Summary
- Space games offer huge sandbox maps, some with trillions of star systems to explore.
- Avorion is like Minecraft in space, letting players design and build their ships voxel by voxel.
- No Man's Sky has the largest game map ever, with over 1.6 quadrillion star systems to explore.
Spacewar! Was the very first video game, ever, back in 1962. Since that time, space has become a staple of video games, and space simulation games have always been popular. Some space games aim to recreate space travel accurately, simulating real physics. Others take a less serious approach, focusing instead on fun gameplay.
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Something that many space games share, is a huge sandbox-style game ma p. Some games offer thousands, or even billions of star systems to explore. There is even one game that has over a trillion star systems. These games have an incredible sense of scale, which is testimony to the excellent job the developers have done making space feel like, well, space.
7 Avorion
Voxel-Based Space Fun
- Platforms: GeForce Now, Microsoft Windows, Linux, Mac operating systems, Classic Mac OS
- Released: January 23, 2017
- Developer: Boxelware, Boxelware GmbH
- Genre: Simulation Video Game, Indie game, Adventure game, Shooter Video Game
Avorion can, in many ways, be considered something like Minecraft in space. The game uses full voxel graphics for all game objects. Furthermore, the player is free to design their own ships, piece by piece.
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The game map in Avorion is huge, and not all areas are available to the player at the outset. Instead, the game has a progression system, mashed on defeating certain bosses and unlocking new, valuable areas of the map, with improved resources. Travel across the massive map in Avorion takes time, giving it a real sense of scale, which is why it made this list.
6 Kerbal Space Program
To The Moon!
Kerbal Space Program
- Released
- April 27, 2015
- Platform(s)
- PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S
- Developer
- Squad
- Genre(s)
- Simulation
- OpenCritic Rating
- Strong
Kerbal Space Program is a game that manages to mix a fun and cute aesthetic with some seriously impressive, accurate physics. Players are free to design their own spacecraft, but must take care to ensure their design is capable of beating gravity, and getting the Kerbel crew to their destination safely.
The game made this list for its sandbox exploration mode. In this mode, there is a real sense of scale, as the player tries to overcome the challenge of getting off a planet, and traveling huge distances through space.
5 Space Engineers
Excellent Space Survival
Space Engineers
- Released
- February 28, 2019
WHERE TO PLAY
- Developer(s)
- Keen Software House
- Cross-Platform Play
- PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S
- Platform(s)
- PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S
- Genre(s)
- Simulation, Sandbox
Space Engineers is a game that melds several genres into a coherent whole. It has base building, advanced construction features, resource management, and of course, some serious survival aspects. The player is free to build anything they can imagine, from a set of standard blocks. There are a number of great DLC available that add additional block types.
What gives Space Engineers such a huge sense of scale, is twofold. Firstly, simply getting out of the gravity well of a planet is a significant challenge. But once in space, it takes a very long time to travel between planets in the solar system. A journey can take several hours in some cases.
4 EVE Online
Long Running MMORPG
EVE Online
EVE Online is an MMORPG that has been successfully operating for 25 years. During this time, it has set several world records related to the highest number of players involved in a single online battle, and the largest loss of real-world cash in an online battle. With its player-run economy and committed player base, it offers a complex and engaging experience.
There are over 5,000 star systems permanently connected to the star map, and a further 2,500 shifting wormhole systems. The sense of scale is huge, and traveling across the map can take many hours. Add to this the fact that many parts of space are player-controlled and hostile, adding to the sense of scale.
3 X4: Foundations
The Most Recent X Game
X4: Foundations
X4 is a living, breathing space sandbox running entirely on your PC. Thousands of ships and stations trade, mine and produce, all realistically simulated. In this universe, you can grow from being the lone pilot of a fighter ship, to managing a vast empire, commanding your fleets and designing colossal space stations. Transition seamlessly from first-person action, boarding ships and visiting their bridges, to an expansive strategy and management simulation. Choose your own path at your own pace. The decisions are yours. Trade - Fight - Build - Think.
Start your journey
In X4, you can start your journey from a number of different gamestarts and as a number of different characters, each with their own role, set of relationships and different ships and technologies to start with. No matter how you start, you are always free to develop in any other direction. Focus on exploration, make money with illegal trading and theft, command large battle fleets or become the greatest entrepreneur ever. It's all up to you to decide.
