledger but are not part of the thirteen. As of today there is no 0.2.9 and no Update 2 -- the newest Steam post is a developer blog (2026-08-05) previewing unshipped Update-2-era features, and the last patch-notes post is 0.2.8 from 2026-06-17, a nine-week quiet stretch consistent with a large content update in the oven. This document is the version anchor for the whole corpus: any value in a sibling doc that is not tagged with a build should be assumed to be 0.2.8-era, and any guide, video or wiki page written before 2026-04-09 should be assumed wrong about progression, Quartz, cargo logistics and corporation levels until re-checked against the Update 1 section below. Creepy Jar's notes are overwhelmingly qualitative -- they name the system changed but almost never publish old/new numbers -- so the "before/after values" this doc can give are the ones the developers actually wrote down, and every other number in the corpus has to come from the datamine track, not from patch notes.

1. How this ledger was built (and how to refresh it)#

Refresh recipe for a future session: hit the news API, diff the top gid against 1840310314339121 (the 2026-08-05 August dev blog, the newest post of any kind on 2026-08-22) and the newest patch-notes gid against 1835871199300344 (0.2.8). If it differs and the title contains "Hotfix" or "UPDATE", pull the body from the partner-events endpoint at the matching offset and append a new section here.

2. Master version ledger#

Version numbers are Creepy Jar's own where they published one. Two entries are inferred (marked): the EA launch build and Update 1 itself were never given an explicit 0.x.y string in their announcements -- 0.1.0 and 0.2.0 are back-derived from the hotfix numbering that followed each.

Cadence read: 0.1.x hotfixes landed 3, 10 and 24 days after launch. The 0.2.x line ran 7, 13, 25, 27, 39, 54, 63 and 69 days after Update 1, i.e. roughly weekly at first and tapering. The 2026-06-17 → 2026-08-22 gap (66 days, no patch) is the longest quiet period since EA launch.

3. Pre-Early-Access timeline (labelled: NOT current, historical only)#

Nothing in this section describes the shipping game. Playtest builds were never versioned publicly and their content has been superseded.

Note the post dates and the event dates diverge for the playtests (the "coming December 3rd" post is dated 2025-11-24 and the "available now" post 2025-12-03) -- the table uses event dates where the post states one.

4. Per-build changelogs (0.1.x line)#

4.1 Early Access launch — 0.1.0 (inferred), 2026-01-06#

Launch build. Creepy Jar published a separate, unusually detailed known-issues list on the same day (2026-01-06 13:59 UTC, one minute after the launch post) -- 44 developer-acknowledged defects. This is the best snapshot of what the launch build was actually like, and most of these were fixed during 0.1.x/0.2.x.

The official post's own grouping and per-group counts are Main (5) · Gameplay & Mechanics (12: Inventory & Items 3, Combat & Tools 4, Building & Environment 5) · Multiplayer & Network (8: World Synchronization 3, Drones 1, Connection Issues 3) · UI & Menu (7: Icons & HUD 4, Menu & Settings 3) · Visuals, Animation & Audio (8: Visual Glitches 5, Character Animation 1, Audio 2) · Performance (4) = 44. The table below re-groups the same items for readability, so its row-by-row counts do not match the post's headings one-for-one.

Developer-acknowledged known issues at EA launch (all superseded -- historical):

Sources: EA Available Now, Known issues.

4.2 Hotfix 0.1.1 — 2026-01-09#

Two posts exist for this build minutes apart (a short "now live" pointer and the notes themselves).

• Subtitles enlarged across all languages; Japanese font rendering improved; oversized text now scales down instead of being clipped.
• Fixed launch crashes on certain PC configurations.
• Fixed crash on AMD GPUs after deleting settings.
• Optimised the logistics and electricity systems in large bases (first performance pass on the two systems the launch known-issues list flagged).
• Fixed players dying inside Habitats during Fire Waves.
• Fixed co-op healing with the Med Tool inside Abandoned Bases.
• Monolith now correctly blocks custom building placement.
• HUD hints now reflect changed keybindings.
• Multiple dedicated-server fixes (unenumerated).

4.3 Hotfix 0.1.2 — 2026-01-16#

• Audiolog subtitle font size adjusted across all languages.
• Simplified/Traditional Chinese font scaling adjusted.
• Fixed crashes when opening the player inventory.
• Fixed crash caused by invalid Engineer hair rendering on AMD GPUs.

4.4 Hotfix 0.1.3 — 2026-01-30#

Localisation-only build.

• Tutorial quest lines made fully readable in Simplified and Traditional Chinese.
• Chinese translations correctly assigned to their respective language versions.
• Chinese UI font size corrected; missing Chinese lines added.
• Heal/revive widget font size increased.

4.5 Technical Hotfix 0.1.3 — 2026-03-25#

Shipped the same day the Update 1 PTB opened, and carries the same version string as the January hotfix -- a trap for anyone matching versions by string.

• Disabled the ability to load saves made on the Public Test Branch build on the Default branch. This is the mechanism that made PTB saves one-way; it is why the PTB posts told players to back up .../userdata/<SteamID3>/1631270/remote/Saved/SaveGames/ before opting in.

5. UPDATE 1 (0.2.0) — 2026-04-09#

The single largest change in the game's history and the dividing line for every guide written before it. Announced 2026-03-25, PTB from 2026-03-25, release date announced 2026-04-07, shipped 2026-04-09, with a follow-up "Changes Overview" explainer on 2026-04-10. The install's build branch is literally named for it: Release-CU1 = Content Update 1.

5.1 New content#

The count Creepy Jar advertised, with the build-menu category each one lands in, verbatim from the UPDATE 1 release post (the PTB post carried the same list under the pre-rename name): 9 new buildings -- Oil Extractor (Extraction), Laser Drill (Extraction), Refinery (Ore Processing), Pyro Forge (Ore Processing), Constructorizer (Production), Facturer (Production), Chemical Generator (Power), Roundabout Rail Connector (Junctions), Recycler (Personal Crafting) -- and 6 v.2 tier buildings (Compounder, Fabricator, Furnace, Ore Excavator, Orbital Cargo Launcher, Constructorizer).

