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No Man's Sky

Hello Games' No Man's Sky is a first-person survival and exploration game set in a universe generated by algorithms. Your character wakes up next to a broken starship on a random planet. Once it's repaired, you can fly from the surface into orbit and on to other star systems without a loading screen. Between trips you mine resources, trade, fight pirates and build bases, alone or with friends. The game is available on PC and Mac, PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One and Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch and Switch 2, and you can also play all of it in VR on PC and PlayStation.

Developer:
Hello Games
Publisher:
Hello Games
Release date:
Languages:
EnglishGermanFrenchItalianPolishDutchJapaneseKoreanPortugueseRussianTraditional ChineseSpanishDanish
TEENPEGI 12
No Man's Sky

About the game

Top 3 Reasons to Play

  1. The Voyagers update added Corvettes, large ships you assemble yourself from modules such as hull sections, cockpits, corridors and bunks. You can leave the pilot's seat mid-flight and walk around inside, bring friends on board as crew, or open the hatch and spacewalk out.
  2. All players share one universe generated from the same seed. If you're the first to upload a planet, creature or plant, anyone who finds it later sees your name on it, and you can rename it within a content filter.
  3. With the Cosmos update you can buy a space station and furnish it, land on larger asteroids and put a base on them, or salvage metal from drifting Hulks. Take too much from a Hulk and it melts down.

Story and Lore

Your character, the Traveller, starts the game with no memory. Early on you receive a distress signal from Artemis, another Traveller stuck somewhere in the galaxy, which begins the Artemis Path. This main questline was added in the Atlas Rises update. Meanwhile the Atlas, an intelligence that appears to run the galaxy, pushes you toward the galactic center.

Much of the plot happens aboard the Space Anomaly. Its two residents, Priest Entity Nada and Specialist Polo, know far more about the universe than other characters and help you along. Helping Artemis eventually involves the Sentinels, portals opened with ancient glyphs and a character named Apollo, and then the question of what the Atlas really is. At the end you choose between staying in the current universe and restarting in a new galaxy.

The game has two more questlines:

  • The Atlas Path. You visit Atlas Interfaces and collect Atlas Stones while heading for the center of the galaxy.
  • The Autophage questline. It unlocks partway through the story and has you locating their hidden camps.

Gameplay and Mechanics

Planets range from toxic and radioactive to frozen or extremely hot. Your exosuit's life support and hazard protection drain over time, and you recharge them with resources you gather. The multi-tool is used for mining, scanning and shooting. Refiners and the crafting menu turn raw elements into usable materials and upgrades.

The game uses three currencies:

  • Units are the standard money. You use them to trade goods and to buy starships, multi-tools and freighters.
  • Nanites come in more slowly and pay for upgrade modules and technology blueprints.
  • Quicksilver comes mostly from missions at the Space Anomaly and buys cosmetics and decorations.

Robotic Sentinels guard most planets. If you mine or attack too much, they react much like the wanted level in Grand Theft Auto, first with small drones and later with heavy walkers. Some systems have far more Sentinel activity than others.

Starships come in several classes and quality grades. Exocraft are ground vehicles for getting around planets. A freighter works as a mobile base with storage and space to build on. You can get your first one for free: after some warps you'll arrive during a pirate attack on a freighter, and if you defeat the pirates, its captain offers you the ship.

You can build a base on almost any planet. Settlements go further, making you the Overseer of a town whose growth and residents you manage.

There are several difficulty presets. Creative unlocks everything and removes nearly all danger. Relaxed, Normal and Survival get progressively harder, and in Permadeath your save is deleted when you die. Custom mode lets you set survival, crafting, combat and ease-of-use options individually, and you can change most of them later in an existing save.

Characters and Factions

The galaxy has three main species. Each has its own language, which you learn one word at a time by talking to its members and finding ancient monoliths. Helping a species raises your standing with it.

  • Gek: small, frog-like traders. They dominate the Merchants Guild.
  • Korvax: synthetic beings with a shared hive mind, focused on science and exploration.
  • Vy'keen: a warrior species that values combat and honor.

Space stations also offer missions from three guilds: the Merchants, the Mercenaries and the Explorers. In space, pirates attack ships for their cargo, and some systems are controlled by outlaws. The story also looks into where the Sentinels came from. The Autophage stay hidden from the three main species.

Editions

No Man's Sky has one edition on every platform, and it includes all content released since launch. If you own the original Switch version, you can claim the Nintendo Switch 2 Edition as a free upgrade. It adds multiplayer and higher-resolution graphics on the new console.

Updates released in 2026 so far:

  • Remnant (February) added the Gravitino Coil, a gravity gun that picks up and throws objects.
  • Xeno Arena (April) lets you raise and train creatures and battle them in a holographic arena.
  • The Swarm (May) introduced the Hive of Glass, an enemy force that can destroy entire freighter fleets.
  • Cosmos (September, version 7.0) brought a Star Map for the current system, Outposts with trading and quests, Bio-wrecks, asteroid belts and player alliances. You can also fly directly into a star.