One of Steam's biggest survival games finally overtakes its beloved predecessor, and a surprise RTS twist may soon hit its new expansion

Sure, the Ark 2 release date is still a few years away, but with Ark Survival Ascended's new expansion, there's a chance to get an early taste of it. Lost Colony has finally arrived, with a star-studded story teasing what's to come in the sequel and all-new mechanics that'll almost certainly feature. The first original expansion Ark fans have received in the Survival Ascended era, it's also packed with a massive map, over a dozen beasts, and new base-building features. However, Studio Wildcard may not be done there. In a new interview with PCGamesN, development director Jeremey Stieglitz says that he wants to find a way to add the RTS-inspired experience from ASE's Genesis Part 2 expansion into Lost Colony.

While its rollout wasn't quite as slick as anyone would've hoped, Lost Colony is now live. Stieglitz told me earlier in the year that, alongside performance upgrades and remastering beloved past expansions, genuinely impactful new content would be the big driver in migrating people from the old game, Survival Evolved, to Ark Survival Ascended. The Unreal Engine 5 version of one of the best survival games has, on Steam at least, struggled to eclipse its predecessor.

However, since Lost Colony's launch, ASA has managed to overtake ASE and has stayed that way for several days now - the last time that happened for a notable length of time was when ASA first launched in 2023. This could, potentially, be the turning point that Studio Wildcard has been hoping for.

Given Lost Colony's scope, it would hardly surprise me if this was the moment most players made the switch. The new map of Arat Prime brings wintery, trippy, and gothic vibes. The creature sandbox expands with new additions like "a super giant, monstrous-scale bat" called the Gigadesmodus, or a new fox-like tame called the Veilwyn, which you can "evolve Pokémon-style" into either a demonic variant, the Malwyn, or an angelic support variant, the Solwyn. A "traditional RPG-style skill tree" lets you learn new passive and active skills. It's a huge offering. However, the new thralls - recruitable, demonic NPCs - feel like the biggest addition.

"So you can either win [thralls] over to your side by attacking [their outposts] or defending them, depending on which seems more convenient or interesting to you as a player," Stieglitz explains. Outposts are procedurally generated, so you're never sure "where you'll encounter them or what they'll look like."

"These thralls are quite useful, though, if you do bring them over to your team," he adds. "They can defend your base for you. They can do utility things in your base - you can tell them to organize your inventories over time. They can harvest for you. They can also accompany you in combat, so you can put them on dinosaurs, give them the equipment you want, and [make them] follow you around on dinos or on foot. Most interesting, to me, is that you can directly control them as well to kind of use them as a scout. So if you want to scout an area without risking your own character, you can take direct [control] of a thrall and use them as kind of a cheap extra life, so to speak. You know, if they're killed, well, there's always another thrall."

While it's an impressive feature, Stieglitz says he had an even grander vision for it - one he hopes to add to Lost Colony, if Studio Wildcard can find the time and space.

"Frankly, we wanted to add the real-time strategy mode that exists in Genesis 2," he reveals. By crafting and piloting the Exo-Mek in that expansion, players could trigger a top-down perspective that lets you control nearby dinos and pick targets for them - nowhere near as deep as some of the best RTS games, but clearly inspired by them. "We wanted to add that for [Lost Colony] to help control the thralls, but we didn't get that in in time. It had too many issues. So hopefully, as we continue to get a little more time on this one, we'll get the RTS mode in for this as well, which I think will be really cool, because I really want to be able to order these units around from a God-like perspective."

Regardless of whether the RTS-style mechanic materializes or not, I ask Stieglitz if this is Wildcard's most ambitious and challenging project to date. He says it's a close call between Lost Colony and Genesis 2. Both pushed the developer hard, but he notes that while things haven't been perfect, the rollout of the equally huge and daring Lost Colony has been much smoother.

"[Lost Colony is] definitely less delayed than Genesis 2," Stieglitz says with a chuckle, summarizing his comparison of the two expansions. "It's on a par with Genesis 2 in terms of its ambition, and on a par in terms of the state in which it launched, which is imperfect, but pretty cool."

Keep your eyes peeled for more from my chat with Stieglitz, where we talk about a major performance improvement coming to ASA and the stacked future roadmap that Studio Wildcard recently revealed.