5.2 Reworked and removed systems#

5.3 Recipe changes published with Update 1#

5.4 Save migration behaviour (Update 1)#

1. Corporation levels reset to 1; prior progress returns as Data Points at the Corporate Terminal.
2. Everything you had already built stays on the map and keeps working -- but you cannot rebuild a deconstructed building until you re-unlock it at the Corporate Terminal or Development Station.
3. Quartz spent on buildings is refunded as Quartz Ore automatically.
4. Quartz Building Material items in inventory/storage become inert (recycle them).
5. Cargo Dispatcher ↔ Receiver links must be re-made by hand.
6. Forgotten Engine blueprints relocated (new locations not enumerated in the post).

This migration was buggy: 0.2.2 added an automatic progression rollback so that pre-Update-1 buildings you had unlocked and built get auto-unlocked in the Development Station, and 0.2.1 noted the "updated progression system now applies to all types of save files". 0.2.4 then fixed a crash in the rollback path itself (UCrProgressionRollbackEvent::Execute).

5.5 Fix list shape#

Update 1's fix list is grouped as Crashes & Performance issues (27) · Multiplayer issues (31) · Building (56) · Enemies (43) · Forgotten Engine & Abandoned Bases (11) · Keybindings (5) · Environment (18) · Other (30) -- 221 entries [0.2.0]. Builder-relevant highlights are pulled into §7. (An earlier pass of this doc estimated ~290 from a truncated extraction; the counts here are from a direct re-read of the post's bullet lists and the group headings are verbatim.)

Sources: UPDATE 1 patch notes, Update 1 Changes Overview.

6. Per-build changelogs (0.2.x line)#

6.1 Update 1 PTB — 2026-03-25 (opt-in beta, superseded)#

• Opt-in: Steam Library → right-click StarRupture → Properties → "Game Versions & Betas" → "Public Test Branch"; revert with "Default Public Version". No password published.
• No dedicated server support on the PTB.
• Explicit warnings: work-in-progress, potentially game-breaking; back up saves from steamapps/userdata/<SteamID3>/1631270/remote/Saved/SaveGames; PTB saves would not be loadable on the release build (enforced by Technical Hotfix 0.1.3).
• Feedback collected via a Google Form (https://forms.gle/cQUSsspCV9yczWxKA).

6.2 Update 1 PTB — Hotfix 1 — 2026-04-01 (opt-in beta, superseded)#

The only pure balance pass Creepy Jar has published as its own list. No numeric values were given for any of these adjustments -- direction of change is not even stated.

Plus roughly 19 fixes (exact count UNVERIFIED -- the post's bug-fix list was counted as 19 on re-read; an earlier pass of this doc said 21), including: crash joining a co-op session; crash building Mega Press / Cargo Receiver / Cargo Dispatcher; save-list display in 4-player co-op hosting; Forgotten Engine second door still reporting "no power" after the Power Cell; excessive Zipline fall damage; Solar Generator v.2 spamming an infolog in the Upgrade Station; Orbital Cargo Launcher item selection for Griffiths/Clever corporations on pre-Update-1 saves; Engineer falling off the Zipline on sharp turns and poles; Habitats built before the Development Station existed now count toward Large Habitat requirements; Constructorizer and Furnace recipe completions now satisfying their v.2 unlock requirements; item insertion into the Recipe Station for new recipes; Supermagnet unlock inconsistency between Recipe Station and Furnace production; character skill XP values on loading multiplayer saves; Recipe Table showing correct item amounts; building and product description fixes; Update 1 welcome-screen translations.

6.3 Hotfix 0.2.1 — 2026-04-16#

Crashes & performance: stability while deconstructing buildings · crash deconstructing Rail junctions · co-op stability when the Fire Wave hits.

Multiplayer: storage-building recipe list not appearing for clients · Zipline riding sync · Forgotten Engine lights missing for some players · no completion notification for rejoining players · character-selection "taken" status sync · Death Screen not appearing for clients.

Dedicated servers: stability during base attacks · stability for joining players · building research not updating in the Development Station · server now correctly pauses when all players leave.

Building: recipes unlocking from only one of several required Recipe Station inputs · duplicate-blueprint substitution by the "Duplicate Blueprint" loot item · attaching Drone Rails with multiple players · inventory unopenable while using the Building Drone · Building Menu popping up after copying buildings · deconstructing one Habitat in a vertical stack destroying all of them · merging Viewports deconstructing the Habitat · deconstructing interior buildings deconstructing the Habitat · deconstructing the lowest Habitat leaving interiors/stacks floating · Cargo Dispatcher status on reload · Analyzing Station UI not updating for clients · Development Station progress for Ore Excavator v.2, Large Habitat, Large Personal Storage, and for joining players.

Environment: water no longer present in water banks when loading a save made between Fire Wave and Planet Regrowth.

Other: player death-spot icon missing on map · updated progression system now applies to all save types · Quartz Ore repeatedly added to inventory when changing online visibility · localisation.

6.4 Hotfix 0.2.2 — 2026-04-22#

Progression rollback: loading a pre-Update-1 save now automatically unlocks, in the Development Station, buildings that were previously unlocked and built.

Crashes: general stability on some saves.

Multiplayer: Forgotten Engine Control Station doors locked after reload in co-op · Zipline sync at close range.

Dedicated servers: Development Station requirement counting for Rail V3 and Ore Excavator V2.