Fly every ship
X4 allows you to fly all ships personally. From small scouts over a wide range of ship classes up to the biggest carrier, everything can be piloted from the cockpit or an external view. A big focus in the development of X4 has been to achieve a seamless and immersive experience when moving between ships. You can leave a ship, climb down a ladder, walk over the dock of a large space station into another ship you may have parked there and replace the pilot that was working for you just by clicking on his chair.
Build space stations and upgrade your ships
Building space stations and factories has always been a foundation of the X games. After gaining enough money through fighting or trading, most players want to establish their own economy and start influencing the universe on a larger scale. In X4, it is now possible to be completely free and creative. Stations can be constructed from a variety of modules, be it production modules, living sections, docks or many other types of parts. The powerful new map system allows you to drag and connect modules using a connection system to design your own unique creations. Ships also offer a variety of upgrades. Engines, weapons and other equipment can be added in a graphical editor and actually seen on the ship.
Experience the most dynamic X universe ever
X4 is the first X game to allow our races and factions to freely build and expand their empires; the same flexibility the player enjoys in creatively designing space stations from modular building blocks is also available to them. Races expand their empire based on supply and demand, which leads to an extremely dynamic universe where every action the player makes can influence the course of the entire universe.
Manage your empire with a powerful map
Once you have more ships and many NPCs working for you as pilots, crew or station managers, the map will be your preferred method of managing it all. Ships can be ordered with simple clicks and through drag-and-drop operations to set their future path and commands. Graphically plan your trade routes, coordinate attacks with your entire fleet, manage the hierarchy or send ships on remote exploration missions.
Dive into the most detailed X economy ever
One of the key selling points of X games has always been the realistic, simulated economy. Wares produced by hundreds of stations and transported by thousands of ships are actually traded by NPCs and prices develop based on this simulated economy. This is the foundation of our living and breathing universe. Now with X4, we have taken another, massive step. For the first time in any X game, all parts of the NPC economy are manufactured from resources. Ships, weapons, upgrades, ammo and even stations. You name it. Everything comes out of the simulated economy.
Research and teleport
The seamless change from ship to ship and from NPCs controlling your empire for you continues on a higher level. Once you own a larger fleet, you will be very interested in researching a technology from your HQ: Teleportation. Once you've unlocked teleportation, you can jump from ship to ship a lot quicker and experience all the critical situations your NPCs encounter first hand. Every order you have given to a ship before turns into a mission objective when you pilot the ship yourself. The moment you leave again, your pilot takes the helm and continues with their previous orders.
- Released
- November 30, 2018
- Developer(s)
- Egosoft
- Platform(s)
- PC
- Genre(s)
- Simulation
The X series is one of the less well-known space simulation franchises. X4: foundations, and the multiple DLC that have been released for the game, are somewhat unique as space sims go. The player is free to play as a single pilot, enjoying space combat, or they can choose to remotely control a huge fleet of ships, setting up an empire. Most people tend to do a mixture of the two.
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When it comes to the sense of scale, the X4 game map isn’t particularly large. However, it takes a long time to explore each sector fully, uncovering gates to other systems, space stations and other points of interest.
2 ELITE Dangerous
Massive Star Map
Elite Dangerous
- Released
- December 16, 2014
- Developer(s)
- Frontier Developments
- Platform(s)
- PC, PlayStation 4
- Genre(s)
- Flight Simulator
- OpenCritic Rating
- Strong
Few games offer such a large game map as ELITE Dangerous, with over 4000 billion star systems a player is free to explore and exploit. The sense of scale is impressive, and travel times can be measured in real-time days or even weeks in some cases.
This list wouldn’t be complete without mentioning ELITE Dangerous, and it only takes second place on this list because it lacks the depth of the final entry, No Man’s Sky. However, it is a vastly rewarding game for a certain niche of players, who put realism above content.
1 No Man’s Sky
Survival Meets Exploration
No Man's Sky
- Released
- August 9, 2016
- Developer(s)
- Hello Games
- Platform(s)
- PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC, Nintendo Switch 2
- OpenCritic Rating
- Fair
No Man’s Sky has the largest game map of any game, ever. How large? There are a total of 1,649,267,441,664,000 star systems to explore. How’s that for a sense of scale? The game was released in 2003, and to date, only a fraction of the star systems have been discovered by players.
With its excellent procedural generation, each star system can contain several planets and other objects. Put simply, this is a huge game, and one that gets better over time, with free DLC and updates being released regularly.
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