I’ve been with the game since day one. It’s given me an absurd number of hours of enjoyment and I am grateful for all the relief and escape it provided over the years — certainly more than any other game I’ve ever played.

Over the summer I reached the game’s building limit and since then I’ve been building and deleting so I can build more. I’ve had to bulldoze some of my favorite creations to make space for new work on new worlds.

Now, I think I’ve reached my own limit and it is time to move on. I wish everyone the best — it’s an amazing game and has been for a very long time. I might pop back for an hour or two if there are further updates, and if Hello Games ever decides to move to DLC, I’ll buy it sight unseen and jump back in — they’ve earned that.

I have been playing since 2016 when it came out, but the realization didn’t hit me until today. There’s so much beauty in the game. The universe of this game created itself. Every flora, fauna, behavior of living creatures, the terrain, the cave systems, the oceans, the trees, almost everything if not everything, was generated by an engine. Not even the developers know what everything in NMS is. This is nothing new, of course, but with the added fact that there are 255 galaxies and 18 quintillion worlds in this game still puts me in awe. The people who did the math said it would take about 500 billion+ years to explore every galaxy, star system, planet, anomaly, and space station in the game.

You will never explore all of NMS. Your children will never explore all of NMS, nor your great grandchildren, nor your great-grandchildren’s great-grandchildren’s great-grandchildren and so on. If the game manages to live on for thousands of years and years to come (it likely won’t but for argument sake let’s say it does), it will likely still not be fully explored and people who find old bases (As it will likely be easier to find old player bases) from these previous and close following years will be as abandoned and relic like as the already implemented ruins we find on planets that we didn’t build. The visuals are insane. Warping into a new start system and seeing the sun (or suns!) with their glow and shine reflecting off the corners of solar system gets me every time. The faint glow of distant stars and the color of your star system are miraculous to see, even if you have been playing this game for about 6 years.

The music is another thing altogether, sometimes it sounds sad, sometimes it sounds fast and action packed, but for the most part there’s a common theme; loneliness and solitude in a vast universe. The music is the perfect mix between sad, ominous, and nostalgic that perfectly makes you realize: “Damn. I’m alone here in this void.” Of course Hello Games implemented ways to see other players and do missions with them, but just the normal feel of the game still makes you feel lonely. It’s great, and 65daysofstatic couldn’t have done a better job.

No Man’s Sky is not just a space exploration game, it’s an infinite feeling mysterious space exploration flight simulator survival economy trading game, with a great soundtrack, a overarching story that gives you an existential crisis, and a redemption story better than Avatar: The last Airbender.

Hello Games and No Man’s Sky have been exceptional at providing so many lovely content updates since launch. And they’ve updated so many visual components as well…but mainly relegated to improving and adding to assets that already exist in the game. Flora, Fauna, Lasers, VFX, space whales etc. etc.

But relatively few of the “beauty” updates with the notable exceptions of NEXT and (edit) ORIGINS. have touched on improving terrain creation.

I can’t help but think that these kind of fundamental updates are being avoided, as to not hurt the base building components of the game.

Do you feel this has become a log jam that is preventing NMS from evolving more complex and dynamic terrain features?

Would you be willing to lose your bases for them to update these features?

Is there a solution that could be implemented to let them keep growing fundamental changes without blowing away all the bases?

Let me know what you think.

I hope this post doesn’t get deleted as it’s not directly about No Man’s Sky but still about Hello Games.

Its a 3D platformer/puzzle game and the game is an absolute masterpiece. It’s incredibly polished and refined, graphically and visually stunning, and emotionally moving with a beautiful message at the end. You’re definitely missing out on something special if you haven’t played it.

It’s also a great way to support Hello Games for all the free updates we have gotten with No Man’s Sky and it’s only $20.