Building: Development Station unlock requirements being satisfied before completion · player airborne when starting a Zipline ride · build stability level now correctly resets after placing Pillar Support beneath Platforms · Platforms not conducting power when placed several at once · Rail Support extension collision checks · Cargo Dispatcher progress occasionally resetting before dispatch · drone pull logic over long distances · Multirail 3 / Multirail 5 deconstruction visuals · Furnace VFX reflecting activity · player airborne when deconstructing a Vertical Connector · grid alignment for Platforms attached under standard Stairs.

Enemies/combat: Turret targeting logic failing on enemies including Swarmers, or firing with visible delay · grenade damage distribution between swarms and single enemies.

Environment: Quartz not loading in caves when buildings were placed near a cave (the launch known issue) · Vulpir egg cluster spawn logic · Coralion egg spawn logic after Fire Waves.

Other: "Delete Session" vs "Delete Save" wording · Zipline and Zipline Pole descriptions in the Building Menu · German localisation · UI.

6.5 Hotfix 0.2.3 — 2026-05-04#

Building: buildings on Supported Platforms keeping stability without cascading deconstruction of neighbours · foundation Platforms spawning under buildings on placement · player stuck in Habitat floor when standing in an Airlock during deconstruction · Viewports left in the world after Habitat deconstruction · Large Personal Storage unlock requirements not counting for co-op clients · Rail and Zipline placement no longer appearing disconnected · Platform placement no longer overlapping or silently failing · deconstructing a primary support no longer leaves dependent platforms floating · Helium-3 mesh colour on Rail Drones · Corporate Terminal now unlocks the Standard Ammo recipe together with the Turret recipe (fixing the launch-era combat progression block).

Enemies/combat: VFX shooting a rolled-up Vulpir · Vulpir eggs not spawning for clients · pathfinding preventing some enemies tracking the player.

Keybindings: HUD hints now show custom keybindings.

Environment: infection persisting after loading a save made when destroying the last Infection cyst during a Fire Wave · gatherables missing interaction prompts after a Fire Wave · gatherables (e.g. Ignitium) not respawning around the player after a Fire Wave · Corrosion cloud around Sulfur Extractors after reload · Grubbler spawn logic.

Other: debug strings in chat log after reload · planet-regeneration music obeying the audio sliders · Medtool glass FX in co-op.

6.6 Hotfix 0.2.4 — 2026-05-06#

Two entries only.

• Fixed a potential crash loading a save made after a lost Base Attack in co-op.
• Addressed a potential crash tied to UCrProgressionRollbackEvent::Execute (the Update 1 migration path).

6.7 Hotfix 0.2.5 — 2026-05-18#

The most builder-relevant hotfix of the 0.2 line.

Quality of life - Added an autosave interval option (previously fixed; the installed build's rolling AutoSave<N>.sav cadence is ~15 min at default -- see the install reference). - Decreased the stability cost of Platforms, explicitly to enable bigger constructions. No before/after numbers published.

Crashes -- eight or nine distinct classes addressed (exact bullet count UNVERIFIED: a re-read of the post counted 8, this doc's original extraction enumerated the 9 below): running during the Fire Wave sequence · at the start of the Fire Wave sequence · improper item spawning after the Fire Wave · Drone movement on Drone Roundabouts · Drones using the Rail system · improper item spawning · the building system · taking foundable items · loading certain saves.

Building: Zipline Pole ghost visually disconnecting for clients · Platform power conduction in co-op (some Platforms were not conducting power) · Coralion eggs now disappear when built over · improved Habitat stability system · Platform placement VFX · multiple Platforms unplaceable when partially overlapping an existing foundation · structures now receive the correct stability value from Pillar Supports beneath them · deconstructing a lower Habitat in a vertical stack now correctly deconstructs the ones above.

Enemies/combat: Goliath spawn rate improved in some regions · Skylisk collision.

Environment: interaction range increased for some foundables · corrosion gas VFX on dedicated servers appearing even with a Sulfur Extractor built · Purplant glow VFX persisting after a Fire Wave · burnt Bloodferns draining players after a Fire Wave before regrowth.

Other: Large Habitat icon on the map · UI.

6.8 Hotfix 0.2.6 — 2026-06-02#

• Crash approaching bigger bases on some saves; crash tied to save file size; dedicated-server crash loading sessions.
• Co-op: T-pose when a grenade throw is interrupted by equipping the Harvester · lobby slot player status on hover · missing Fire Wave VFX for players joining during a Fire Wave · every player hearing each others' dialogues · clients hearing no dialogue · multiplayer settings unresponsive when changing session visibility.
• Battle music looping in the Forgotten Engine Control Room on dedicated servers.
• Pillar Support could be placed while unstable -- fixed.
• Fixed the stability status of Habitats on saves created before version 0.2.5 (i.e. 0.2.5's habitat-stability change needed a repair pass for older saves).
• Deconstructing a merged Viewport in co-op making the Habitat disappear.
• Looping SFX on the Character Selection Screen.
• Added a warning about outdated GPU drivers on game launch.

6.9 Hotfix 0.2.7 — 2026-06-11#

• Fixed a crash that could occur while deconstructing buildings.
• Dialogues no longer skipped for the client when the host is far away.
• Crash Report Tool gained an additional response window that can identify the crash cause and suggest self-troubleshooting steps.

6.10 Hotfix 0.2.8 — 2026-06-17 — CURRENT#

• Fixed crash on exiting the game on NVIDIA RTX 40 and 50 series GPUs.

That is the entire patch note. 0.2.8 is a one-line stability build; gameplay content is identical to 0.2.7, and gameplay-wise identical to 0.2.6 for all practical purposes. Any balance question about "the current version" is really a question about Update 1 + hotfixes 0.2.1-0.2.5.

7. What changed for builders (digest)#

Everything below is cumulative to 0.2.8. Where a value exists it is given; where Creepy Jar published a direction but no number, that is stated plainly rather than guessed.

