You know that specific feeling when you break through the atmosphere for the first time in No Man's Sky? The music swells, the stars stretch out, and for a second, you actually feel small. It’s addictive. But eventually, you start to see the "seams" in the procedural generation. You realize that while there are quintillions of planets, a lot of them just feel like different coats of paint on the same rock.
That’s usually when people start looking for games like No Man's Sky.
Searching for a replacement isn't easy because Hello Games basically built a genre-defining chimera. It’s part survival, part flight sim, part base builder, and part existential dread. Most games that try to mimic it fail because they lean too hard into one side of that equation. They give you the space flight but forget the "vibes," or they give you the crafting but lock you to a single, boring moon.
Honestly, the "perfect" alternative depends on what part of the loop you’re obsessed with. Are you here for the loneliness of deep space? The satisfaction of automating a mineral farm? Or do you just want to see weird creatures?
The Heavy Hitters: Where Scale Meets Mechanics
If we're talking about pure scale, Starfield is the elephant in the room. Bethesda tried to do the "1,000 planets" thing, and the results were... divisive. While No Man's Sky is seamless, Starfield is a series of menus and loading screens. You don't "fly" to a planet; you fast-travel to it. That kills the immersion for a lot of people. However, if you want actual RPG quests and NPCs that don't just speak in vague philosophical riddles, it’s a solid pivot. The ship-building mechanic in Starfield is objectively deeper than anything Sean Murray has given us so far. You aren't just buying a ship; you're playing LEGO with reactors and hab modules.
Then there’s Elite Dangerous. This is the game for people who think No Man's Sky is "too arcadey." In Elite, landing a ship feels like a high-stakes engineering task. You have to manage heat signatures, landing gear, and approach vectors. It uses a 1:1 scale representation of the Milky Way galaxy. That's not a marketing gimmick. If you fly toward a star in the night sky, you are flying toward a real astronomical coordinate.
The learning curve is a vertical wall, though. You’ll spend your first four hours just trying to map your controller or HOTAS setup so you don't accidentally boost into the back of a space station. But the sense of "being there" is unmatched. It’s cold, it’s empty, and it’s terrifying.
The Survival Evolution: Subnautica
I’ll go out on a limb here: Subnautica is the best "game like No Man's Sky" that isn't actually set in space.
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Think about it. You crash-land on an alien world. You have a limited oxygen supply. You have to scan plants and rocks to learn how to build a base. The core loop is identical. The genius move by Unknown Worlds was hand-crafting the map instead of relying on an algorithm. Every cave system and kelp forest is placed with intent.
Because it’s not procedural, the developers could script "fear." When you're 500 meters down in the pitch black and you hear a Reaper Leviathan roar in the distance, it hits harder than anything a random number generator could create. It captures that sense of alien discovery better than almost any space sim on the market.
Why We Keep Looking for the "Next" Frontier
There's a psychological hook in these games that most developers miss. It's the "just one more horizon" effect.
Astroneer is a great example of this, but it trades the photorealism for a soft, low-poly aesthetic. It’s basically "Space Logistics: The Game." Instead of complex combat, you're focused on tethering oxygen lines and terraforming the ground to reach hidden deposits. It’s tactile. You don't just click a menu to mine; you use a vacuum-like tool to physically reshape the world. It’s incredibly satisfying in a way that No Man's Sky's mining beam often isn't.
But what if you want the physics to actually matter?
Enter Outer Wilds. Not The Outer Worlds (the Fallout-in-space game), but Outer Wilds.
This is a masterclass in curiosity-driven exploration. There are no quest markers. No inventory management. No base building. You just have a rickety wooden spaceship and a solar system that resets every 22 minutes because the sun goes supernova. It’s a giant clockwork puzzle. Every planet has a unique physical gimmick—one is a pair of twins exchanging sand, another is a water giant with giant cyclones that toss islands into space. If the part of No Man's Sky you love is the "What the hell is that?" factor, Outer Wilds is your holy grail.
The Technical Reality of Procedural Space
We need to talk about Star Citizen. It’s the most expensive "maybe" in gaming history.
