No Man's Sky is the ultimate sandbox experience. It has already delivered the space adventure that Star Citizen is still chasing: it is a finished, released game, fairly cheap for the amount of content and game mechanics it offers, and Hello Games keeps surprising us with new content and sophisticated systems long after launch. It is an immersive adventure, and an online universe you can share with other players, where you can be anything you want.

Be Anything You Want

The best way to describe No Man's Sky is by listing what you can actually do in it, because the list keeps growing. You can:

  • Own a freighter with a crew, build rooms and bases inside it, and send squadrons of frigates out on expeditions while you do something else entirely.
  • Found a settlement and run it as its overseer, a mayor in all but name.
  • Hunt pirates, take on bounties and fight in space battles.
  • Raise a huge base and play as a survivalist, farming, mining and crafting your way through hostile planets.
  • Trade between stations and make a fortune.
  • Catalogue every species you meet and name your discoveries.
  • Tame creatures and keep them as companions.
  • Sit by the water and go fishing.
  • Own and customise a whole space station.

Getting around is half the fun. On the ship side there are fighters, shuttles, haulers, explorers, solar sailers, exotic ships and even living ships, and the corvette lets you assemble your own vessel with an interior you can walk around in. Your fleet and your freighter sit in orbit waiting for you. On the ground you have a whole garage of exocraft, from wheeled rovers to the Minotaur mech, and a submarine for exploring the deep, where underwater bases are possible too.

A large freighter and several small fighters exchanging laser fire in front of a glowing planet

Nothing forces you into any of these roles. You can switch between them in a single evening, or spend a hundred hours perfecting just one. That is the sandbox in its purest form.

A white and orange six-wheeled exploration vehicle parked on a green hillside beneath a bright blue sky

A Universe That Never Repeats

The game features 256 galaxies, and each of them is procedurally generated, adding up to more than 18 quintillion planets. To put that in perspective, Sean Murray said at the game's ten year anniversary in 2026 that players had visited less than one percent of them. Every environment offers a different experience.

You can stumble upon lush paradises full of strange wildlife, scorched deserts, frozen wastelands, toxic swamps and radioactive worlds, barren moons with no atmosphere, ocean worlds and gas giants. Weather changes the feel of a planet too, with violent storms, extreme heat and cold to survive. Beneath the surface there are caves and underwater biomes to explore, and above it there are binary star systems, asteroid fields and abandoned ships drifting in space. Planets also have their own fauna and flora, so you never know what will walk past you on the next one.

Several alien creatures grazing on a bright green meadow with mountains in the distance

A Rocky Launch and a Remarkable Recovery

The initial launch was troublesome, and I will not pretend otherwise. The game arrived in 2016 with features missing and promises unfulfilled, and the backlash was fierce. What happened next is the reason this review exists. Hello Games recovered extremely well. Since 2016 the studio has released all of its new content and mechanics for free, and every time it was huge, never small stuff. Base building, multiplayer, vehicles, settlements, fleets, VR, a full planet generation overhaul, fishing, corvettes and space stations all arrived as free updates, without microtransactions or a battle pass. That adds up to dozens of major updates, and it is rare to see a studio keep that promise year after year.

You Build Your Own Story

This is not a story driven game. It starts with a rather simple main story, but that is only there to help you get going. And this is where No Man's Sky shines: you build your own story. Every journey is yours, whether it is a lone survivor eking out a living or the captain of a fleet, and the memories you take away from it are not written by any script.

You can meet other players too, although due to the sheer size of the universe it is rare to come across someone on a planet. The game also allows PvP, so if both of you have PvP active in the settings, players can attack each other. If you would rather keep the peace, you can simply leave it off.

Hubs, Vendors and Lifeless NPCs

Space stations and the Space Anomaly are the hubs where players gather. These places offer vendors that sell goods and upgrades, and NPCs who hand out quests. Here you will come across many other players. You can look at their ships, talk to them, and invite them to an activity to do together in the universe.

Speaking of NPCs, there are NPCs in the game other than vendors and quest givers, and Hello Games did publish some updates to make them a little more immersive, but they are still quite lifeless. The most they do is walk around, work on their tablet or wave at you, and that is it. It would be amazing if they could improve things by just a notch.

The Rest of the Pack

There is still a lot we have not covered. Expeditions are time-limited, curated experiences with milestone rewards that give veterans a reason to start fresh, and the community keeps coming back for them. If you want a gentler ride, there are Creative and Relaxed modes, and if you want pain, there is Permadeath. Sentinels and pirates punish careless play, so combat is always lurking in the background, but it never takes over the game.

A tall red robot walking among stone pillars on a green alien landscape under a hazy sky

The game is available on almost everything: PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, Switch 2 and Mac, with VR support on several of them, and cross-platform play lets friends join each other wherever they are. It also looks and sounds the part, with a colourful art style and a soundtrack that fits the sense of solitude and wonder.

It is not flawless. The game does not explain much, so newcomers can feel lost in the early hours, and managing inventory and crafting menus can be fiddly. Neither is enough to spoil the experience, but they are worth knowing about before you start.

Final Thoughts

Overall, No Man's Sky is a very solid title, and seeing how reliable Hello Games is and how much it values its players, I would buy the next title from the studio without hesitation. No Man's Sky is one of the best games ever made, and it offers a tremendous amount of fun for the money you pay, plus the free expansions. If you love a space adventure, this is a must play game.