Practical takeaways for a base-planning tool at 0.2.8: 1. Quartz Ore is a research currency (Development Station), not a construction input. 2. Cargo Dispatcher throughput is fixed by a 20-second cycle and a 1:1 receiver binding -- there is no parcel-size lever to model any more. 3. Platform stability budgets changed twice after Update 1 (0.2.5 cost decrease, plus the Pillar Support correction in 0.2.5 and the unstable-placement block in 0.2.6). Any stability spreadsheet built before 2026-05-18 is wrong. 4. v.2 building power draw and Base Core cooling were re-tuned on 2026-04-01, before Update 1 shipped -- so PTB-era numbers from late March are not the shipped numbers either. 5. No patch note contains a machine rate, a power figure, a stack size or a recipe count. The numeric layer of the planning tool must come from the datamine (Content/Chimera/Crafting/CR_*, CRC_*, Buildings/DA_* per the install reference), not from patch notes.

8. Announced but NOT shipped (as of 2026-08-22)#

Everything in this section is not live. Nothing here is in 0.2.8.

8.1 Early Access roadmap (posted 2026-01-08)#

The roadmap post's substance is inside images, so the itemisation below comes from press transcriptions of those images (Insider Gaming, BisectHosting, GameRant, TheSixthAxis) rather than machine-readable Steam text. Creepy Jar gave no timeframes at all for any of it.

8.2 Developer Blog, 2026-06-19 — explicitly labelled Update 2, work-in-progress#

Creepy Jar's own caveat: the content shown "is still representing a work-in-progress status and might change in its final game version."

8.3 Developer Blog, 2026-08-05 — "our next update", update number not stated#

Reported, not confirmed: one search summary attributed a plan of "Updates 2 to 4 with 1.0 in 2027" to a third-party hosting blog. Fetching that blog did not substantiate it -- the page explicitly says no timeframe has been given. Treat "Update 2/3/4" and "1.0 in 2027" as UNVERIFIED.

9. Stale-guide warnings#

Facts that were true once, are repeated everywhere, and are wrong at 0.2.8. Sorted by how much damage they do.

10. Build identifiers and technical version markers#

Version detection for tooling: the cheapest reliable version read is the save .met sidecar's gameVersion object (three ints); the second is appmanifest_1631270.acf's buildid; the third is the shipping exe's VersionInfo build string. All three agreed at 0.2.8 on 2026-08-22.

Gaps & Unverified#

• Numeric before/after balance values essentially do not exist in Creepy Jar's patch notes. The only hard number published in any StarRupture patch note to date is the 20-second Cargo Dispatcher cycle. Every "adjusted", "decreased", "improved" and "rebalanced" in the ledger above is qualitative in the source. The scope's request for "balance changes with before/after values" cannot be fully satisfied from official notes; those values must come from the datamine track (CR_* recipe assets, DA_* building data assets) or from a community spreadsheet, and must then be tagged with the build they were extracted from.
• Per-build Steam build ids and depot manifest ids are only established for 0.2.8 (23761620, first-hand) and, reportedly, Update 1 (22674441, from a SteamDB permalink seen in search results). SteamDB's build-history page was not fetched (Cloudflare-class blocking risk; not attempted after the first-party data proved sufficient). A future pass could enumerate all buildids from steamdb.info/app/1631270/patchnotes/.
• Silent builds without patch notes are not enumerated. A Steam discussion thread titled "542.8MB update just now - what did this change?" exists on the StarRupture forum, implying at least one depot push not accompanied by a notes post. The ledger here covers announced builds only.
• The Early Access Roadmap's exact wording is image-only. The §8.1 itemisation is transcribed by gaming press, not read from Steam text. Column names and item wording may differ slightly from the image.
• EA launch date has a one-day source disagreement. Steam's own announcement is timestamped 2026-01-06 13:58 UTC and TheSixthAxis and BisectHosting both say January 6, 2026; Insider Gaming says January 7, 2026. 2026-01-06 is treated as correct here.
• Update 1's exact version string. The announcement never says "0.2.0". It is inferred from the 0.2.1 hotfix that followed seven days later. Likewise "0.1.0" for the launch build.
• The two "0.1.3" builds share a version string (2026-01-30 localisation hotfix and 2026-03-25 "Technical Hotfix 0.1.3"). Whether the March build incremented anything internally is UNVERIFIED.
• Update 1's full 221-entry fix list is not reproduced entry-by-entry here -- only the group structure, the per-group counts (re-counted directly from the post on 2026-08-22) and the builder-relevant entries. Several extracted entries were truncated mid-sentence by the original extraction pass and are quoted only as far as they were legible.
• Two bullet counts remain UNVERIFIED after re-check, because a direct re-read disagreed with this doc's original extraction by one or two: the U1 PTB Hotfix 1 fix count (19 on re-read vs 21 originally) and the 0.2.5 crash-fix count (8 on re-read vs the 9 distinct entries enumerated in §6.7). Neither affects any gameplay value; both are listed here rather than silently picked. The 0.2.5 content -- autosave interval option and decreased Platform stability cost -- is confirmed verbatim.
• The EA launch known-issues total is 44, not 43 (corrected 2026-08-22). The post's own headings sum to 44; §4.1's table re-groups the same items, so its row counts differ from the post's.
• No canonical community wiki exists for patch notes. starrupture.wiki.gg was checked: its page index was last edited 2025-08-05 (pre-Early-Access) and core articles are still red links -- it is not a usable cross-check for version data. starrupture.fandom.com, wiki.starrupture-utilities.com, starrupture.wiki and starrupturewiki.org all exist as competing fan wikis; which one the community treats as canonical is unresolved and should be settled by a dedicated pass. starrupture.org returned HTTP 402 and was abandoned.
• Playtest-build changelogs do not exist publicly. The 2025 single-player and co-op playtests were never given version numbers or patch notes; §3 lists only the announcement timeline.
• Dev blog cadence has a hole: blogs are titled "February 2026", "March 2026", "June 2026", "August 2026" -- there is no "July 2026" blog and the titles do not consistently match their post months (the "June 2026" blog posted 2026-06-19, the "August 2026" blog posted 2026-08-05). Titles are treated as labels, not dates.
• Whether an Update 2 PTB has opened since 2026-08-05 is unknown -- no announcement exists as of 2026-08-22, but PTB openings have historically been announced the same day they happen.

