Valheim Lead Engineer Announces Space Survival Game Starpath
Starpath is a passion project Smårs developed during nights and weekends over several years, and its announcement at BitSummit marks the first public reveal of a game from a key figure behind one of the most successful survival games of the past decade.
Reporting from 3 sources: Denfaminicogamer, KAI-YOU, Game Spark.
On May 21, 2026, Swedish developer Jonathan Smårs, who served as lead engineer and designer on Valheim for the past five years, announced Starpath, an open-world survival crafting game set in space. The game supports both single-player and cooperative multiplayer. Players build their own spaceship to explore a seamlessly expanding procedurally generated universe, visiting unknown celestial bodies and derelict ships while investigating whether other beings exist. The spaceship building system is described as simple but flexible, with operable buttons and customizable systems including a terminal computer. The game adopts a retro 3D art style inspired by Alien, Cowboy Bebop, and Interstellar. Starpath will be playable as an early development demo at BitSummit 2026, held May 22 to 24 at Miyako Messe in Kyoto, at booth 3F-C05. The game is scheduled for release on PC via Steam. Japanese language support is currently undecided.
The game's spaceship design allows free-form construction, including Von Braun wheels that generate artificial gravity through rotation, according to Game Spark. Players wake up inside a space station and must craft exploration ships and tools to streamline life there while venturing into the unknown. The space station includes a terminal computer with interactive mini-games for breaks from exploration. Denfaminicogamer reports that the game combines space simulation, survival crafting, and a relaxed play experience, with a retro 3D art style evoking 1980s analog technology. Smårs plans to share development progress going forward following this announcement. The demo at BitSummit will be an early build, and the full release date on Steam has not yet been specified.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 3 cited sources below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.