Versus Evil announces that Early Access to Habitat: A Thousand Generations in Orbit is now available on Steam, offering the chance to check out the in-progress version of this sandbox strategy game. They explain: "Habitat: A Thousand Generations in Orbit’s Early Access build for PC, Mac and Linux is now available through Steam, Amazon, Humble Store, GameFly, Gamer's Gate, GreenMan Gaming and Nuuvem priced at $14.99, £10.99 and €14.99. An additional value ‘buddy-code’ bundle, where gamers have the option of buying one code for themselves and one for their friend at a reduced rate, is also available for $19.99, £14.99 and €19.99." Here's an Early Access launch trailer and here's word:

In the early access build, gamers will be able to explore a procedurally-generated orbital playing field and manage their engineers to build, rearrange and repair livable habitats created from the space junk they raid from a dozen or so space junkyards. They will also be able to test out and master physics-driven flight simulation using rocket physics, boosters and steerable thrusters to get around as well as experiment with lasers, grappling hooks and particle accelerators to turn their creations into deadly kinetic orbital weapons. Finally, they’ll be able to practice destroying and salvaging enemy space stations, taking on defense turrets and nanomachine hunters in a bid to survive!

The Early Access version of Habitat is not feature complete and represents just a portion of what the final game will offer, both in terms of complete feature set and polish.

In Habitat: A Thousand Generations in Orbit players assume the role of ‘Commander’ and lead a team of engineers to gather a variety of debris found in a procedurally–generated orbital playing field with a dozen space junkyards to raid and create livable habitats that can support human life Habitat’s sandbox environment provides a diverse and creative range of possibilities as players combine different elements of debris, explore space and mine the resources found there. A fully expandable tech tree can be researched to develop more elaborate space stations.