Sources#

All accessed 2026-08-22.

Official — Steam (Creepy Jar announcements, app 1631270) - Steam news index API (post list + authoritative timestamps): <https://api.steampowered.com/ISteamNews/GetNewsForApp/v2/?appid=1631270&count=100&maxlength=1&format=json> - Steam partner-events body endpoint (full announcement bodies): <https://store.steampowered.com/events/ajaxgetpartnereventspageable/?clan_accountid=0&appid=1631270&offset=0&count=30&l=english> - Announcement hub: <https://steamcommunity.com/app/1631270/allnews/> - StarRupture Early Access Available Now (2026-01-06): <https://steamcommunity.com/games/1631270/announcements/detail/1819386365125734> - Known issues in the Early Access launch build (2026-01-06): <https://steamcommunity.com/games/1631270/announcements/detail/1819386365125736> - Early Access Roadmap (2026-01-08): <https://steamcommunity.com/games/1631270/announcements/detail/1821288646578995> - Hotfix 0.1.1 (2026-01-09): <https://steamcommunity.com/games/1631270/announcements/detail/1821288646580787> - Hotfix 0.1.2 (2026-01-16): <https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1631270/view/313696298477814501> - Hotfix 0.1.3 (2026-01-30): <https://steamcommunity.com/games/1631270/announcements/detail/1823191198604894> - Technical Hotfix 0.1.3 (2026-03-25): <https://steamcommunity.com/games/1631270/announcements/detail/1827626365767922> - UPDATE 1 Announcement (2026-03-25): <https://steamcommunity.com/games/1631270/announcements/detail/1827626365768187> - UPDATE 1 now on Public Test Branch (2026-03-25): <https://steamcommunity.com/games/1631270/announcements/detail/1827626365768188> - Update 1 PTB Hotfix 1 (2026-04-01): <https://steamcommunity.com/games/1631270/announcements/detail/1828894815554082> - Update 1 Release Date Announcement (2026-04-07): <https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1631270/view/542260396903367803> - UPDATE 1 now available [what's new + patch notes] (2026-04-09): <https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1631270/view/490464385050870875> - Update 1 Changes Overview (2026-04-10): <https://steamcommunity.com/games/1631270/announcements/detail/1829528821310369> - Hotfix 0.2.1 (2026-04-16): <https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1631270/view/541135584198923067> - Hotfix 0.2.2 (2026-04-22): <https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1631270/view/496100856889868382> - Hotfix 0.2.3 (2026-05-04): <https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1631270/view/694259874864824744> - Hotfix 0.2.4 (2026-05-06): <https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1631270/view/694260508207874075> - Hotfix 0.2.5 (2026-05-18): <https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1631270/view/659358246189924378> - Hotfix 0.2.6 (2026-06-02): <https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1631270/view/714528609564363487> - Hotfix 0.2.7 (2026-06-11): <https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1631270/view/715655143637386581> - Hotfix 0.2.8 (2026-06-17) — current build: <https://steamcommunity.com/games/1631270/announcements/detail/1835871199300344> - Developer Blog: June 2026 (Update 2 WIP) (2026-06-19): <https://steamcommunity.com/games/1631270/announcements/detail/1835871199307020> - Base Building Basics: Part 2 (2026-06-25): <https://steamcommunity.com/games/1631270/announcements/detail/1836506165549224> - Developer Blog: August 2026 (2026-08-05): <https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1631270/view/698772352667746350>

Wiki / community (checked, mostly unusable for version data) - Star Rupture Wiki (wiki.gg) page index — last edited 2025-08-05, pre-EA: <https://starrupture.wiki.gg/wiki/Star_Rupture_Wiki/pages> - <https://starrupture.wiki.gg/wiki/Version_history> — HTTP 404, page does not exist - StarRupture Wiki (Fandom): <https://starrupture.fandom.com/wiki/StarRupture_Wiki> - Unofficial StarRupture Wiki: <https://wiki.starrupture-utilities.com/en/home> - Steam discussion, "Wiki & Guides": <https://steamcommunity.com/app/1631270/discussions/0/684116375920399115/> - Steam discussion, "542.8MB update just now - what did this change?": <https://steamcommunity.com/app/1631270/discussions/0/742664166129629882/> - Steam discussion, "Update 2 - when ?": <https://steamcommunity.com/app/1631270/discussions/0/561408449130409362/>

Press / third party (roadmap transcription, launch date) - Insider Gaming, StarRupture Early Access Roadmap: <https://insider-gaming.com/starrupture-early-access-roadmap/> - BisectHosting, StarRupture Roadmap 2026: <https://www.bisecthosting.com/blog/starrupture-roadmap-2026-updates-features-content-fixes> - TheSixthAxis, roadmap released as game launches into EA (2026-01-06): <https://www.thesixthaxis.com/2026/01/06/starrupture-roadmap-released-as-game-launches-into-early-access-today/> - Game Rant, StarRupture's Roadmap Outlines What's Coming Up: <https://gamerant.com/starrupture-roadmap-explained/> - SteamDB, StarRupture patch notes / build history (Update 1 buildid 22674441 seen via permalink; page not fetched): <https://steamdb.info/app/1631270/patchnotes/> - starrupture.org update history — HTTP 402, abandoned: <https://www.starrupture.org/release/updates>

First-party install ground truth - C:/star-rupture/docs/ref/shadow-install.md — buildid 23761620, ++Earth20+Release-CU1-CL-121391, UE 5.6.1, save .met gameVersion 0.2.8, appmanifest, Manifest_UFSFiles_Win64.txt

