"Space? SPACE! SPAAAAAAACE!"

-Space Core

Remember No Man's Sky? I'm sure you do. Whether you've played that game or not, I'm also sure that you know how the majority of gamers seems to be mad and disappointed by the promised to be great space exploration game. Some love the game so much, other even write down their disappointment and negative review that probably worth one page of Creepypasta story. 

Plus I happened to found a lot of articles about the sh*tload of broken promises of Sean Murray on the internet more than the good things of the game, which makes me quite hesitated to put No Man's Sky in my wishlist. But that was a few months ago, I don't know about now. That's why while this post might be useful for you, I'm also asking about your thought.

Now let's just say I wanted to add one or two space exploration games to my wishlist other than No Man's Sky IF it really is that bad, and I don't want to spend my money or time on a.. Ehem, crap. Just like the title says, I'm asking you if these alternate games to No Man's Sky are better or not. 

---

Empyrion - Galactic Survival

In the middle of many sandbox survival games, Empyrion stands out with its blend of RPG progression systems, voxel-based crafting and space sim elements all set in a procedurally generated solar system. Empyrion offer a large amount of opportunities for crafting and exploring. The crafting in Empyrion could be a bit complicated, so we will need to learn from the tutorial to understand the crafting components. But the more messy the crafting library, the more fun a survival game would be, that's what I think. We will need to build our base and grow our own food to survive, as well as assembling a spaceship in order to fly to another planets. 

This game also have a high focus on survival, as we need to maintain our resources to survive, we will encounter many hidden danger and hostile wildlife creatures on the planets we explore, aggressive drones, and alien soldiers along with their guardians that will hunt the players down once we are in sight. 

Developer : Eleon Game Studios
Mode(s)     : Single-player and Multiplayer
Status         : Early access

---

Elite: Dangerous

The entirety of Milky Way galaxy is available for us to freely explore it along with friends and other players in Elite: Dangerous. If it is the first time for you playing the game, Elite: Dangerous could be so complicated, given how little it guides the players. This game has 400 billion star systems with a full galactic and technological simulation based on real scientific principles, as well as procedurally generated planets to land into. 

Along the way mining objects in space, get into dogfights, and game the economy, in Elite: Dangerous we will engage in frightful space pirate battles, acquire new ships that will allow the player to travel even further into the unknown. There is so much to be seen and to discovered in the game's near infinite scale of galaxy with your friends or other players. Besides the massive scale of exploration-heavy gameplay, the space pirate battle seems to be the greatest aspect Elite: Dangerous have to offer. 

Developer : Frontier Development
Mode(s)     : Single-player and Multiplayer
Status         : Released

---

Rebel Galaxy

Exploring the galaxy in an awesome spaceship with fantastic soundtrack is what brings the biggest fun to the game, and we can do that in Rebel Galaxy. Rebel Galaxy is swashbuckling exploration-heavy indie game that set the player in space exploration (Captain obvious, right here) The game title itself has given an interesting impression about some Han Solo epic space adventure. We can choose to play as a trader, miner, bounty hunter, or pirate in the giant procedurally generated star cluster, or there is also the main quest that we can follow. But whatever routes we play, we will always get ourself into combat in pretty much whatever we do in Rebel Galaxy. That's why it seems to be so crucial to add upgrades to our ship if we don't want to get smashed by the other space adventurer.

There is so much beautiful things of the space in this game that we can look at while fly around with our spaceship. From the countless stars, nebula with different swirling colors, the planets, the moon, asteroids floating around the ship, give the impressive look to the game's surrounding. 

Developer : Double Damage Games
Mode(s)     : Single-player
Status         : Released

---

Planet Explorers

The game that allow the players to play however we please, Planet Explorers have three different gameplay modes available for us to choose how we gonna explore the Planet Maria. The Building Mode will let us focus purely on building stuff and spending time to design remarkable architecure. Or we can also set out on some random quests, explore dungeons and different landscapes, and defeat bosses in Adventure Mode that place the players in 40x40 km procedurally generated world. 

There is also Story Mode where we can indulge in a structured narrative, which is the main point of the game. We can interact with the NPCs, build a colony, embark on the main story's missions, training, and many more. While the game does include combat elements against the planet's hostiles, we can still finish the story only by building, farming and so on. In co-op multiplayer we can play the three modes available in single-player. There is also Versus Mode where two teams of 16 players will fight against each other. The team with higher score that is calculated through the kills, built objects, and resources mined is the winner.

