The best space games on PC to play in 2022
We all love a adept space game, but finding the all-time intergalactic adventures tin can be catchy when in that location are and then many to selection from, which is why we've created this list of the twenty best space games you tin play on PC right now. Whether you lot're a budding space cruiser captain, a wannabe space conqueror or an intrepid space-faring explorer, there's a space game here for you.
We've kept our definition of "space game" adequately traditional hither. While y'all'll find plenty of hybrid games in our all-time space games list, from RPGs and strategy games to roguelikes and more, most of them involve hurtling across the universe in a send of some description, rather than, say, settling on the surface of a new planet and starting a new life for yourself. That means no Surviving Mars or Astroneer, for example. We've also discounted games like Destiny two and Alien: Isolation, mostly because while these games are set in space to some caste, you never actually get to go to space.
All-time space games
There are loads of brilliant space games to be found on PC, but nosotros've selected 20 of the best below. In that location are nevertheless plenty of classics here, but for we've focused on games we'd recommend you lot play today for this listing, rather than a 'greatest space games of all time' affair. Disagree? Tell us nearly your favourite space game in the comments below, and maybe y'all'll convince others to requite it a effort.
- Mass Upshot: Legendary Edition
- Slipways
- Descent
- Galactic Civilizations 2: Endless Universe
- Star Wars: Necktie Fighter
- Insubordinate Galaxy Outlaw
- Star Traders: Frontiers
- Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2
- Sins Of A Solar Empire
- X3: Albion Prelude
- EVE Online
- Homeworld Remastered
- Distant Worlds Universe
- Outer Wilds
- Stellaris
- FTL: Faster Than Light
- No Man's Heaven
- Elite Dangerous
- Kerbal Space Plan
- Freespace 2
twenty. Mass Effect Legendary Edition
The Mass Effects are Captain Kirk simulators. Yous're non Sulu, blowing Klingons out of space, or Chekov, piloting a ship; yous're the dominate. And being the boss largely means telling people what to do - and snogging.
Commander Shepard's 2nd mission remains their best - it'south a planet-hopping Argonautica and suicide mission with some of BioWare'southward best-realised characters - but now the entire trilogy has been remastered as part of the Legendary Edition, at that place's really no reason non to play the whole lot from start to finish. After all, no Mass Effect is an island. The eye game might be the best, but the outset lays all the groundwork. And don't heed to the naysayers, the terminal game drops the ball a bit during the closing act, but otherwise it'southward a smashing stop to the trilogy.
19. Slipways
At beginning glance, Slipways looks like some other spacefaring 4X-athon, but it'due south actually a fiendishly moreish strategy-infused puzzle game. The goal is to create a prosperous, star-spanning galactic civilisation past linking up networks of planets so that each one has access to the resources it needs to starting time survive, then thrive. However, the titular slipways can't cross each other, so you lot need to consider all futurity connections with each expansion.
But in that location's a lot more than to Slipways than just managing resource exchange routes. There are dissimilar planet types to consider, which come with their own imports and exports to sort out, and you'll also demand to send out probes to notice what lies across the border of your current borders, which costs time and may end upwards beingness detrimental to your empire's happiness and sustainability in the long run. It'southward a wonderful blend of efficiency and risk management, simply the best thing nearly Slipways is that each run lasts simply 45 minutes, delivering all that lovely puzzle-y, 4X goodness in manageable, bite-sized chunks. If y'all've ever aghast at the delivery required to play a 4X, Slipways is a perfect starting point.
18. Descent
Having been lumped in with run-and-gun first-person shooters since the time of its release (CGW magazine called it "Doom on Benzedrine in a vacuum"), Descent'southward numerous innovations accept often been serially overlooked. Truthful, it didn't have many rock star developers working on information technology, there were no demons from hell rampaging through it'south claustrophobic corridors and there was not one smear of claret to enrage or please its audition. What it did have was speed, maze-like 3D levels and a range of movement in all directions that was at beautiful odds with the express space in which to manoeuvre.
Disorientation was a constant companion - for some players and so, too, was motility sickness - but in rescuing trapped colonists otherwise doomed to die and escaping each quaking level before it was engulfed in a nuclear fireball the game paid out in full. After more than 20 years, does Descent remain an essential game in the same way as Doom? Given that information technology would morph into Freespace and remain to some degree in Red Faction's DNA, yes, yep information technology is. More importantly, it'due south still enjoyable, more and so in many ways than the game that inspired it.
