Terra Invicta's first DLC, Dark Skies, adds a post-nuclear scenario and a 2003 UFO-sceptic starting point

Terra Invicta — Pavonis Interactive's sprawling sci-fi grand strategy about resisting an alien invasion — is getting its first ever DLC. The expansion is called Dark Skies and it's coming in July, published by Hooded Horse.

Dark Skies adds two new starting scenarios. The first rolls the clock back to 2003, dropping players into the early days of the US-led invasion of Iraq. That extra two decades of prep time sounds like an advantage, but the catch is credibility: fewer people will believe you when you start warning about an alien threat, and the geopolitical landscape is messier. The second scenario is the grimmer one — a post-nuclear wasteland setup that the article compares to Fallout, where civilization has already taken a serious hit before the aliens even show up. The expansion also brings new spaceship designs into the mix.

Terra Invicta launched into Early Access back in 2022 and hit version 1.0 relatively recently. It's a notoriously deep and slow-burning game — the kind where colonising your first asteroid can still be a work in progress six months after you start. Hooded Horse has built a reputation for publishing dense, ambitious strategy titles, and Dark Skies is the studio's first move into paid DLC territory for this particular game.

No exact release date beyond July has been confirmed yet. With 11 comments already on the announcement and the game's dedicated community known for long-haul campaigns, reaction should be worth watching — especially from players who've been grinding through the base game since 1.0 launched.