Osiris: New Dawn

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Osiris: New Dawn is an open-world sci-fi survival game created by Fenix Fire Entertainment. It originally published with Reverb Triple XP until December 15, 2020, when Fenix Fire bought the publishing rights. The game entered Steam Early Access in September 2016 and had a full Windows release on January 18, 2023.

The story takes place in 2078, when humans are beginning interstellar travel. You join the United Nations of Earth’s second colonization team and are sent to the Gliese 581 system to study planets for habitability. During the trip, a light-speed crash leaves you stranded on a harsh desert planet. To survive, you must build a base, explore, and adapt to dangerous conditions. The game supports both single-player and multiplayer in an open world, and the single-player campaign can be played offline.

Players start with jet boots and a few basic tools. Osiris: New Dawn was developed by a tiny two-person team. They first showed a single-player demo at PAX West 2016. Lead developer Brian McRae says the team focused on creating an immersive setting and survival experience inspired by Prometheus, Gravity, and The Martian. They wanted players to feel challenged by the survival systems and to avoid overpromising what the game would be.

Reverb helped with crafting elements during development, and the team later took over publishing to maintain ease of use and intuitive gameplay. During Early Access, updates added features such as craftable spaceships. A major update, Prometheus II Unearthed, arrived in April 2017, bringing more areas, weapons, and enemies. The developers talked about future ideas like building complex space stations and biospheres.

In April, the developers announced they were ending active development, though multiplayer servers would stay online for players to explore and survive. Osiris: New Dawn received some early awards while in development but faced mixed reviews at release, with many critics saying it was unfinished. On January 30, 2023, Fenix Fire posted about the game’s future, which was met with disappointment and negative feedback. The post was later removed, and by May 2023 the game had been removed from Steam, though it could still be downloaded from the developer’s website.