17. Galactic Civilizations II: Endless Universe
Galactic Civilizations II isn't the most inventive space strategy game on the planet (pardon the pun), but Stardock'south intergalactic conquer-'em-up isn't and then much most unexpected story twists as it is about simply creating a actually adept, solid 4X game. You guide a space-faring race across the stars and stake your claim on the rest of the galaxy, job done.
What sets Galactic Civilizations Ii apart, though, is its crafty AI. Not merely does it offer a meaty challenge to your space-faring exploits, but its attempts at deploying tailored, counter-strategies makes information technology experience all the more personal each fourth dimension y'all play. It is getting on a bit now, but the Countless Universe / Ultimate Edition release shows Galactic Civilizations at its best, bundling in both expansions (Dark Avatar and Twilight of the Arnor) and giving you the option to destroy unabridged solar systems.
16. Star Wars: TIE Fighter
Contrary to popular belief, the X-Wing series wasn't a directly assault on Wing Commander. It was an attempt to transpose the systems and success of Totally Games' first series onto what would exist its second. Indeed, yous don't need to play much of either to see that there's more than of Wing Commander in Battlehawks 1942 and Their Finest Hour than there is of X-Wing or Necktie Fighter in Wing Commander. Merely as Star Wars' space battles are inspired past WWII combat footage, the X-Wing series are informed well-nigh entirely by Totally's WWII fight games. That they all featured a mission builder, gainsay recorder and historical missions only serves to underline that fact.
In whatsoever case, had X-Wing been intended equally Star Wars' reply to WingCo, 10-Wing 2 would surely take followed information technology. Instead Totally and Lucasarts opted to flip the story to the Dark Side, in so doing allowing players the opportunity to fight for the Empire for the first time while fugitive the mistake of painting everyone in it as wholly and irredeemably evil. Even though we knew we were on the wrong side, the game had us believing our hearts were in the right identify, even if our guns were pointing at the good guys.
Plus, if you want to see what TIE Fighter might look like with modernistic mean solar day graphics, exist certain to cheque out the recently released TIE Fighter: Total Conversion mod for Ten-Fly Brotherhood, besides, which pretty much recreates TIE Fighter from the footing-upwardly, and adds in VR support.
15. Rebel Galaxy Outlaw
Rebel Milky way Outlaw is that rare space sim that manages to capture the thrill and wonder of exploring a star system without wildly over-promising on what to expect. Information technology may only be set in a single region of space with 40-odd star systems to peruse, simply within those limited confines is a game packed with dogfights, bounty hunts, underhand deals and fraught delivery runs. Activity is the name of the game here, and Double Impairment Games makes yous get you're able to become your hands dirty at every possible opportunity.
Thanks to Outlaw'south clever targeting organization and motorcar-pursuit arrangement, dogfights are brilliant fun. Y'all tin can plow off motorcar-pursuit if you prefer to go sometime-schoolhouse with your space fights, but leaving it on makes every skirmish feel similar a nail-bitter battle of wits rather than gamble pot-shots into the void. Rebel Milky way Outlaw besides manages that rare feat of giving u.s.a. a character we actually care about, and a story that gives them a place and purpose in this vast region of the unknown. A lot of it covers familiar ground, but it makes a refreshing change from your No Man's Sky and Aristocracy Dangerous types. Lovingly crafted and ever stunningly pretty to look at, Rebel Galaxy Outlaw ever has us coming back for more.
xiv. Star Traders: Frontiers
Space captains are better served than ever for 2D Elite-ish games, only Star Traders: Frontiers is by far the best out at that place. Create your captain, pick a transport, and make full it with a crew of pilots, navigators, swordsmen, and whatever niche experts adapt your needs. Getting on your feet can exist difficult, but once you've got a piddling coin and the favour of some political figures, the galaxy is yours to adventure in.
