• It is now possible to disable snap / smooth turn in the ‘Gameplay’ settings.

• Fixed cases where the game could crash when restarting a virtual challenge.

• Added additional sound variants for commonly used interactions such as climbing and magnetically grabbing items.

• The volume of Espire’s “Sprinting footsteps” has been reduced.

• Minor localization fixes across all supported languages.

• Improved “Climbing Collision” in the Wolf Takedown and Redleg Hostage Rescue Virtual Challenges.

• Minor Lighting improvements in Mission 1.1 Espire Labs, with higher quality baked lighting builds for the 6 campaign missions. 

• PC & Quest unification for the Grammostola Person of Interest and Rosea Combat Takedown challenges. These 2 PC-only challenges are now also present on the Quest version of Espire 1. We optimized the performance of these challenges on the Quest platform using draw call reduction techniques which don’t lower quality on the PC version of Espire 1. As part of this pass, we performed a minor lighting and collision pass on the 2 missions. 

Patch 1.13 is a minor update on the Steam platform, however it is part of our commitment to ensure the PC version of Espire 1 stays in lock-step with the Quest version. Since October 2023, we’ve been ensuring that the PC release stays in sync with the Quest release, with Espire 1 updates coming to PC within 2-5 weeks of them launching on Quest. There’s a delay as the PC version of Espire 1 has many levels that are unique to PC. The PC version of Espire 1 also supports approx. 16 different headset & controller combos and so a lot of extra QA testing is required. Side note: did you know Espire 1 allows you to switch between HTC Vive and Valve Index controllers at any time during gameplay?

This update is called the “New Season” update as on the Quest version of Espire 1, this update introduces some of the virtual challenges into the ‘weekly challenge roster’. Weekly challenges utilize the “Oculus Challenge Leaderboards" feature that’s exclusive to the Quest platform, which is why they aren’t included here. 

In other news, we don’t yet have access to Steam Frame devkits, however are keenly eying the hardware as a potential opportunity to finally port Espire 2 to Steam, as well as ensure the PC version of Espire 1 has frame support. Fingers crossed we can make that a real-reality in 2026. The biggest blocker for Espire 2 has been in having the resources required to do a port. 

Thanks for your interest in Espire 1 and to the Espire 1 players, we hope you enjoy the latest updates. 

Cheers, 

EspireMike from LODE, developers of Espire.  

PS: It’s not lost on me that we’re launching Espire’s 13th major update on Friday the 13th. Hoping for no gremlins. We did test it on all supported headsets, of which there’s a lot!