Arcade classic Asteroids returns as an open-world, multiplayer survival game for PC

This is not your father’s Asteroids.

The 1979 arcade shooter will return as Asteroids: Outpost on PC, coming to Valve’s Steam service as an Early Access title. Announced today, this marked departure from the original works in some of gaming’s most popular design approaches, adding an open-world sandbox and survival gameplay to the beloved classic. This move will have publisher Atari using a top brand from their portfolio to stay relevant in the PC games market, which is expected to hit $30.7 billion in 2017.

Atari chief executive officer Fred Chesnais says that the company pays homage to the original with asteroid-blasting gameplay and that this new effort should appeal to fans of the classic as well as followers of “immersive survival games and expansive MMOs.”

Players take up the role of a deep space miner, working to blast through asteroid fields to collect resources so that they can build bases. Asteroids: Outpost’s open-world format allows players to stop freely to explore while they build up their resources, and a survival element has them defending their base and territory. Multiplayer gameplay allows for alliance forming and PvP fighting.

Asteroids: Outpost’s developer is Los Angeles-based Salty Games, a new studio that employs veterans from franchises such as Call of Duty and Star Trek Online.

Atari has not yet set a release date for Asteroids: Outpost, but it says that Steam Early Access will open soon.