Your ship and coiffure define you lot more in whatever infinite RPG, as you can refit and reorganise them every bit you lot come across fit. Almost everything you lot do in Frontiers can impact the economy, status, and political relations of local characters, planets, and factions, whether you desire to dig into its multi-threaded story jobs or non. And you'll inevitably end upwards doing more than than you planned for when opportunity knocks. Your unarmed spy send might make a neat smuggler. Your send-disabling pirates might create perfect opportunities to start taking on bounty hunter jobs. Or y'all might but stumble across some exotic goods, and detect yourself waylaid in a concatenation of unexpected events on your way to observe a blackness market to sell them at. Plus, y'all can hire a sniper who wears pink thigh loftier boots in space. What'southward non to love?
13. Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2
If you're happy to trade off realism for sheer spectacle when it comes to infinite battles, then Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2 (the definitive Warhammer 40,000 navy 'em up) is going to be your happy place. Despite all the cinematic 3D camera work, its battles play out on a resolutely 2D playing field. It's essentially a ocean boxing game with bombastic, giga-scale space stylings, and it pushes a lot of the aforementioned buttons every bit Total War games in terms of play feel - you build up fleets on a campaign layer, and then position them on a tactical map and shove them into the enemy to start knocking lumps out of each other.
Conflict in BFGA2 feels huge: hundreds of private turrets concoction away at each other, while fighters goose egg around like clouds of grit, and massive ships explode gloriously with a groaning sound like a whale reading its credit bill of fare neb. You can play as 12 of the major 40k factions in BFGA2'southward skirmish fashion, while four get their own campaigns. The strategic game sometimes feels a fiddling low-cal, just not so much that information technology feels stripped downwards, and there's an impressive level of storytelling and lore involved, when information technology didn't necessarily have to be. The large draw, however y'all choose to play, and whatsoever y'all cull to play as, is that you're guaranteed one hell of a lite show.
12. Sins Of A Solar Empire
Ironclad Games' RTS pinches the scale of a 4X game and pits massive armadas against each other in orbital laser light shows. All the diplomatic, trade and inquiry systems borrowed from 4Xs prop up the constant war, funding and upgrading increasingly various fleets. At first you'll simply be throwing low-cal assail ships at planets yous want to gobble up, but eventually you'll be surrounding worlds and enemy fleets with majuscule ships the size of minor moons and a whole host of support vessels, carriers, tiny fighters and bombers.
Sins' smartest play a trick on is the use of restrictive lanes to connect worlds. It forces fleets to travel downward predetermined paths, actualization in specific places. Even in infinite, then, there'due south terrain, with the lanes' entrances and exits acting as choke points around which weapons platforms can be constructed and fleets positioned. The Rebellion standalone adds the additional wrinkle of new playable rebel factions and their accompanying victory conditions, but also powerful Titan-form ships and overhauled vanilla factions. Oh, and it'due south quite a flake prettier!
11. X3: Albion Prelude
Although it started out as a rather humourless and unhurried take on Elite, the 10 series has carved out an impressive niche for itself over the course of fifteen years or so, becoming the go-to game for space captains who'd rather explore a backer frontier than venture across anything physical.
Egosoft would no uncertainty fence that in that location's been more to its games than first-person Industry Behemothic in space, pointing to the series' motto and the prominence of fighting ahead of thinking. The truth is that that it took a few attempts for the German developer to properly boom combat. The X3 games seemed to blast it though; each release offering a more evolved Os-styled control setup that managed to avoid falling into the FPS mouse trap while complimenting the complexities of the trading simulation underpinning the game. Some might protestation that the Albion Prelude expansion went a pace also far, with as well much deadening-burning intricacy and not enough caption, but by setting the X universe at war with itself ahead of the slate-cleaning Rebirth, it offered players the all-time opportunity in the long-running series to make good turn a profit at the expense of others.
10. EVE Online
For all its infamous high stakes drama and ruthless corporate betrayals, there'due south room for a lot more than in EVE than most people retrieve. The enormously circuitous histrion economy is ultimately almost loads of random players all doing their own matter, after all.
More then than maybe any other game, EVE is about interacting with others, but that also tin exist done as you encounter fit. The jostling alliances of hundreds-strong players make the headlines, only exist aslope countless small groups of friends, pairs, even the occasional solo player making their space life by merchandise, manufacture, murder, or just quietly shooting endless disposable NPC ships for an 60 minutes or ii after work to unwind. It'due south a enervating game for sure, but getting to know fifty-fifty a pocket-size corner of it feels satisfying. Seeing familiar names and knowing what they're up to, who they're friends with, and what things y'all tin can achieve together is ane of the promises that few MMOs evangelize on.
