Mech farming sim Lightyear Frontier is getting a complete overhaul, adding a bigger map, massive tornados, and an interplanetary delivery cannon: ‘It’s been clear that we were not living up to the fantasy’

Lightyear Frontier seemed well liked when it launched into Steam early access last March, garnering a Very Positive rating from players for its ingenious synthesis of first-person mech piloting and farming simulation. But it seems there’s been some discontent bubbling beneath that big blue thumbs up.

In announcing its imminent Shifting Gears update, Frame Break opens with something of a mea culpa, explaining why it hasn’t provided more information about the game’s progress in the last six months. “Since we started, we’ve had the privilege of watching our game grow together with our amazing community,” the studio writes. “As we’ve listened closely to your feedback, it’s been clear that we were not living up to the fantasy that Lightyear Frontier promised.”

It isn’t the introduction to the update I expected, but the underlying issue is the size of the map. Players apparently complained that it was far too small, limiting the scope and creativity of farming. “Many of you quickly explored the entire map and were left wanting more. We also saw that you enjoyed making huge farms, but the world didn’t support that, and there was no reason to farm a lot of crops.”

Hence, the first goal of the Shifting Gears update is to address this, adding a “huge” new map that both provides more options for where and how you build your farm, while also letting your farm sprawl over much more territory. This larger scale also comes with an array of new tools to help you manage it, such as a bigger plough for churning up large fields more efficiently, plus a more powerful irrigation hose.

But the Shifting Gears update isn’t just wide, it’s also deep, reworking the progression system to give players greater impetus to build big farms. As Frame Break points out “the new system involves sending large deliveries of crops to other planets, which will reward you for your contribution”.

To facilitate this, Frame Break has added the enticingly named “delivery cannon” which blasts crop consignments to nearby colonies, unlocking new buildings and mech upgrades in the process. So it’s kinda like Satisfactory’s space elevator, but more projectile-based.

Other new additions include environmental hazards to make farming more challenging. Foremost among these are some impressive tornados that can tear up crops and damage farm equipment. There’s also a new mod chip system for upgrading your mech’s abilities, while you can make irrigating crops easier with automated drones.

All told, it sounds less like an update and more like a complete overhaul. But I wonder whether these changes will alleviate or exacerbate the main complaint Elie had when they played Lightyear Frontier last year, namely that the game was sluggish to get going. “The start of Lightyear Frontier is slow. It’s not like other cosy farming sims like Stardew Valley or Slime Rancher 2, where you can dive headfirst into the world and start doing whatever you want,” Elie wrote. “Lightyear Frontier introduces you to skills with the guardrails on, holding your hand every step of the way.”

The Shifting Gears update hasn’t spooled up yet, but eager farmers won’t have much longer to wait, as it arrives in less than a fortnight, on June 4.