Universe Sandbox
the physics are really good.. NO..more like PERFECT. The physics is based on Newtonian Physics, although this game isn’t using Einstein’s General Relativity, this physics is really accurate. If you lower the timelapse, the physics is more accurate. But if you add the speed of the timelapse, the physics is less accurate. Nonetheless, this game is not only stunning, awsome and satisfying ( Except if its lagging lol) But also Educational and Usefull. Perfect. [Note to player: if you have something wrong, just go to settings , there are so many tools.]
– Real player with 98.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best Space Physics Games.
I wish universe sandbox would add a feature where you can change the type of clouds a gas giant has along with more materials
– Real player with 75.2 hrs in game
The Orville - Interactive Fan Experience
The Orville is a fantastic show which is both funny and dramatic, and this game is a must-have for any Orville fan. Also its FREE!
The game allows players to create a character to explore the USS Orville, including the bridge, medical bay, various character’s quarters, shuttle dock, quantum engine rooms, the environmental simulator, and many other rooms on the ship. Players can visit various locations and planet as backdrops to look at out the windows. Players can explore alone or in multiplayer with friends. A few weapons from the show can be picked up and used by players. The ship also contains many Easter eggs from the show to discover.
– Real player with 4.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Space Sci-fi Games.
Woot!
The loss of the interactive “Star Trek: The Next Generation” experience was bad for Star Trek fans. (I never understood why CBS didn’t just buy the website and hire the developers to run it, but anyways…)
But in the wake of Bad Reboots, canon-ignoring prequels, Kling-orcs, spore drives and CBS boldly backing away from where no man has gone before, we’ve now got something now that’s “More Trek than Star Trek” in its present form.
Taking a brief tour of this interactive Orville experience was nothing short of awesome. I’ve only gotten to try one of the scenarios so far. But so far this is beyond cool. The graphics are top-notch, and the interactive features are great. A lot of it still needs to be finished but so far this is looking awesome.
– Real player with 3.1 hrs in game
Avorion
If you grew up on sci-fi and space operas, this is the game for you. Do you dream of exploring the galaxy flying a ship you designed block-by-block to be what you always dreamed in your head? Or crave having a merchant empire? Or perhaps your dream is to jump into combat, with an entire fleet of ships at your back like the Rebel fleet arriving at Endor? I’ve done it all, and you can too.
I tell people that what really makes this game is moments. That time you jumped away from a pirate ambush with 2% health. The time you were deep in a lonely nebula, and found a secret stash hidden between some asteroids. The first time you discovered a boss, some sassy, some scary, some like nothing you expected at all. The first time you have a second or third ship to fight beside you, that moment where you go from being a ship to a fleet.
– Real player with 1942.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Space Open World Games.
Something about Avorion just draws me in, yes it has some issues as most games do, but overall this game is fantastic. The story elements are on the simpler side but the uniqueness of the entire story gives Avorion charm. There are still some lore/backstory holes but they can be plugged over time.
The ship design takes a special sort of player, that is not me, I can build rectangle based ships… anything curved or angled is beyond me :D
I only have one piece of advice from playing almost 600 hours (at time of review), enjoy the early game, try for the most challenging way of obtaining the build knowledge…
– Real player with 597.4 hrs in game
Space Engineers
Do not get this game. It is like smoking. Giving up is hard, but at least one can warn others not to start.
It is a constant struggle between the amazement and joy of things going right and the infuriation and tedium with things going wrong or things not working or existing at all. You will both love and hate the game. Love for what it is, and hate for what it ought to have, but doesn’t. (And with that I don’t mean liquid water. Or a console port, for that matter.) Or what it could be.
It is an old game that can’t possibly have ever honestly been intended to be an actual product. It is one of Keen’s usual abandonware children with, for once, a little less abandonment than usual, likely because, against all odds, it managed to gather enough of a critical mass in player-hours to not fade into obscurity fast enough. All this game continues to get is a bolting-on of “features” that, at best, expand the game sideways, but never truly forwards, and a fix of the most pressing, but not always also pressed-for, bugs. (Though, no blame on those who actually fix those bugs and test the fixes. After all, there are only so many hours in a workday and eyes in a team.) SE is, and always will be, a sort-of-playable agglomeration of tech demos. An Early-Access game without the Early Access flag. Instead of a truly continued improval, effectively all you get, and continue to get, is more things (usually little more than band-aids with pretty pictures on them) that can (and tend to) go wrong.