It promises everything: seamless transitions, high-fidelity FPS combat, multi-crew ships where one person flies while another manages the shields. When it works, it’s the most impressive thing you’ve ever seen on a monitor. When it doesn't—which is often—you’ll fall through the floor of your $200 virtual ship into the vacuum of space. It’s currently in a perpetual alpha state. It's a "game like No Man's Sky" for the person who has a $3,000 PC and a lot of patience.
On the complete opposite end of the spectrum is SpaceEngineers.
This isn't about "finding" things as much as it is about "building" them. It’s essentially Minecraft with Newtonian physics. You want to build a rotating space station? You have to account for the rotors and the center of mass. If you mess up the thruster placement, your ship will just spin uncontrollably until it hits an asteroid. It’s gritty. It’s brown and grey. But for the technical-minded player, it provides a level of agency that No Man's Sky's simplified base building can't touch.
When "Space" Isn't the Point
Sometimes, the itch we're trying to scratch isn't about stars. It's about the feeling of being an explorer in a world that doesn't care if you live or die.
- Valheim: It's Viking purgatory, but the exploration beats are familiar. You build a boat, you sail into the fog, and you pray you don't find a Sea Serpent.
- The Planet Crafter: This is basically "No Man's Sky: The Home Renovation Edition." You are on a barren rock, and your only job is to change the atmosphere. You watch the sky turn from red to blue in real-time. You see lakes form. You see grass grow. It’s a condensed, highly rewarding version of the terraforming dream.
- Empyrion - Galactic Survival: It’s a bit janky, honestly. But it offers a middle ground between the complexity of Space Engineers and the exploration of NMS. You can build capital ships block-by-block and actually fly them from the surface of a planet into orbit.
The Misconception About "Infinite" Content
The biggest lie in gaming is that "infinite" equals "better."
No Man's Sky succeeded because it eventually realized this. The Atlas Rises and Next updates added structure to the chaos. Most games like No Man's Sky that fail do so because they give you a giant sandbox but forget to give you a shovel.
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Take Everspace 2. It abandoned the "infinite" procedural generation of the first game for a hand-crafted semi-open world. The result? Better combat, better puzzles, and a world that feels like it has a history. It’s a looter-shooter at heart, but the exploration is dense. You aren't scanning 50 identical bushes; you're finding hidden caches inside the hollowed-out remains of a derelict freighter.
Where to Head Next
If you're staring at the No Man's Sky title screen and feeling like you've seen it all, don't just buy the next space game on sale. Identify the "loop" you're craving.
If you want the loneliness and scientific wonder, go get Elite Dangerous. Just buy a cheap flight stick first; your wrists will thank you.
If you want the mystery and the "Aha!" moments, stop everything and play Outer Wilds. Go in blind. Don't look up a guide. The "knowledge" you gain is the only way to progress, and once you know it, you can't "un-know" it to play it again.
If you want to build and survive with a tighter focus, Subnautica is the answer. The sequel, Below Zero, is also great, but the first one is a masterpiece of atmosphere.
For those who just want to tinker with machines, Space Engineers or Astroneer will eat your weekends alive.
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The reality is that No Man's Sky is a unicorn. It's a comeback story that shouldn't have happened. But the genre it spawned—or at least revitalized—is full of games that take one specific part of that dream and do it better than the original ever could.
Check your hardware specs first. Most of these, especially Star Citizen and Elite, are notoriously heavy on CPUs. If you're on a console, your options are a bit narrower, but Subnautica and Astroneer run beautifully on modern systems. Pick a direction, fuel up, and stop worrying about the center of the galaxy for a while. There’s plenty to see in the "smaller" universes.
Actionable Next Steps:
- Audit your playstyle: If you spend more time in NMS building bases, prioritize The Planet Crafter or Space Engineers.
- Check the "Hand-Crafted" vs "Procedural" preference: If you're bored of "random" planets, switch to Subnautica or Outer Wilds for intentional level design.
- Verify Peripheral Support: Before jumping into Elite Dangerous, check if your current controller setup is supported, as keyboard-and-mouse can be frustrating for flight maneuvers.
- Try the "Demo" approach: Many of these titles, particularly Astroneer and Valheim, are frequently on Game Pass or have trial versions. Test the physics engine before committing to the 100-hour grind.