The Crust Leaves Early Access With Huge 1.0 Update
After more than two years of Early Access, VEOM Studio’s lunar base-building strategy game The Crust has officially reached version 1.0 on Steam. The full release arrived on September 10 with a completed story campaign, a substantial optimisation pass and enough new tools and systems to make returning players reconsider how they build their Moon factories.
The Crust puts players in charge of a lunar colony responsible for mining regolith, processing resources and building increasingly elaborate production chains both above and below the Moon’s surface. Conveyor belts and drones handle much of the automation, while colonists need to be managed and resources can be traded back to Earth. The campaign also involves competing Earth factions, with decisions capable of influencing the political situation back home.
One of the biggest additions in 1.0 is Planning Mode, which allows modules and conveyors to be laid out before construction begins. Entire modules can be copied together with their recipes, while a resource tracker shows what will be required to turn the planned factory into something less imaginary. Roads and parking areas have also been added for trucks, which should hopefully reduce the amount of expensive lunar machinery being treated as an unconventional shortcut.
The story campaign is now complete with multiple endings, accompanied by a reworked prologue and global events including solar flares, meteor showers and epidemics. The latter additions come with some appropriately practical responses, including an anti-meteorite cannon and, rather less dramatically, showers and toilets for colonists. Sandbox 2.0 adds selectable starting locations, map-generation seeds, four new maps and additional custom-game settings.
VEOM Studio has also reworked large parts of the game’s logistics and rendering systems. According to the developer, large bases can see substantial performance improvements, with logistics changes alone providing gains of up to around 50% in some situations. RAM usage and save sizes have also been reduced. Version 1.0 additionally brings Linux and macOS support alongside Windows.
There is one important catch for existing players: Early Access saves are not compatible with version 1.0 because of the extensive changes to logistics, roads and excavation. Those saves haven’t been deleted, however. VEOM Studio is keeping the final Early Access build available through Steam’s Previous beta branch for anyone who wants to finish an existing colony before starting over in 1.0.
Other additions include an online leaderboard, salary controls and the ability to fire colonists, a Training Centre, improved auto-buy and auto-sell systems, new visual styles for base interiors, additional achievements and numerous interface and quality-of-life changes. The Crust is available now on Steam for Windows, macOS and Linux. Check out the 1.0 trailer and gameplay screenshots below.
