Open-world games are some of the finest ways to explore the limitless potential in video games, and there is no wider scope than those open-world games that focus on space exploration. New alien worlds and colonization are central ideas to these games, tasking players with running, constructing, or simply living in far-away colonies dedicated to the expansion of exploration.
Games thatexplore these conceptsare some of the most rewarding gameplay concepts around, allowing gamers to realize their dreams of settling on worlds with their own challenges, environment, and storytelling. Whilst the complexity and style vary with each game, each offers a way to realize these aspirations from the comfort of home. Several games with open-world elements and mechanics have been considered as well.
Updated on Jun 25, 2025 by Matthew Weideman:As the tech to make games continues to improve, more and more games can provide a huge world for players to explore. The most exciting of these games take players off-world and into the far reaches of space. Whether these games put players in the shoes of terraformers, explorers, or colony saviors, they are always a good time.
InSatisfactory,up to four players are pioneers assigned to a planet by FICSIT, Incorporated. They get to choose which biome they initially drop into, and from there have to create a factory to start providing valuable goods for their corporate overlords.
Players get to explore the planet’s multiple biomes, fight off wild creatures, and then build and automate infrastructure. They can use trains, drones, conveyor belts, and more to create the most efficient factory possible in their time on their FICSIT Designated Sector. While players aren’t building any settlements for colonization, having places that produce goods is valuable for any interstellar civilization.
Metacritic Score: 68
Space Engineers
Space Engineers is an open world sandbox game defined by creativity and exploration.It is a sandbox game about engineering, construction, exploration and survival in space and on planets. Players build space ships, wheeled vehicles, space stations, planetary outposts of various sizes and uses (civil and military), pilot ships and travel through space to explore planets and gather resources to survive. Featuring both creative and survival modes, there is no limit to what can be built, utilized and explored.Space Engineers features a realistic, volumetric-based physics engine: everything in the game can be assembled, disassembled, damaged and destroyed. The game can be played either in single or multiplayer modes.Space Engineers concentrates on construction and exploration aspects, but can be played as a survival shooter as well. We expect players will avoid engaging in direct man-to-man combat and instead use their creativity and engineering skills to build war machines and fortifications to survive in space and on planets. Space Engineers shouldn’t be about troops; it should be about the machinery you build.
The voxel (cubic) structuring inSpace Engineerspleasantly lends itself to interstellar construction, allowing players tobuild space stations and settlementswithin a rigid, grid-like format that recreates the blocky architecture of current out-of-this-world buildings.
The focus is less on ‘filling’ these structures with NPCs and is instead aimed at constructing the buildings to make the settlements, but there is still enough content involving space colonization to warrantSpace Engineer’splace on this list, especially when it comes to its multiplayer, allowing friends to participate in the construction process as well.
Another game benefiting from the wealth of content enabled by procedural generation,Astroneertasks players with activating cores found on multiple planets, but like the game’s distant cousinMinecraft, this plot and progression can be done away with entirely to instead focus on the creation of any structure the player dreams of.
Astroneerallowsterraforming to take place, which is a key concept in speculative space colonization often left unexplored in sandbox games like this. As a result, it plays with more authenticity than games leaning more on the technological or construction side of colonization, and is presented through a fun and engaging art style.
9Mass Effect: Andromeda
Metascore: 71
TheMass Effecttrilogy is one of the most loved RPG series of all time.Mass Effect: Andromedais more of a spin-off than a sequel, despite taking place about 600 years after the trilogy finished up.
In the face of the Reaper threat, countless citizens boarded settler ships bound for the Andromeda galaxy in hopes of starting a new life somewhere safer than the Milky Way. The player takes on the role of Ryder, who must find his/her father as well as help the colony survive the various threats in the Andromeda Galaxy. WhileMass Effect: Andromedaisn’t a full-blown open-world game, it does have many mechanics and features that one would expect from an open-world experience and has a strong emphasis on exploration.
Elite: Dangerouswas something of a lighter space-colonization sim given its focus on ship-based experience and gameplay, but this all changed with the release of the highly controversial Odyssey expansion, which converted portions of the game intovast interactable environmentsthat could be traversed on foot.
Much of the original game - the gathering of resources, and exploration of new bodies and stations - had become tighter in focus, allowing players to explore and participate in various colonies throughout the many star systems present inElite: Dangerous.
An open-world game using procedural generation is a must-have formula for limitless exploration, andStarboundmakes excellent use of it to create anever-evolving systemthat players can discover. Gamers can visit far-flung settlements and aid them with missions, creating an immersive experience of space colonization.
Starboundis packed to the brim with fresh ideas, and its two-dimensional system allows quicker creation of new content including characters, weapons, settlements, and locations. As a result, the game is a vibrant and ever-changing simulation to explore.
The Planet Crafterfocuses on one important concept of interstellar colonization, terraforming. Up to ten players are dropped off on an inhospitable planet and are given the task of making it livable so that colonies can be built there.
Players have to survive with their own oxygen supply until they make the atmosphere breathable. Likewise, they will need to gather materials and build machines that can raise the heat and geo-engineer the planet to sustain plant and animal life. This chill, but exciting game is a great experience as players get to see the fruits of their labor as the planet changes with their progress.
More RPGand less sandbox,The Outer Worldsexplores the actions and consequences of a colony, rather than expecting players to create a colony of their own. The star system of Halycon, prey to the mega-corporations and their sinister goals, acts as the setting for a fast-paced narrative adventure involving cryogenics and secrets.
Players can expect to traverse multiple colonies in various states of disrepair or dystopia, and make meaningful choices that affect not just the conclusion of the game, but the fates of each location as players explore. It is a far less time-consuming process than the fresh creation of a colony, but is no less engaging. In comparison to other games mentioned,The Outer Worldsprovides players with enough areas to explore that it feels like an open-world game.
In line with the physics-based realism ofKerbal Space Programand its sequel, planetary colonization is something only to consider in the endgame and accompanies all the difficulties that can be associated with the process in the real world. Attempting such featsin the game’s early stagesis hopeless.
Players should not expect easy-to-build modular construction nor multitudes of citizens flocking to settle on player-created bases. Instead, the focus is on research and resource management and the game acts more as the conception of space colonization than the fully-fledged action.
