Best space games – Lift-off with this definitive list of stellar titles

Fascination with what’s beyond our planet is just one part of why we love the best space games, and most of the other parts involve lasers. Whether you got your start stargazing, from your favorite sci-fi books or movies, or space camp, there’s a whole universe of great space games out there. Want to explore the unknown or be the first to have a close encounter with an alien? Fancy conquering a new galaxy and reshaping it to match your vision? It’s all there.

One of the best aspects of games that make for the stars (and beyond) is how each genre brings out something different. An excellent space game about exploration can trigger a true sense of wonder, while another can use space to evoke fear of the vast, dark expanse above. Just as preparing to take off for the real thing can be a big job, preparing to play a new game can be a big job. Take your protein pills and put on your helmet; here are the best space games to check out. 

✓ VideoGamer Summary

• Space games really love the strategy genre, with countless excellent examples, many of which rank among the best space games on PC.
• Exploration and discovery are core to most space games, with picks like No Man’s Sky centering entirely around them thematically.
• Spaceships are central to space games, with games like Elite: Dangerous, EVE: Online, and FTL: Faster Than Light focusing nearly exclusively on your ride as both setting and character.
• Numerous space games, such as Alien Isolation and Elite Dangerous, emphasize immersion and atmosphere.

Starsector

In active development for over a decade, Starsector weaves genres like strategy, sim, and RPG to deliver one of the most engrossing single-player sandboxes imaginable, and one that’s further elevated by a vibrant modding community. You take direct control over a single ship at a time in combat, but can issue orders to an entire fleet of ally ships you purchase, build, or capture that will support you. 

Every ship can be redesigned to your heart’s content, letting you turn a cargo ship into an anti-missile flak platform, or a luxury liner into a giant ram packed with short-range torpedoes. Alongside the space combat is a galaxy-wide economy and empire sim, where different factions will trade, engage in diplomacy, and go to war. You can pick sides, or just dodge the whole thing and set out to found your own colonies – just be ready for the aggressive politics that follow when other factions realize you’re trying to step up on the cosmic stage.

No Man’s Sky

One of the famed redemption stories in video games, No Man’s Sky released originally as feature-poor and issue-rich, and since 2016, it’s turned it around completely to become one of the best open-world games. 

Letting you explore a nigh-limitless galaxy of planets, No Man’s Sky spans different genres, with crafting and survival, ground and space, trade, base-building, and lots of customizing and modifying of your exosuit and ship. The sense of wonder from exploration is helped by the abundance of things to do as you travel, taking on hostile pirates, scavenge and gather resources, and even dive into the central story that drags you towards the center of the galaxy.

Stellaris

The best space strategy games have been tied to the 4X genre since the days of titans like Masters of Orion 2, and with the genre flourishing nowadays, Stellaris consistently wins out as one of the best. Taking the reins of a budding space empire, each playthrough has you define the path of your ruler and species, whether that means colonizing planets, building ships to explore or fight, researching new technologies, or choosing which structures and upgrades get built on your planets. 

Stellaris hits all the space-bread and alien-butter of the 4X genre and executes them well, but what elevates it are the micro-narratives it incorporates into your exploration and empire-building. While one game might have you investigating a plague on one of your colonies, the next might have you discovering a brain bank containing the neural records of an entire long-forgotten species. Few experiences have felt as appropriate to science fiction as Stellaris’s masterful weaving of small stories into a larger galactic tapestry.

Mass Effect Legendary Edition

Playing through the Mass Effect games for the first time felt like connecting with someone who really understood everything I loved about science fiction. From the wonder of exploration to some of the same values that I learned from the cast of Star Trek The Next Generation, the story beats and characters of Mass Effect dragged me along for a ride I didn’t realize I needed. 

With the Legendary Edition, a lot of the rough edges of the first game are smoothed over, making way for third-person shooter and RPG elements that get improved even more with Mass Effect 2 and further in Mass Effect 3. Tying your choices into the narrative and making you care about the characters you work with (and pick favorites) is the hallmark of the series. While the ending of the third game gets a lot of hate thrown its way, on the whole, it’s still a phenomenal trilogy.

