Once Human's Isles of Abyss Ocean Expansion Sets Sail October 22

Once Human is getting its biggest content drop since launch. NetEase Games and developer Starry Studio confirmed during Xbox's Tokyo Game Show 2026 broadcast that the free-to-play survival game's Ocean Expansion, subtitled Isles of Abyss, launches October 22 across PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and cloud, included at no extra cost with Xbox Game Pass.

The reveal came via a new release-date trailer shown alongside Xbox's other Tokyo Game Show reveals, landing the update just eight weeks after Once Human made its console debut on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S in August. Starry Studio has been building toward the expansion publicly for months, running staged pioneer tests on live servers since the spring and gradually opening qualification to more players as the October build came together.

What Isles of Abyss changes

Where Once Human has so far kept players on dry land fighting corrupted wildlife and rival factions, Isles of Abyss opens the ocean itself as a new survival layer. Starry Studio is billing it as a self-contained scenario with its own progression track, environmental rules, technology tree and phased objectives, rather than a strip of new map bolted onto the existing world.

The headline system is full ship-building: players start with a basic wooden raft and progressively refit it into a seaworthy vessel capable of surviving deep-water crossings. Once out past the shallows, the update adds dual land-and-sea survival mechanics, deep-sea exploration zones, and a set of endgame boss encounters built specifically around naval combat rather than the ground-based fights the base game is known for.

A living, hostile sea

The release-date trailer frames the expansion around six in-fiction survival rules for the new ocean space, warning that ghost vessels drift with no living crew, that the sea itself is hunting, and that entire islands may shift position between visits. Early marketing material also describes crewed watchtowers, wandering mechanical beasts and abandoned ships as hazards scattered between the new islands, on top of the resource and territory pressure that already defines Once Human's existing scenarios.

NetEase has run the expansion through repeated public feedback stages rather than holding everything back for a single reveal. A Pioneer Test opened invitations in waves over the summer, and Starry Studio used the official Steam announcement to thank early testers and confirm that qualification for later rounds was still rolling out while the October build was finalized.

Part of a bigger post-launch push

Isles of Abyss arrives on the back of a busy stretch for Once Human. The game crossed 30 million users around its console launch window, and Starry Studio has kept a near-weekly cadence of balance patches and class reworks running through September, including a Beastmaster class overhaul and animal-ranching changes shipped just days before the Tokyo Game Show reveal.

That cadence matters for how the ocean expansion is being positioned. Rather than a one-off marketing beat timed purely to Tokyo Game Show, Isles of Abyss is being folded into the same live-service rhythm as the game's existing scenarios, complete with its own test cycle, forum-driven patch notes and a staged rollout across PC, console and cloud rather than a single simultaneous unlock.

Where to play it

Isles of Abyss goes live October 22 across every platform Once Human currently supports. PC and Steam Deck players can find it through the game's existing Steam page, while Xbox Series X|S owners get it bundled into their existing Game Pass access alongside the rest of the Tokyo Game Show wave of Xbox updates. Sony has not detailed separate PS5 timing beyond the same October 22 date Starry Studio gave for the update generally, and mobile support has not been mentioned for this scenario.

Full patch notes, including specific ship-building tiers, resource requirements and boss encounter details, are expected closer to launch through Once Human's official news channel, which has so far published the expansion's test schedules and recruitment waves rather than a complete feature breakdown.

For a game that launched as a PC-first survival shooter, the addition of a dedicated naval survival scenario built around ship construction marks one of the more ambitious systemic additions Once Human has attempted since its 2024 debut, and one Starry Studio is clearly treating as a marquee moment for the console audience it only just picked up.