Developer : Pathea LLC
Mode(s)     : Single-player and Multiplayer
Status         : Released

---

The Solus Project

The Solus Project environments' is like No Man's Sky's environments. Except it is less cheerfully colorful and there is so much danger in here, and it is a survival horror game. The Solus Project gameplay is much more focused on survival than a walk in the park exploration. The players will need to manage the survival need such as managing our own water, food, and keep an eye on the temperatures as we explore different environments while facing the extreme climate, tornadoes, storms, meteors, and lightning. Okay slow down, the game also has a story for us to complete and the survival difficulty can be turned off at any time in favor of focusing more to the story than the extreme survival gameplay.

Developer : Teotl Studios, Grip Digital, Hourences
Mode(s)     : Single-player
Status         : Released

---

Planet Nomads

This open world sandbox game is focused on building, crafting and exploration. Sounds the same just like the other sandbox exploration games, but there is survival aspect in this game that not so extreme. The fantastic looking environments and the relaxing ambient and soundtracks makes this game is great if we wanted to build a base in a bit more relaxing atmosphere. Even so, we still need to be aware for the danger on the planet. The many alien monuments and artifacts that hold many secrets is one of the point of interests we could go to.

Batteries are crucial in this game for it is what makes resource gathering process to run smoothly, otherwise it will be a lot slower. That's why we'll need to craft batteries frequently with many different components that can also used to build another things such as walls, vehicles and grenhouses. This is also the game where we could manipulate the terrain of the massive world to create the desired ground shape for our base to stand nicely.

Developer : Craneballs
Mode(s)     : Single-player and Multiplayer
Status         : Early access

---

Astroneer

Exploring the large scale space and planets to gather resources, discover new researches to advance our technology and improving the base is pretty much what we could find in a sandbox eploration game, and Astroneer will give that opportunity to do exploration on colorful environments where it would be a lot better to play with friends in online co-op. The game starts off with the player launch in a pod and land on some random planet. This also a game where we can mold the environment with our tool. 

There is also well balanced survival aspects that Astroneer has to offer. The planets have different atmospheres, gravity and the danger that we also have to be aware of like storms, deadly plants, flying debris, and maintaining our oxygen level as the main survival aspect of the game. However, the low poly graphics may not appeal to everyone, but it looks fine for me though. 

Developer : System Era Softworks
Mode(s)     : Single-player and Multiplayer
Status         : Early access

---

Starbound

From the creator of Stardew Valley, Starbound is a 2D sci-fi action-adventure platformer that also have similar to No Man's Sky's space exploration open world where there is a lot of mining, crafting, exploration and combat to do in a procedurally generated 2D sandbox environment. 

Often said "Terraria in space", Starbound offer the players a lot of opportunities to build the world as we please, create better engines for our spaceship, even assembling a mech that we can use to fly around battling enemies. The player can travel to many planets, each have their own combination of unique surface and underground environments with several settlements and bandit camps we could encounter along our journey. I see this game have gained some nice awards too. 

Developer : Chucklefish Games
Mode(s)     : Single-player and Multiplayer
Status         : Early access

---

Everspace

This one is focused more on the action, Everspace is a roguelike open world space shooter with stunning realistic visual that takes us on a challenging journey through an ever-changing beautiful universe full of surprise. Aside of exploring the space in the spacecraft, fighting enemies is also what we gonna find ourself doing in this game. The enemies has a chance to drop blueprints upon destruction, that will grant some cool stuff such as primary or secondary weapons, weapons mods, consumables, and upgrades for the ship systems. We can customize the spaceship with some specific systems to suit our own playstyle from the cloak on the scout ship, making it a silent killer, to laser turret on the gunship to make the shieldless behemoth a level of defense against nimble enemies.

Dying in this game won't be as upseting as dying in Dark Souls, because when we die in our journey in Everpace, then we have the chance spend our money earned from the exploration for upgrade both personal pilot skills as well as ship-specific skills. And we can start again to gather resources, craft the supplies, live to fight in another sector, that will unlock the story piece by piece from every sector we traverse.

Developer : ROCKFISH Games
Mode(s)     : Single-player
Status         : Released

---

From all this games, the ones that take my interest the most is Astroneer, because it's looked a little bit like the closed EverQuest Landmark but in space. I don't know about the rest, so what do you think? Are these games worth it? Are the early access games have great potential? And I hope by reading this post you also find the space exploration and survival game that might interest you as well.

---

Follow me for daily dose of gaming stuff.