No Man's Sky

No Man’s Sky is a first-person adventure simulator set in a futuristic world. You’ll explore outer space and planets, some of which are home to various forms of alien life you can interact with. You can gather resources, fight in space across a variety of randomly generated regions of the galaxy, develop and upgrade your own ship, and take on missions for “bounty hunters.”

No Man’s Sky is an open-world sandbox with adventure-action elements. The player must explore a vast game world at the helm of a spaceship, but there are a few other gameplay options, too. That’s about it.

No Man’s Sky takes place in an alternate universe made up of 256 galaxies nested inside one another like matryoshka dolls. To reach the next galaxy, you have to make it to the center of the current one.

Each galaxy contains 20 billion star systems and more than 80 billion planets, and it takes hours of real time to travel from the edge (where the player appears) to the center. You travel within a system using a hyperdrive, and between systems by making a warp jump.

This makes No Man’s Sky the biggest game ever created at the time of its release. Thanks to procedural generation, even the combined efforts of all players won’t be enough to fully explore the game world. The creators drew inspiration from recent astronomical discoveries when creating the stars and planets.

The story of No Man’s Sky is completely independent of the world. The player finds themselves on an uncharted planet, where a tutorial begins, covering the basics: using technology to craft items, finding resources, interacting with the world, trading, and piloting a spaceship.

Some players begin their journey on toxic planets and spend their first few hours fighting to survive and painstakingly collecting resources. Others find themselves in paradise, surrounded by peaceful animals and rich deposits of resources.

The story of No Man’s Sky has been expanded with each new update, so if you played at launch, it’s worth giving the game another try—much has changed. For example, the character learned to think (in the 2018 Next update), hold conversations, and share their own thoughts, as well as try to figure out what an alien is saying if they haven’t learned its language yet.

The character has no backstory or major story-altering choices like in Mass Effect. Instead, No Man’s Sky is about feelings and meaning, not decisions and epic drama.

For roughly 30 hours, the writers lead the player toward the idea that our universe is just a computer simulation. In the game, the protagonist meets characters who make him question whether the No Man’s Sky universe is real. In fact, it was created by a higher intelligence (which the developers mean to represent themselves).

There are also side quests that can be more difficult than the main quest and may require an upgraded ship and character. The developers are constantly adding new quests and activities, and in 2018, completing them all took more than 50 hours.

When No Man’s Sky was released, its gameplay was simple and focused on space flight and planetary exploration, discovering and cataloging new plant and animal species (as in Spore), completing simple quests, hunting, gathering resources, crafting items, and trading with NPCs.

Updates added other points of interest to star systems, such as black holes, space anomalies, trading stations, and other players’ bases. Some activities became linked to minigames and puzzles, which could reward players with a valuable item or technology for solving them correctly.

Players began encountering both friendly aliens, who could give them a missing technology or resource, and hostile ones, who would rather eat the protagonist for breakfast. There are four types of weapons to fight them with. Players can also explore the ruins of fallen civilizations, build on habitable worlds, or grow their own fleet of ships.

The economy in No Man’s Sky is simple—for example, discovering new life-forms brings in a small amount of money, while fully exploring a planet earns a generous bonus. Players can also sell their surplus resources, organize expeditions, grow rare plants on a space farm, and more.

All credits earned from quests can be spent on new technologies, rare resources, items, or ships. Each trader has their own stock, so players need to think carefully about whether to buy something now or fly across the galaxy to get it later if they need to.

At the time of its release, No Man’s Sky offered an unusual form of online interaction: the names players gave to discovered planets and species were shared with the community. This meant players might come across planets named “Butt” or “Frontbutt,” and some truly “original” species names.

Later updates added full co-op multiplayer for up to four players. When the world is synced, players and their starships appear in the same universe and can explore together, complete certain types of quests, and trade resources.

In multiplayer mode, many game systems started to actually work instead of just “pretending.” For example, there was a reason to develop bases and defend them, earn credits and gather resources, hunt each other (direct PvP between Travellers is allowed, but you can also just fly around and raid caravans), and visit each other by teleporting halfway across the galaxy.