EVE Online

It’s been over 20 years since EVE Online launched, and through numerous overhauls, it’s as visually stunning as any MMORPG released today. While the slower-paced strategic gameplay isn’t for everyone, the intersecting systems, opportunities for specializations, and grand scope of EVE Online’s simulated galaxy are staggering to behold.

Whether you have dreams of galactic domination, prefer a life of daring combat and piracy, or the simple, but honest work of a long-haul trader, you can do it in EVE’s galaxy. Build and pilot an agile frigate, equip a cruiser to skirmish enemies, load up a battleship with smartbombs, or maybe just never bother to undock from the station and manage your financial and logistical empire from there. 

FTL Faster Than Light

While it’s a clever marriage of roguelike and space strategy, FTL Faster Than Light is so much more than the genres it blends. Your federation vessel is constantly on the run, cut off from its allies, and continuously scavenging for supplies and fuel, just one step ahead of a rebel fleet as you hunt for its flagship. 

By keeping combat to real time, FTL nails the pure chaos of every sci-fi space combat scene and elevates itself to one of the best space strategy games. As you give commands to each of your crew members, they’ll man stations, rush to put out fires, and fight to repel boarders. Each run lets you refine your strategy, and different achievements unlock new ships and starting setups, giving you a new set of disposable minions crew and a fresh slate for the not-so-final frontier.

Wildgate

It’s the newest entry in the list, and it has some rough edges, but Wildgate is a brilliant and creative twist on the extraction shooter and battle royale genres. Every match, you pick a character and you, your team of up to three friends, and your starship are launched into space to hunt for an artifact, the stellar macguffin that can win your team the round. 

Along the way, you can explore, battle PVE enemies for loot and upgrades to better your chances, search out and prey on other teams in PVP, and hunt for the artifact itself. Once somebody has it, the race is on to escape through the titular Wildgate, but until someone does, you’ll have to solve puzzles, tackle ship and ground combat, and keep your ship running. 

Alien Isolation

While space is a place of wonder, it’s also dark, cold, silent, and full of terrors – all things that Alien Isolation embraces wholeheart-in-your-throatedly. Playing as original protagonist Ellen Ripley’s daughter, Amanda, you’re stuck on a derelict space station while investigating your mother’s disappearance. The station is falling apart, crowded with malfunctioning androids, dotted with other (largely unhinged) survivors, and now stalked by an alien.

Unlike other survival horror games, you’re not expected to blaze a path forward by gunning down your biggest foes. Instead, the entire station becomes a stealthy gauntlet as you try to evade the game’s resident unstoppable xeno-force. The space station is a character all its own, constantly providing Amanda with places to hide, lovingly rendered in the same cassette-futurism stylings that got the original film nominated for a 1980 Academy Award for production design. 

Elite Dangerous

Living somewhere in the gray area between a space sim and a shockingly attractive cult is Elite Dangerous. Unabashedly complex and vast, but far quicker-paced and more action-oriented than the likes of EVE Online, piloting your own ship in Elite Dangerous leads to just as many epic space yarns to tell around the digital fire. 

Somewhere in between the economy simulation, resource mining, and deadly ship combat is room for stories like the galactic AAA bringing you a dilithium gas can or just kicking back while listening to in-universe music and interviews on Radio Sidewinder. There’s a level of atmospheric immersion that’s wholly inappropriate for a space game where you spend most of your time in hard vacuum, but that’s just part of the massively multiplayer space sim’s charm.

Hardspace Shipbreaker

For every one daring ship captain, there are thousands of unsung starship heroes, from engineers and ship mechanics down to the janitorial staff that has to clean up the alien-of-the-week you splattered across the hull plates. Hardspace Shipbreaker is all about the latter, as it sets out to teach you to value a day of hard work by showing you just how little the cold darkness of the corporate bottom line cares about you, right in front of your OSHA manual.

Every day, you’ll risk life and limb as you cut apart ships in orbit, salvaging and recycling them to their component pieces for a pittance of their value, splitting what little profits you get between the Lynx Corporation you owe a billion credits debt to, and your own bank account. That same bank account is also expected to foot the bill for every second you work, every time you die (don’t worry, the Lynx Corporation will just tack your revival fees onto your debt), and of course, all of your gear and its upgrades. Remember always to act your wage.

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