The Next World

The Next World launched on March 7, 2016 and received two paid expansions over its post-launch life: Planetary Exploration (August 5, 2016) and Rocketship (July 13, 2018). All three DLC items listed on the store are released. The Rocketship DLC was the last major content addition, and no further content for The Next World has been announced since its release. The most recent developer communication referencing The Next World was an October 28, 2020 post, but it was an announcement about a brand-new game — The Zone: Stalker Stories — rather than any new content for The Next World. This signals that Illuminated Games had moved on to a new project rather than continuing to develop this one. Before the Rocketship DLC, a May 2018 post asked players to vote between four potential DLC concepts. The winning option was Rocketship, which shipped in July 2018. The other candidates (The Other Crash Site, Internal Strife) were never announced as planned or in development after Rocketship launched, and no roadmap or future content was ever communicated following its release. The studio's 2020 announcement of a separate new game further confirms that active development of The Next World concluded with the Rocketship DLC in July 2018.