It takes some patience and a lot of initiative, and the ability to sigh and shrug some things off. But if you're non enjoying what you're doing in EVE, you can but do something else. Become talking to someone, for heaven's sake. There are opportunities everywhere if you're willing to make the try.
nine. Homeworld Remastered
The original Homeworld is ane of the all-time great infinite RTS games, but trying to become it running on a modern PC is a bit of a nightmare - if only because it hasn't been available to buy for the amend part of a decade. Thankfully, Gearbox's 2015 remaster brought it bang up to date. Bundling remastered editions of both Homeworld and Homeworld two and a special Steam multiplayer mode, this is the definitive fashion to play ane of the best space games of all time.
A lot of Homeworld'south accomplishments may seem like old-hat now. Moving multiple units in 3D space? Yawn. A choice betwixt total annihilation and desperate survival? Been there, done that. And however, the thrill of Homeworld'southward epic space battles remains just as stiff as it did back in the olden days of 1999. Add together in modernistic dynamic lighting, hi-res textures and a remastered score, and information technology really is quite the homecoming.
8. Distant Worlds Universe
Distant Worlds Universe collects Code Force and Matrix Games' circuitous space 4X game and its DLC in one parcel, and it was our strategy game of the year back in 2014. The laurels is nevertheless well deserved. It's a sprawling behemoth of a game set in a universe that gets forth with or without y'all. Merchandise companies practise business all across the universe, empires ascent and autumn, sectors transform from tourist traps into warzones.
Rather than presenting empire building as a series of paths, it's a pure sandbox absent all simply player-defined goals. If that sounds daunting, information technology is! Simply that that's OK because Distant Worlds also boasts an unparalleled automation system that breaks the game upward into manageable chunks. If state of war isn't your cup of Earl Grey, you tin can exit all martial matters upwards to the extremely competent AI. The same goes for every system. If you really want to ease into things, or if you just fancy exploring infinite, you lot can give up control of everything autonomously from a single ship. Effectively you take a break from being Emperor to go a simple spaceship captain. From that perspective y'all tin can just watch the universe evolve around you. When that gets old, you tin can start switching off the automation of other systems one by 1 until you find your limit.
7. Outer Wilds
The solar organization of Outer Wilds may but take a few minutes to cantankerous in your rickety erstwhile space ship, but the mysteries of its 6 planets and accompanying moons, comets and satellites will keep y'all guessing for hours and hours. Our game of the year in 2019, Outer Wilds is a clever space detective game with a Groundhog Day twist. The sun goes supernova every 22 minutes, simply thanks to a foreign encounter with an ancient conflicting artefact, your broad-eyed explorer manages to escape being turned into infinite dust by getting stuck in an infinite fourth dimension loop. The merely manner to break it is to solve the mystery of the space-faring Nomai, whose architecture, engineering science and discoveries shape each and every planet y'all'll somewhen touch downwardly on.
The planets themselves are marvels of design and engineering. From Breakable Hollow, which has a black hole violent information technology apart from the within, to The Hourglass Twins, which are linked past an epic column of sand that gradually drowns one and reveals the secrets of the other with every passing 2d, the world that Mobius Digital have created here actually captures your imagination. Information technology's exactly the kind of mad science fiction yous've always dreamed about in games, and each one feels similar a distinct ecosystem with its own rules and systems. Y'all're free to explore them at your own pace, besides. Driven by hints and secrets y'all get together past translating ancient Nomai scrolls and texts they've left behind (just never giant 'go here side by side' icons), Outer Wilds' greatest achievement is simply letting you follow whatever trail of Nomai-shaped breadcrumbs you please equally you work to solve this milky way-broad mystery. Brilliantly written and beautifully crafted, Outer Wilds is a truly stellar stuff.
6. Stellaris
Later on years of simulating the politics, economic science and wars of history, Paradox decided to head off into the stars with their thou strategy/4X hybrid, Stellaris. Crusader Kings II and Europa Universalis Four had been pumping out weird stories and slices of historical drama for a few years, and more than anything else that's what Stellaris brought to 4X's sector of space.