StarRupture is a first-person co-op base-builder / survival-automation game by Creepy Jar (Green Hell), launched into Steam Early Access on 6 January 2026 at $19.99, with 1.0 targeted for 2027. Its fiction is a penal-labour industrial colony story: you are a convict shipped to the alien world Arcadia-7 to build extraction and refining infrastructure for Earth's mega-corporations, in exchange for commuting a prison sentence. The planet's star, Ruptura, periodically detonates a fire wave that scours the surface clean of everything not sheltered indoors -- then the world regrows, and the cycle repeats. You are not the first expedition: the map is littered with abandoned corporate bases, dead colonists, audio logs and datapads that tell you what happened to the people who came before, and a colossal derelict machine called the Forgotten Engine sits at the centre of the map as the current story climax. As of v0.2.8 the narrative layer is deliberately thin -- Creepy Jar has stated the bulk of story content, endgame and the in-game Codex arrive later in Early Access and at 1.0 -- so this document separates what the game actually says today from what is only teased or theorised.

Confidence key used throughout: [C] confirmed (official source, or wiki + independent second source) · [R] reported (single source, usually a guide site) · [I] inferred (my reading of first-hand install data or convergent evidence) · UNVERIFIED (cannot be established).

1. Version discipline for lore facts#

Lore in an Early Access game is version-sensitive in two ways: content is added, and content is re-gated. The relevant timeline:

All dates above are the raw date epoch values from the Steam news API (app 1631270), converted in UTC -- not a guide site's rendering. The feed is internally consistent and strictly ordered; the earlier "disputed dates" reading in this document was an artefact of bad conversions and has been retired. (v0.2.8)

Pre-release / playtest-era caveat. Statements from the 2025 showcase, the Playtest and Reveal trailers (the Supporter Pack soundtrack includes dedicated "Playtest", "Reveal" and "Gameplay Reveal" trailer tracks) describe intent, not necessarily shipped 0.2.8 content. Community reports of megastructures visited during playtests that are not on the current retail map are explicitly playtest-era, not current [R].

2. The world: Arcadia-7#

2.1 The planet#

2.2 Ruptura, the star, and the Rupture cycle#

This is the single most important lore object in the game, and it is also the game's core mechanic.

• Ruptura is the name of the planet's star, described officially as "the planet's very own life-giving -- and taking -- star" that "wipes the surface clean in a fiery rage as it has countless times before." [C]
• The event it produces is called variously in-game and in the community the Rupture, a rupture cycle, a Star Rupture, a heat wave or an eruption; the resulting sheet of fire is the fire wave / firewave. [C] for "Rupture"/"Star Rupture"; [R] for the interchangeable use of "heat wave" and "eruption".
• Internally the system is the enviro wave (Content/Chimera/EnviroWave, save subsystems EnviroWave, EnviroWaveTimer, EnviroWaveEffects, CrWaveTimerActor). Internal identifier, not a display name. [I]
• Cycle structure as it plays out [R], cross-checked against the save's wave-timer fields [I]:

• Survival rule: the only known way to survive is to be inside a sheltered structure (Base Core + Emergency Habitat + Airlock is the standard field kit). Guides recommend permanently carrying 1x Meteor(ite) Heart and 100+ Basic Building Materials to throw up an emergency shelter. [R]
• Rewards from the cycle: ruptures are described as the only source of rare items such as Meteor Hearts and Ignitium. [R] -- treat the exclusivity claim as single-source.
• Cadence: the wave repeats on a timer whose length is a settings value in the save (waveSpeed, preWaveDuration, nextWaveTimer). In one first-hand 51-hour save the counter stood at 44 waves survived (numWaves: 44) with the next wave ~1,476 s away, implying an inter-wave period on the order of ~20-25 minutes of unpaused world time at default settings. [I] -- derived, not an official number.
• Wave side-effects are flagged, not fixed: the save's EnviroWaveEffects carries booleans sulfurActive, enemySpawnersActive, evaporateWater, hidePoisonIvy, hideAggressivePlant, i.e. a rupture can turn sulfur hazards on, wake enemy spawners, boil off water bodies and swap flora sets. [I] first-hand save data; the player-facing names for these states are UNVERIFIED.
• Planned second wave type: a Frost Wave is on the Early Access roadmap, listed under 1.0 alongside a new biome, endgame content, additional story elements and achievements. [C] (roadmap, 2026-01-08). The further framing as "a biome and system in its own right rather than a simple reskin" is single-source [R]. The build already ships CRC_WaveFreezer, CRC_WaveSmelter crafting categories and a FreezingTool weapon folder, which is consistent with the freeze/heat wave duality being partially built. [I]

2.3 Ecology#

2.4 Named places#

Named locations on the Arcadia-7 map (v0.2.x). Each named base is attributed to a corporation, which is itself the primary environmental-storytelling device -- the ruins are branded.

Source for the named-POI table is the community wiki starrupturewiki.org [R]. Spellings "Griffits" and "Claywood" are reproduced as the wiki gives them.

Second-source reconciliation (added on verification -- the two sources disagree). TheGamer's abandoned-base walkthrough covers 7 abandoned bases (not 9) and 11 blueprints total, and it conflicts with the wiki on several rows:

Two consequences worth flagging: the Hardening blueprint is placed at Next Step by the wiki and at Redleaf by TheGamer -- disputed, do not act on either; and Claywood is no longer single-source -- TheGamer independently attributes Grey Owl to Claywood, so it is a real in-fiction corporation name rather than a probable wiki typo. Directions in the table above should be treated as [R]/disputed, not as navigation data. (v0.2.x)

3. Who the player is#

3.1 The premise#

Official/press-consistent framing [C]:

Players take the role of people convicted on Earth for an unknown crime who have been offered an alternative to remaining behind bars: travel to the distant planet of Arcadia-7 and help build up infrastructure for resource extraction and refinement on behalf of Earth's Mega Corps.