– Real player with 1416.5 hrs in game
my review may be negative but i really loved this game, i feel my hours in this game says that. the game is super fun but expect the game to be fun tell you finally get a ship where you could jump from planet to planet easily and you will find you have reached the end game of space engineers where the only thing to do is hop from space station to space station doing cut and paste quests for space cash that you can spend on materials that you can produce faster then the station could sell them to you. or you can buy already built space ships if you have enough money and send the ships crashing into a moon because the ship you built is far better then any of the ones you can buy. this game is kept alive today thanks to the community of modders in the workshop and that to me is sad. dlc blocks add things mods already added but in standard vanilla and tho only NPCs we have seen have been a wolf and a spider. there are AI controlled ships that will shoot at you but once you get on board you’ve pretty much have won the fight as you will only meet interior turrets as a threat on the ships because the AI driver seat only flies the ship while the turrets are just being standard defense turrets, there is no NPC crew to fight against once you get inside. i know this game is mainly meant for multiplayer but most servers have block limits (for good reason game is still unstable) so you will reach a point you can’t build or add anything else to your ship or station. It’s a fun game that feels like it’s stuck in limbo
– Real player with 876.8 hrs in game
StarMade
After FFXIV 1.0 i never thought i’d see a bigger shitshow, but so help me this game came through and then some!
TL;DR review:
1 : Game has ZERO gameplay, all you can do in the game is build and there are no plans for adding any.
2 : Developer is completely alienated, doesn’t listen to community at all except small echochamber and bans people that speak out against bad design decisions.
3 : Developer has NO IDEA WHAT THEY WANT TO MAKE. Read on for details.
4 : Recently destroyed the notion of competitive/mechanical building by replacing functional blocks with an arbitrary “skill tree”, eliminating your ability to trade one attribute for another, limiting the amount of stat enhancing blocks based on ship length of all things… Building is now largely a cosmetic deal and ships have no purpose anyway, but at least you used to be able to duel with them.
– Real player with 2329.6 hrs in game
I started off loving Starmade…then we broke up. Now I spend time thinking about maybe giving it a another shot. I got into the game just after the big graphical re-boot having played Minecraft for years and checking out every voxel based, procedurally generated game I could find. I trolled Greenlight and found many wanna be contenders but Starmade impressed me with it’s vision of what it wants to be. Like any relationship we fall in love with what could be, an ideal, sometimes a projection we place onto the other. I am love with what Starmade is trying to be, but has not yet become.
– Real player with 1375.7 hrs in game
Star Sonata 2
I cautiously recommend this game only if you can look past its shortcomings. I have been playing since ~2008 when I was only 12yr old.
The Good:
There is something about this game that can get you addicted like no other. The player base is very close (admittedly also rather small) and everybody knows everyone else and that makes the community very strong. You can create your own team join a team (aka clan, faction, country) and take control of start systems and use the resources within them to build ships, weapons, space stations, and become an industrial powerhouse. But you better be prepared to defend what you own. Much like a country in real life, your team could become a true superpower with all the fame and infamy that comes with it. You can exercise your hard and soft power as you see fit. Politics are very real in this game and I love it. Likewise, if you upset too many players they may declare war against you. Every solar system you own and space station you build is at risk. In a worse case scenario you could lose all of your territory, all of your industry, and be forced to surrender which almost always results in the death of said team. This is something I really like about this game. You have a lot of freedom and the choices you make can make you insanely rich, respected, and powerful. But you could lose it all.
– Real player with 4273.5 hrs in game
TLDR - A decade+ after the game’s initial launch there is still nothing else quite like Star Sonata on the market today.
The game is heavily influenced by the Star Control series and combines 90’s style arcade action with MMO character development and an almost limitless item progression that rivals many modern MMOs. It has in-depth base building that is basically a whole different game unto itself where you can make money doing colonies, making gear, selling industrial commodities and more. The PvE content is typically fun and offers a variety of solo and group style engagements.. The PvP and team vs team combat probably needs the most improvement but the game doesn’t really revolve around those.
– Real player with 3859.9 hrs in game
Kerbal Space Program
I kind of feel it’s late to post a review for KSP at this time as I think that anyone who would be interested in such a game has heard about it by now, but hey, you never know.
For me, KSP is more than a game, it is more like a hobby. You spend hours building your ship, you fill it up with little green Kerbals and then actually fly it to space!
