State of the Game: No Man's Sky – an ever-expanding universe of wonder
There I am, admiring a particularly luminescent blue tuber in my hydroponic garden, when an alarm begins to blare. Pirates, raiding from the skies! A minor inconvenience, sure, but one worth dealing with swiftly, so I hop on Blort – my trusty translucent pet sphere – and roll purposefully, if not exactly speedily, toward the throbbing heft of my organic ship, the whir of a friendly robot drone jabbering somewhere behind me.
No Man’s Sky
- Publisher: Hello Games
- Developer: Hello Games
- Platform: PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox, Switch, iPad
- Launched: August 2016
- Monetisation: Paid up front, no other transations.
And then it’s up, up, up, we go, past my newly renovated capital ship and its armada of frigates (the latest addition, a pulsating tentacled mass, wiggles encouragingly), past a space station recently commandeered by pirates, and then, with a little more room to manoeuvre, it’s time to do my worst. Within seconds the pirate threat is no more and peace, for now at least, is restored. Before I go home, though, I summon the imposing hulk of the inter-dimensional Space Anomaly and head in for a friendly rendezvous. Cake has been promised.
No Man’s sky has, it’s fair to say, come a long, long way since its undoubtedly controversial launch in 2016. What was once a game of low-key, curiosity-driven exploration across a beautiful, often haunting, procedurally generated universe has morphed into something far bigger, far bolder, and, I think, after countless revisions and refinements, quite brilliant indeed.
In the six years and 20 update since its arrival, No Man’s Sky has swelled to accommodate multiplayer, base building, dashboard bobbleheads, farming and cookery, customisable space freighters, land and water vehicles, massively expanded ocean gameplay, pilotable mechs, organic ships, space derelicts for spooky sci-fi adventuring, new flora and fauna, tameable pets and breeding, music tools, sand worms, robotic companions, space pirates, space whales, AI squadrons, settlements, new narrative adventures, curated Expeditions, and much, much more.