Two things the player is not told at the outset, per Creepy Jar's own framing:

1. This is not the first expedition to Arcadia-7.
2. The planet is infested with vermin that have acquired a taste for human flesh.

You are, functionally, indentured industrial labour: you extract, refine and ship goods off-world to the corporations back home, and they pay you in technology (blueprints), standing (Corporation levels / reputation) and, implicitly, time off your sentence. The Orbital Cargo Launcher / Exporter is the narrative spine of the economy -- everything you build ultimately feeds a rocket pointed at Earth. [C] for the premise; [I] for the "time off your sentence" reading, which the game does not state explicitly in any source found.

3.2 The four playable convicts#

All four are cosmetic/narrative choices only -- as of v0.2.8 they share identical abilities, unlocks and progression; the difference is backstory, appearance and voice acting. [C] (multiple independent guides agree, including a PlayerAuctions post stating "right now, all characters have the same abilities").

Sourced from Shacknews (2026-01-06) and corroborated by PlayerAuctions/Game Rant [C].

Class-name reconciliation (important for modders). Three naming layers disagree, and the internal one is what the files use:

So: Biologist == internal Medic; Scientist == avatar-art "Physicist" == internal Scientist. Never present PD_Medic as an in-game class name.

Prisoner designations. The wiki.gg wiki titles its scientist page "The Scientist (P0212)", implying convict ID numbers of the form P####. Single source, wiki last touched August 2025 (pre-EA) -- [R], treat as pre-release-era until seen in a shipped build.

3.3 What "finishing the story" means today#

There is no ending in v0.2.8. The Steam Early Access blurb promises, for the full version, "more biomes, enemies, buildings and mechanics, along with a compelling end game", and the roadmap places "more story elements", the Frost Wave, a new biome, endgame content and achievements at 1.0 (targeted 2027). [C]

The current terminal story beat is the World Engine Program mission (the Forgotten Engine), which is the last of the 13 tracked missions. Completing it removes the radiation border and, pre-Update-1, granted the Teleporter. Update 1 moved the Teleporter to a Corporation reward -- verbatim: "You can now unlock the Teleporter by achieving the corresponding Corporate level - you won't need to launch the Forgotten Engine to receive it anymore." [C] (v0.2.0+)

4. Factions and organisations#

4.1 The corporations#

Six corporate entities exist in the save's CrCorporationsOwner.corporations[], matching six CD_* data assets in the install. Five are the "real" progression factions; the sixth is the tutorial/starting employer.

The 11/11/11/11/13 and "57 total" figures are the same data, not a stale figure versus a current one. 11 + 11 + 11 + 11 + 13 = 57, so the community wiki's "57 corporation levels" and the pre-Update-1 per-corp counts agree exactly; the earlier reading here (that Update 1 invalidated the 11/13 numbers and 57 superseded them) was wrong. What Update 1 actually did was reset every corporation's player level to 1 and refund prior progress as Data Points -- verbatim: "All Corporation Levels are rolled back to Level 1 and your progress from before the update will be restored as Data Points." It did not restate the level ceilings. Treat 11/11/11/11/13 = 57 as the best available ceiling figures, still [R] (BisectHosting, 2026-02-13, pre-Update-1) and possibly raised since -- the roadmap explicitly lists "additional corporation levels and rewards" as EA content. [C] on the reset. (figures pre-v0.2.0)

Note also that the starting corp is not level-less: it caps out early (the wiki says "roughly two levels"), though Robert's 51 h v0.2.8 save has it at L5 with bStartingCorporationMaxedOut set -- so the wiki's "two levels" is wrong or pre-Update-1. [I]

How the relationship works mechanically (and why it is lore): you raise a corporation's level by shipping it the materials it requests or by spending Data Points; it pays you back in blueprints, buildings and upgrades. The save tracks per-corporation level, reputation, levelRewardsClaimed, upgradedBuildingsClaimed and researchPointsTier1/2, plus a global dataPoints pool and unlockedFeaturesFlags. The corporations are your only channel to technology; they are also the entities whose earlier expeditions died on this planet. [I] from save structure + [C] from guides.

Currencies named in the community corpus: Data Points [C], War Bonds [R], Terminal Points [R] (the latter two single-source; War Bonds are described as loot found in abandoned bases).

4.2 The IRO#

IRO is an Earth-side organisation referenced twice and explained nowhere:

• Samuel Khumalo's bio states he "despises the IRO" [C].
• The central-map POI Next Step is an "IRO-SO Joint Research Outpost" [R].

No source found expands the acronym or states IRO's role. The most economical reading is a governmental/regulatory or penal authority distinct from the corporations (it is the thing an anti-government terrorist would hate, and it partners with a corporation on a joint outpost). This is inference, not lore -- listed under Gaps.

4.3 Claywood#

Claywood appears only as the owner of the Grey Owl Research Outpost -- but it is now attested by two independent sources (starrupturewiki.org and TheGamer's abandoned-base walkthrough), so the "probable wiki typo" reading is retired. [C] that the name exists in-fiction. It is still not among the six CD_* corporations in the shipped data, i.e. it is a flavour-only / environmental-storytelling corporation with no progression track -- a defunct predecessor, on the same footing as the "IRO-SO" attribution. Its identity and fate are still unexplained: UNVERIFIED.

