No Man's Sky really is a forever-game, huh? It is unbelievable that eight years of massive updates have been completely free — they've long since paid off their launch debacle debt, it's well past time they start doing some kind of monetization

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmU3_6BK-Ro

Making my way through a new playthrough of No Man's Sky, just to get fresh ‘first impressions’ of how the game works these days. The barrier to entry is dramatically lower, and a lot of the annoyance/frustration has been stamped out of it since 2016. Introducing a multiplayer social hub within the first few sessions also makes it feel much more like an MMO, with other players running around making plans and starting missions together

@stroughtonsmith do you think this is something that would be good for multiplayer with friends a few times a month for a relatively short time? Or is it something you need to think a ton of time into?

@MuseumShuffle I think so? That isn't my style of play though, and I'm only early in the game. They have regular big multiplayer events though

@stroughtonsmith OK thanks. I’ll look into it.

@MuseumShuffle @stroughtonsmith you can casually play it this way. It’s very low pressure overall IMO. They do timed “expidetions” which are fun but unnecessary. Just to earn cosmetics and have something defined to work towards.

Definitely worth the $20-$30 it usually is. Super chill vibe for me. I prefer single player but have fun cruising around with others and knocking out some missions sometimes.

@MuseumShuffle @stroughtonsmith @cwagdev I've been playing it for years on and off and it's always fun when I pick it up 🙂Last played about 2 years ago and went back to the game this week because of the new update.

All my stuff was there from the last play and I continued on from there. With PS5's second-controller/co-pilot feature, the wife and I can play together and we enjoy it a lot more because neither of us feels like a spectator. We can simply play (kind of) co-op even though it's a single player game 🙂

@stroughtonsmith Sadly this is exactly opposite of what I would like from this kind of game 😅

I would love alone exploration, slowly discovering new stuff & world, maybe some plot, artifacts, crafting, building a solitary bases. No ridiculous aliens, other players, "guardians”, or fighting.

Just alone exploration, with much less „liveable" planets,

@stroughtonsmith what platform are you playing on?

@Airout12 always PC

@kkolakowski You do get all that from "No Man's Sky" 🙂 If you want to play with others, I guess it's there, but it's never been that intrusive/obtrusive for me.

My wife and I play together but we don't really want to play with other players and we nver do. We explore, build bases, follow missions etc. all on our own. Have not met anybody else in the game (that we know of) who's another player. We do see player ships in space sometimes, but that's about it ...

@f I get it, I played a bit of NMS alone, but I just envisioned something different 😅

Science-based (planetary systems in NMS are ridiculous and non-realistic), no aliens or trade, just solitary exploration

Picking up my No Man's Sky playthrough again now that Worlds Part II is out, and having watched a /45 minute/ run through of the new features alone, the game feels impossibly vast and I know I've only scratched the surface of it. I'm building up my colony of sims, I have my freighter in orbit, my quest log is full and detailed, and I've barely left my starting systems yet

The Voyagers update to No Man's Sky really does elevate this game into the stratosphere. The ability to build your own ship and design its interior changes the nature of the game completely. It lets you bring your entire base with you as you explore the galaxy, and wipes out all kinds of busywork in the base gameplay by giving you the ability to beam down to planets vs expending fuel to land/launch, and providing a ton of cargo slots you can bring with you. A lot of Star Citizen vibes here

Baby's first Corvette!

It's a little ugly — I just slapped together whatever I could find to make a working ship.

Just like Starfield, this will grow over time as I discover/buy new modules and structural elements, add new rooms and layers. All I have now is an empty hab unit with a bed and a cinematic view 😜

Can't wait to see where they go with this

Can't get enough of this

One very interesting new dynamic in No Man's Sky is that you get to see the ships that other players have built, as they all dock in the shared social hub. You can just walk on board and wander around

@stroughtonsmith The ship builder is a bit janky in VR but I'm having a lot of fun so far! Might have to switch to pancake mode for a lot of this expedition though, it's very combat-heavy and the motion controls in the ship make space combat really annoying. Going to switch back to my main save to unlock more parts in a more chill setting in VR.

@stroughtonsmith made some expedition progress outside of VR. Now have a little bedroom and kitchen upstairs 😁

@sam I'm finding it real hard not to have my ship be a flying brick 😅 I need to recreate something fun like Star Citizen's Caterpillar

@stroughtonsmith 😂

@sam https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYjRBl5PTY8

@stroughtonsmith I have tried like three times to get into NMS and kinda bounced off it every time after like 10 hours. It felt like I was being bombarded with systems constantly instead of playing a game.

Last I tried was like a year ago or so. Think this might help the early game?

@matt it certainly helps the mid game and beyond, and I guess can provide an easy way to make lots of cash in the early game. What you might actually want to do is an Expedition, which is aside from the main game and gives you concrete tasks and rewards alongside other players

No Man's Sky's Expedition system is kinda genius. It gives you the ability to do a focused 'New Game+' with new mechanics, narrative and story, on pre-built worlds, and when it's over you go back to your normal game save, bringing all the rewards you've earned. It solves a lot of the problems of sandbox games where you end up missing all the new stuff because you don't want to start over, and your maps slowly age out of the current feature set

@stroughtonsmith Can I do this from the main menu and without having played much at all over the years?

@jeremys I think you have to get to space and visit The Anomaly, first, which is one of the first few quests in the game

@stroughtonsmith Ah, cool! So the NG+ is basically a more guided way to enjoy all what NMS has to offer?

@jeremys very much so, it gives you a path through the game with distinct goals and rewards. But being familiar with the mechanics is important so you don't get lost

In 2016, I wrote this about No Man's Sky:

"Played through No Man's Sky: great tech demo, shame about the game part. Every mechanic was subpar and a chore

★★☆☆☆"

In 2025, No Man's Sky is an incredible game. It is virtually everything you could want from a space sandbox, but without taking itself so seriously that it would get in the way of fun. It's a 'greatest hits' of the genre — very easy to get lost in. That initial version (pictured below) is but a distant memory

★★★★★

Some screenshots from my current Expedition 19 playthrough (my first No Man's Sky expedition!) 🚀

@stroughtonsmith Your recent writing about this game has inspired me to take the plunge for the first time on Switch 2. I'm 12 hours in, having a blast, and feel like I've barely gotten started.

@stroughtonsmith note to self: turn off multiplayer before entering the Space Anomaly in VR. This absolute chonker of a Corvette flew in and destroyed my frame rate 🤢😂

@sam speaking of chonkers, I just bagsied a pirate star destroyer