Every milestone you achieve feels extremely satisfying. You feel proud of yourself for every new goal you reach, and not in the way you do in other games, it’s not that you had good reflexes, or that you killed some big boss. You actually designed, built and flew a spaceship! And you did all that using realistic rocket parts, and realistic, unforgiving Physics. No clicking “launch” and poof you’re in space in this game.
– Real player with 2380.7 hrs in game
Well, actually, this test flight was not my idea…
…doesn’t matter now anyway!
After years of “test flying” I have solid ground under my feet again thanks to the Almighty!Where this uselessness of Jeb is hiding? He really tell me, “Just travel to the moon and back,with his best apprentice till now. No big deal!”. I should have told his grandma about the idea, after all, she would have told me something! Why i was so dumb to agree this flight?
When I get him in my fingers. Believe me! ..Oh..
– Real player with 2033.8 hrs in game
X3: Terran Conflict
Beware possible spoilers ahead for newbies
X3 Reunion had a good voice cast. The story was not good. The game engine is still beautiful. The hud and mouse speed can be a problem. X3 Terran Conflict and the add-on Albion Prelude are amazing. If I knew that x-rebirth would totally destroy the series by being completely horrible I should’ve just asked for a albion prelude 2 on this old engine. This is the end of the line for the series. Everything after albion prelude is considered a hallow lifeless body floating in space that is worshipped by shills. (I’ll exclude X4 from this. Since it’s pretty good after years of repair. So that just leaves X-Afterbirth.. Huh weeeirdddd)
– Real player with 3672.1 hrs in game
My favourite game of all time. A space flight sim blended with a strategy game and trading/industry sim, with a truly functional open world that you can profoundly change.
There are three things that in my opinion set the X3 series miles ahead from most other similar games. First is the ability to buy more than one ship and construct your own stations. Some space-sims will let you destroy stations in the game universe but there aren’t many where you can build your own, making permanent changes to the game world and economy, Many space-privateer games let you choose a ship to fly, where some might be better for combat, or trading, faster or tougher etc. Not many games will let you buy several ships, hop in one and order the others around while you fly.
– Real player with 623.7 hrs in game
X4: Foundations
The game’s come a long way from launch but this version definitely redeems X Rebirth’s game design choices that drove some long term fans (myself included) away.
If you’re coming to this from X3TC, a lot has changed. This is an evolution of X:R into something that leans back towards the kinds of things X series fans loved. X:R felt oddly constricting and disconnected, even as it brought new ideas to the series. If you avoided X:R like the plague, it’s time to try X4 out. There are some things here that are just amazing like station building and getting out of your ship is a great way to feel the scale of these ships like you’ve never experienced before. You also get things like sector ownership that can change, arguably better fleet organization and management (especially with recent updates), and a universe closer to the original with the recent Split and Terran expansions.
– Real player with 686.8 hrs in game
A lot of the reviews are written for returning veterans of the X series, so let’s give newcomers a quick rundown instead.
WHAT IS IT: Essentially, it’s a 4X (no pun intended) strategy game set in space, except you physically exist in the world rather than being some disembodied overseer.
IS IT FUN: If you like empire building and space battles, then yes, it’s extremely fun.
WHAT MAKES IT UNIQUE: There are many other first-person space combat games and many other space strategy games, but few if any other examples of games that are both these things at once.
– Real player with 485.4 hrs in game
CSC | Space MMO
EDIT: 3/20/20 Since the time of this review, missions have been added, refineries have been added, crafting has been added with the ability to make modules and ships, and more. This is a ton of development in less than 6 months! There are tons of new things to do, and development is moving fast, both great signs. This is a game that takes patience and time, if you enjoy the factory/production type aspect of games, and if you like economics and space stuff, you will like this game. It is not for everyone but it is a gem for those who enjoy this type of game. A player economy on this scale is something special that really sets this apart from other games.
– Real player with 1757.8 hrs in game
UPDATE After 1500 hours played…
There now “gate campers” playing the game. These scumbags sit there and wait for players to travel through gates and then kill them when the come out the other side. Wouldn’t be such a big deal if the game developers didn’t purposely leave the players ship completely vulnerable to attack for about 10 seconds after coming out of a gate. Can’t equip shields, or counter attack. If you have hundreds of $$ worth of mods on your ship, you are shit out of luck, and you loose it all. Not only that, but you have to rebuy insurance for your ship, which can range from $5-$15 depending on your ship.
– Real player with 1560.4 hrs in game