| Era One | |||
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| Release Date | Gameplay & Story | Pre-Order & DLC | Review |
Era One is a sci-fi RTS game where you build up and defend a starship in the endless vastness of space. Read our review of its early access build to see what it did well, what it didn't do well, and if it's worth buying when it fully releases!
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Everything We Know About Era One
Era One Story
Era One being is a space opera, promising a gripping campaign that will be available in game at full release.
Mankind had completely exhausted the planet Earth and took to the stars to gather resources. It brought about a new age of culture and wealth that vastly expanded the reach of humans, allowing them to span the entire Solar System. From these riches, numerous powerful factors grew ungovernable, and thus mankind no longer became divided by ethnicity or nation, but by which Space Station they hailed.
Eventually, a powerful man named Alais De Shars saw himself as the person to be able to rule everyone, and commanded the construction of the Navi Mondo, a gigantic, colossal space ship base that could house billions of people aboard. After the completion of the Navi Mondo centuries later, De Shars' direct descendant took control of the Solar System and united all humans under the Federation of the Free Worlds.
It would not last, as centuries later, as mankind was just about to strike another breakthrough in space travel with the invention of the Space Gate, their efforts were dashed at the zero hour, when a mutation caused the system to be disrupted, and a new threat has emerged that seeks to cause the existinction of the human race.
Alya De Shars, the last descendant of Alais De Shars, now commandeers the last Navi Mondo, rebranded as Era One. Aboard were only a few thousand people compared to the usual billions that it can fit. Now, Alya must take to the nearly-depleted Solar System and find a way to ensure humanity's survival by defending the Era One against the horrifying space mutations, as well as keeping her crew alive.
Era One Gameplay
Era One is a unique cross between the tactical commanding of an RTS and the mindful resource management of a base-builder, all taking place in a floating base in space. Players will be able to completely customize their ship bases freely with the given modules, where there is no limit to the size, just your resources and imagination. Massive cities can be built, complete with defense turrets, and fighter units trained to attack any hostiles or asteroid fields that one might come across in the vastness of space. Strategically expand the massive floating base and defeat any potential threat to the safety of everyone.
Era One Release Date and Time
Released August 6, 2025
After facing numerous delays, Era One is now aiming to release on July 25, 2025, for the PC (Steam).
It was previously slated to launch around September to October 2024, but was delayed two months to December 8, 2024. Afterwards, another delay struck, where the developers announced that they wished not to state any definite dates from now on, as not to disappoint fans.
They, however, reaffirmed that the game is steadily being worked on and has shared numerous updates and features that they are targeting to fully implement in time for early access sometime within the first half of 2025. Then, they once again announced a delay of the previously-mentioned time period, and have now set the launch day for August 6, 2025.
 Steam |
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| Price | $29.99 | ||||
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Era One Review [Early Access]
This is What We Get After All Those Delays?
They say patience is a virtue, and more often than not, I’ve found that to be true. Letting things arrive at their own pace has, in my experience, led to better quality and deeper satisfaction, enough times to make the wait feel worth it. To borrow a modern phrase, “letting them cook” isn’t always a bad thing, especially if you’ve got time to spare.
But what happens when you let someone cook, then let them keep cooking, and then keep letting them cook, only to finally be served something that isn’t nearly as well-done as you hoped? Well, stray metaphors aside, that’s exactly how Era One has felt from its announcement to release—and it doesn’t satisfy me one bit to be stuck with the result.
A Space Odyssey That Doesn’t Exist Yet
So, let’s begin this breakdown of Era One with its story, not that you’ll actually encounter it in this version of the game. Let’s set the scene, why don’t we?
In a future where humanity has long since abandoned Earth for massive orbital cities called Navi Mondo, centuries of expansion, conflict, and collapse have boiled down to one last shot at survival. Mutated biominers threaten what remains of civilization, resources are running dry, and chaos erupts when a hyperspace migration goes catastrophically wrong. Amid the fallout, a young woman named Alya De Shars sets out to steal a powerful energy source and ignite a new beginning beyond the stars.
How’s that for a setting? It’s unique, isn’t it? Not derivative, decently thematic, and easy enough to follow. So that’s good, right? Well, yeah—if it actually existed. The campaign isn’t here, not in this build, because we’re still that early into development. And that should tell you exactly how this review is going to go moving forward, because my biggest issue with this game is that it’s barely here, despite the numerous delays that led up to this early access release.
Reach the Stars with Your Very Own Build-A-Ship
Moving on to gameplay, there’s actually some meat on these bones—or plating on this scaffolding, if you want an analogy more in line with spaceships and whatnot. Era One’s whole deal mostly revolves around its shipbuilding and combat mechanics, with a bit of resource management tossed in for good measure. If you’ve played any of the Homeworld games (hopefully not the disaster that was Homeworld 3), then you’ve got the general idea.
Your goals vary depending on the game mode, ranging from curated scenario-based missions to wave-based defense modes, full-on sandboxes, or a survival mode where the map is wide open and you’ll need abasic grasp of resource allocation to make it from point A to B. It’s a nice, healthy mix that looks to expand even further, if the menu screen is to be believed.
To get anywhere, you’ll need to grow your humble starting setup into a fully functional starship by salvaging resources from nearby derelict vessels and asteroid fields. And here lies one of the game’s only real redeeming qualities at this stage: its shipbuilding. Having a mothership to pump out smaller units is standard fare for this kind of RTS, but being able to build your own ship from scratch? Not exactly the norm—and that’s absolutely a point in its favor.
You begin with a central command core, basically a big block of metal that floats around, and expand outward using a variety of modules in a LEGO-like construction grid. You’ve got basic hull pieces to give you more attachment points and flesh out your frame, facility modules that handle specialized tasks like constructing ships or generating power, utility modules that offer passive bonuses or functions, and weapon modules to arm your ship with turrets and whatever gear they need to function.
Every new module needs an attachment point to latch onto, including the armor plating you’ll want to slap on the exterior so your starship doesn’t fold after a few enemy shots. With these modules, you’ll be juggling resources, crew, energy, and the capacity to support all three, along with the various stats that come with your overall construction. Naturally, you’ll want some form to go with that function, and the game has you covered there too, offering a decent spread of cosmetic modules so you’re not stuck flying around in a glorified Rubik’s Cube.
Once you’ve got your ship built up, you can pilot your mothership as a single massive unit and/or command a fleet of smaller ships to handle everything from scouting out new territory to laying siege to enemy outposts. Which brings me to the other half of Era One’s gameplay: combat.
Neither Elite, Nor Dangerous
If I had to describe this game’s combat in a word, the onomatopoeia “eh” comes to mind, because there’s really nothing worth writing home about. You’ve got formation toggles and behavior parameters to dictate how your fleet moves and fights, plus grouping options so you don’t have to manually command all 40 of your fighters to dogpile one poor enemy bomber. Sounds like a solid setup, sure, but it’s all just standard stuff for this genre. Not great features—just required ones to make the game playable. No bonus points there.
As for the combat itself, I’d be tempted to call it finicky, but “poorly explained” is probably the more accurate term. There’s actually a solid system buried in here, not unlike Homeworld’s, where battles hinge on formations, angles of attack, hit probabilities, and a sort of rock-paper-scissors logic between weapon types and armor. It can be genuinely fun once you get a feel for it… if you get a feel for it, that is.
Yeah, this game’s tutorial isn’t great. It’s neither comprehensive nor efficient, with too much downtime between instructions and plenty of gaps in explaining what buttons do what. All it takes is a single screenshot to see how cluttered the interface can be, and in a game like this, a well-made tutorial is the difference between actually understanding what you’re doing and feeling more lost than an astronaut without a safety harness.
There’s also something to be said about the game’s pacing—mainly that it’s a crawl among crawls. I get it, space is vast, but if my ship feels like it’s moving at three plack lengths per second (not literally), then yeah, it starts getting tedious fast—especially when I have to slowly swing it around just to reposition.
Resource gathering, building, combat, progression—it’s all glacial. And to make matters worse, there’s no option to speed things up mid-run. Even Homeworld 3 had that feature, and I hated that game. Imagine being bested by Homeworld 3, of all games.
That said, the unit variety in combat is at least worth commending. You can build heavy, medium, and light ships, each with customizable weapon loadouts tailored to your preferences. That’s not even counting the absurd number of ways you can kit out your mothership with guns, armor, and whatever else you can cram into its frame. You can really go buck wild with it if you want—and it’s a good thing, too, because that’s pretty much all Era One has going for it right now.
For Shipbuilding Only, At Least For Now
Shipbuilding, that’s it. Technically not, but it’s the only worthwhile thing you can do with what the game gives you in its current state. I love the modular building system. I love the variety you get with your parts and the absurdity that variety allows. I love that you can customize your color schemes and have enough cosmetic options to truly live the space odyssey of your dreams as the captain of some legendary ship.
It does this one thing quite well; one could even call it intuitive. If this was all it sought out to be, well, it won’t be much of a game, truth be told, but my disappointment wouldn’t be as potent because it actually delivered.
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A Sci-fi Space Opera in Sight and Sound
To give a bit more credit where it’s due, the visuals are positively stellar—pun absolutely intended. The blocky, sci-fi industrial aesthetic of the ship parts gives off strong Stellaris meets Satisfactory vibes, with sharp edges and a heavy emphasis on mass-produced construction. Every ship and module is detailed in a way that perfectly fits the game’s tone, and honestly, I’m here for it.
Speaking of things that sing, the background music is genuinely grand. If there’s one thing I can say about the game’s story—despite it not actually being present—it’s that the soundtrack feels like it belongs to something epic. Both the music and the intended narrative share this sense of scale and grandeur, and the music alone manages to carry that feeling even when the story doesn’t yet show up to do its part.
Just the Building Blocks of a Game
And here we are at the final frontier of this review for Era One. One thing becomes clear by the end: these are just the building blocks of an incredibly unfinished game. I mean, sure, it’s early access—what was I expecting? Honestly, more than this. It feels like the devs spent all the time bought by those delays, including the couple of extra hours past the listed release time, polishing the wrong parts of the game, at least from a functional standpoint.
It’s very likely we haven’t seen the last of Era One. I can imagine a future where the tutorial actually teaches you something, the pacing doesn’t feel like molasses in zero-G, the story finally shows up, and maybe even multiplayer gets tossed in for a bit of razzle-dazzle. But all of that depends on whether this game survives its infancy—and that’s something not even a few more months of delays can promise.
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Era One Product Information
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| Title | ERA One |
|---|---|
| Release Date | August 6, 2025 (Early Access) |
| Developer | Team Complex |
| Publisher | Team Complex |
| Supported Platforms | PC (Steam) |
| Genre | Strategy, Simulation |
| Number of Players | 1-10 (Online Multiplayer) |
| ESRB Rating | RP |
| Official Website | Era One Website |
