12 Open-World Games That Explore Interstellar Colonization

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 that explore these concepts are 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 July 10, 2024 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.

12 Satisfactory

Overwhelmingly Positive on Steam

In Satisfactory, 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.

11 Space Engineers

Metacritic Score: 68

The voxel (cubic) structuring in Space Engineers pleasantly lends itself to interstellar construction, allowing players to build space stations and settlements within 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 warrant Space Engineer’s place on this list, especially when it comes to its multiplayer, allowing friends to participate in the construction process as well.

10 Astroneer

Metacritic Score: 71

Another game benefiting from the wealth of content enabled by procedural generation, Astroneer tasks players with activating cores found on multiple planets, but like the game’s distant cousin Minecraft, this plot and progression can be done away with entirely to instead focus on the creation of any structure the player dreams of.

Astroneer allows terraforming 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.

9 Mass Effect: Andromeda

Metascore: 71

The Mass Effect trilogy is one of the most loved RPG series of all time. Mass Effect: Andromeda is 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. While Mass Effect: Andromeda isn’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.

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7 Elite: Dangerous

Metacritic Score: 80

Elite: Dangerous was 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 into vast interactable environments that 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 in Elite: Dangerous.

6 Starbound

Metacritic Score: 81

An open-world game using procedural generation is a must-have formula for limitless exploration, and Starbound makes excellent use of it to create an ever-evolving system that players can discover. Gamers can visit far-flung settlements and aid them with missions, creating an immersive experience of space colonization.

Starbound is 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.

5 The Planet Crafter

Metascore: 82

The Planet Crafter focuses 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.

4 The Outer Worlds

Metacritic Score: 85

More RPG and less sandbox, The Outer Worlds explores 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 Worlds provides players with enough areas to explore that it feels like an open-world game.

3 Kerbal Space Program

Metacritic Score: 88

In line with the physics-based realism of Kerbal Space Program and 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 feats in the game’s early stages is 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.

2 Starfield

Metacritic Score: 86

Bethesda’s recent step into a new IP is a great success, moving the company out of the shadows created by their previous release, Fallout 76. Starfield explores a human race that has spread itself among the stars, leading players on a multi-planet quest to collect artifacts of an unknown origin.

Adjacent to that, however, is the ability to create outposts, similar to the settlements of Fallout 4. Here, gamers can create homes or bases of operations, or move away from that entirely to make resource-harvesting factories devoid of life. It’s an open-ended system, allowing player freedom when it comes to planetary colonization, while still retaining the expected traits of a game exploring this theme.

1 No Man’s Sky

Metacritic Score: 83

From its early start as a troubled launch to the widely celebrated space sandbox it is today, No Man’s Sky puts space colonization front and center in its quest to depict a 1:1 universe of endless planets, moons, and stations ripe for exploration.

What makes No Man’s Sky’s colonization so inviting is the fact Hello Games have welcomed player-run settlements with open arms; key organizations, such as The Galactic Hub, have become officially recognized in the lore of No Man’s Sky, giving players satisfaction that their organized choice of location will not disappear with a save file. It hasn’t been done in any other game yet, but it would certainly be an excellent feature to implement.