4.4 NPCs, AI companions, antagonists#

• There is no named AI companion or on-screen NPC cast in v0.2.8. No source found names a single living NPC character. The build ships a ContextualDialog plugin and a GameSubtitles plugin, and the save records exactly one entry in allCharactersBaseSaveData (the player) in a 51-hour single-player run -- consistent with narration/radio voice only, no companion actor. [I]
• Contact with the corporations is via terminals (the Corporate Terminal, where Data Points are spent) and voice/dialogue lines, not embodied characters. [C] on the Corporate Terminal; [I] on the delivery.
• The antagonist is environmental, not personal: Ruptura (the star) and the Vermin. There is no named villain. [I] -- no source names one.
• Dead colonists are the recurring "cast". The Forgotten Engine walkthrough has you retrieve a Tech Level Access Card "found near a deceased colonist"; the Supporter Pack ships three distinct Dead Body avatar arts (DeadBody_1..3). Corpses are a deliberate, art-directed content category. [C] walkthrough; [I] avatar set.

5. The Vermin (creatures as lore entities)#

"Vermin" is the in-world collective term for Arcadia-7's hostile fauna [C] -- the Supporter Pack soundtrack even has a track titled "The Vermin", and the official creature trailer is titled "Vermin Swarmer, Slasher & Goliath Trailer".

Cross-checks: the roster and behaviours above are consistent across starrupturewiki.org, TheGamer, Destructoid and Game Rant [C for the eight names]; the wiki's threat-tier labels are that wiki's own taxonomy [R]. The Supporter Pack avatar set independently confirms art exists for Goliath, Exploder, Flinger, Slasher, Spitter, Swarmer [I] -- it does not include Blader or Young Slasher, mildly supporting the idea that those two are variants rather than headline species.

Lore hooks the game gives you: - Vermin aggression scales dynamically with your base size and activity level [R] -- i.e. the fiction explicitly ties the invasion to industrialisation. You are the provocation. - Base attacks originate from monoliths, and only begin after you upgrade the Base Core for the first time; more Base Core upgrades -> larger spawned waves [C]. - The build carries an entire Content/Chimera/Infection tree -- BP_AlienObeliskSpawner, BP_AlienObieliskActor [sic], DA_AlienObelisk, DA_InfectionCyst, DA_StandardInfection, plus infection-cloud, monolith, summoner-pulse and wave-summon effects -- and the save has infectionActors and per-building CrBuildingInfectionFragment / AlarmFragment. So an infection/cyst system attached to the obelisks is implemented in 0.2.8, even if the player-facing vocabulary for it is not documented anywhere public. [I] first-hand install/save data; display names UNVERIFIED.

6. Megastructures: monoliths and the Forgotten Engine#

6.1 Monoliths#

A widely repeated community line -- "monoliths are ancient alien structures left behind by the beings responsible for the Rupture events" -- is community interpretation, not stated lore, and directly contradicts Game Rant's "no narrative explanation" finding. Labelled as a theory in section 10.

6.2 The Forgotten Engine / World Engine#

The centrepiece of current narrative content.

Megamachines (plural). The save carries a MegamachinesSubsystem whose megamachineDatas map contains forgotten_Engine: Inactive, and the crafting-category list includes a MegaMachine scenario. The container is plural and keyed -- structurally ready for more than one megamachine. Community reports of playtest-era megastructures absent from the retail map line up with this. [I] + [R] -- strong circumstantial evidence, not a confirmed feature.

7. Story structure and how narrative is delivered#

7.1 Delivery channels (v0.2.8)#

7.2 Main story beats -- SPOILERS#

SPOILER WARNING. The following is the complete v0.2.x main-mission chain in order.

Mission list sourced from GameTrek's mission index and the Forgotten Engine walkthrough [R for the exact 13-item list]; the World Engine Program contents are corroborated by TheGamer, nerdschalk and MetaForge [C].

Note the shape: beats 2-12 are a factory tutorial with story framing, and beat 13 is the only conventional narrative set-piece. That is the accurate characterisation of StarRupture's story content at 0.2.8 and should not be dressed up.

7.3 Side content#

8. Environmental storytelling#

The abandoned bases are the game's primary lore surface, and they are structured as a record of failure:

• Every named research outpost / mining base is attributed to a real in-fiction corporation (Selenian, Griffits/Griffith Blue, Claywood, IRO-SO, "Combined-Corporation"). The ruins are corporate, which makes them a comment on the corporations rather than generic alien ruins. [R] on the attributions.
• They contain blueprints in chests -- meaning the technology you unlock is largely scavenged from your dead predecessors, not given to you. [C]
• They contain War Bonds, food and drink, ammo, ELMs (augment modules) and researchable items to exchange for Data Points -- the previous expedition's supplies literally fund yours. [R]
• They contain audiologs and datapads telling you what happened to those crews. [C] -- the content of those logs is not documented in any source found and is a major gap (section 11).
• Corpses are placed set-dressing and occasionally load-bearing (the Tech Level Access Card is looted from a dead colonist). Three distinct dead-body art assets ship in the Supporter Pack. [C] + [I]
• The install has a dedicated AbandonedBases map, an AbandonedBase content folder and 529 assets under Buildings/AbandonedBases -- these are handcrafted set-pieces, not procedural clutter. [I]
• Official framing for all of it: "Who walked these lands before you? What happened to them?" [C]

9. Themes, tone, and how lore motivates mechanics#

Tone. Industrial fatalism with a corporate-satire edge, delivered mostly through art direction and framing rather than dialogue. The clearest tonal artefact is the official soundtrack's own track list, which reads as a précis of the game's themes (first-hand from the Supporter Pack):

01 The Rupture · 02 Welcome to Arcadia-7 · 03 The Long Shift · 04 Efficiency · 05 Expansion · 06 Optimalization · 07 Ashfall · 08 Planet Regrowth · 09 Outreach · 10 Time to Fight · 11 The Vermin · 12 Conflict · 13 The Forgotten Engine · 14 Core Under Attack (+ 5 trailer bonus tracks).

"The Long Shift", "Efficiency", "Optimalization" and "Expansion" are the labour/productivity vocabulary of the corporation; "Ashfall", "Planet Regrowth" and "The Rupture" are the planet's counter-argument. That juxtaposition is the theme.

The four themes, and the mechanic each one justifies: