Over the past couple of months, survival sandbox Fractured Veil has been talking up its upgrade to Unreal Engine 5.1, sharing details and previews along the way. It looks as if the time for preview is past and the time for release has come, as the engine upgrade officially went live in June.
The upgrade itself enhances the visual polish of the title (naturally) and applies several other benefits such as improved server stability and improved game performance, while the patch has also applied weapon balance adjustments, economy tweaks, better loot distribution, and improved enemy AI. Unfortunately, this sizeable upgrade has also forced a full server wipe, meaning everyone has had to start from zero all over again.
All of this is well and good for those who have backed the project on Kickstarter and were invited in over the course of alpha testing, but everyone else who missed that boat has been effectively locked out of kicking the game’s tires. However, a pledge store has recently opened up, selling pledges – founder’s packs by any other name – to let people buy in to the alpha. Paddle Creek Games is offering three bundles in total that offer a single copy or multiple copies to hand out to friends, with prices starting at $25 and running up to $170.
The survivalbox otherwise continues to be on course for its early access launch, though a presser we received notes a Q4 2023 launch window while a roadmap update released in April dated September 23rd for early access; readers may recall that Fractured Veil has missed launch targets on multiple occasions before, so maybe take any of these dates or windows with a boulder-sized grain of salt.