When Half-Life 2 and the Source Engine released, the first thing that came to mind was Natural Selection 2. We finally got an opportunity to interview the game’s designer Charlie Cleveland, and asked him a little about their upcoming standalone game – Natural Selection 2, and here is what we found out …
How far into development is Natural Selection 2, can you give us a rough release date?
Right now we're still in "pre-production". We're creating tools and processes that will speed our development and prototyping the basic game mechanics to prove some of our new gameplay ideas. We're also updating our web site to help us get game information and progress out more easily.
Also, we're creating a base set of materials and map props which we will give out to the public before the release of the game in order to kick-start the mapping community. We did this with the first Natural Selection and it worked great; we had tons of great maps to choose from when we shipped v1.0. We're doing the same thing this time around, though because we're selling Natural Selection 2 (over Steam), we will be paying mappers for the maps that we choose to include with the game. This is going to be a great opportunity for budding level designers to get their work in a shipping game that many people will see and play.
We've learned our lesson about giving release dates. We want to make the best game we possibly can, so we that means we don't have a deadline. I wish I could tell you more! It won't be years though.
man i loved that game i had to stop though since steam keeps telling me to pay 50$ even though i bought the source,anthology and etc... at a store so i stoped playing after that plus my code didnt work since cheat engines already took mine T-T hope it comes out without steam access 