You lot can spend hours creating your brand new alien species, correct downwardly to their government type and how proficient they are at making babies, but new technology and special events can transform them into something completely different. Since launch, Stellaris has gone from strength to strength, with Paradox calculation a steady stream of new expansions, species and story packs. Its latest expansion, Nemesis, came out in April 2021, besides, making it a not bad time to leap in if you haven't already.
five. FTL: Faster Than Light
Subset Games' roguelike-like darling deconstructs spaceship sims and presents managing a vessel as a series of disasters and crises. Each of FTL's procedural adventure casts you adrift in space with a single goal: outrun the Federation and bring their secret plans to your Rebel allies. In between you are scouts, pirates, people needing aid and horrible space parasites. You lot tin't turn back, though, because the Federation is always nipping at your heels.
In real-fourth dimension fights against other ships, you'll see your crew slain, your send boarded by droids, hulls ripped open, explosives teleported in and allies psionically controlled. But you'll be able to exercise all of that to your enemies too. Along the fashion, you'll also find or rescue new crew members, get access to the fanciest of future tech, and hopefully go tough enough to take on the last Federation boss.
Even seemingly blessed runs tin can cease in catastrophe, but each failure becomes another bright sci-fi story. The journey of the Ham Sandwich, for instance, concluded especially tragically. Afterward a run in with a pirate, the ship looked to be done for, with a fires and breaches in multiple rooms and merely about every organization offline. The engine fire was the worst of the problems and if it wasn't taken care of, the whole ship would be doomed. Our engineer tirelessly fought the burn, even every bit the oxygen was sucked out of the room through a tear in the hull. With his last breath he managed to put out the fire, the doors could be unsealed, and the remainder of the crew repaired the hole. Unfortunately, an come across with a solar flare 1 jump later finished the Ham Sandwich off.
4. No Man'southward Sky
Information technology's been a bumpy sometime ride for No Man'southward Heaven since information technology launched in 2016, but after a steady stream of gratuitous updates, patches and a lot of jiggery-pokery behind the scenes, How-do-you-do Games' epic, procedurally-generated space exploration game has finally become everything we hoped and dreamed it would be. No Human'south Sky has gone from forcefulness to strength in recent years, adding a proper multiplayer experience, full VR back up, aquatic biomes, and even more beasts, flora, beast and customisation options. Heck, you tin can even fly around in sentient, living, breathing space ships now, and if that doesn't shout 'best infinite game' material, we don't know what does.
Information technology is, without doubtfulness, one of the greatest improvement stories of the last decade. At its eye, No Human being'south Heaven is nevertheless a crafting-based survival 'em upward that sees yous journey toward the centre of the universe and gradually upgrading your ship so you can jump farther and further distances, only it's also nearly flight to and from stunning looking planets and staring slack-jawed at all the mad creatures you lot'll find therein. You lot no longer have to make the journey alone, either, equally upwards to 32 players tin now bring together a single server, and you'll run across other players appear onscreen when they're nearby. Its VR support is too first rate, making it i of the best VR games yous can play on PC right now, and it's also one of the best games to play in ultrawide style, likewise.
iii. Aristocracy Dangerous
What makes Aristocracy Dangerous so compelling isn't so much virtually the game as the experience. Information technology's the tinkering with and the taking out of a performance car for a Sunday drive, non to rack up more than miles, nor to break any speed limits, but to but feel the growl of the engine and the wind rummage through what's left of your hair. To remember those carefree days arched over a BBC Micro or blinking angrily into a Lenslok and to forget for a brusque while that you lot take to make 357 people redundant in the morning. Aristocracy is a hermetically-sealed escape capsule and information technology's the best there is. Hell, you could burn the game up and but sit there on a launch pad and the sounds are enough to bear you away, then strong is your ship'due south presence and so absorbing are the station surroundings.
Taking off, tearing through the station archway a little besides fast and just missing a Python, angling for the side by side jump, scooping fuel from a blazing sun, spinning the camera around your ship to catch its best profile, starting a fight but for the hell of information technology, seeing smoke ascent from the command console, hearing the screen crack and precious oxygen escaping into space and landing dorsum at base with seconds to spare - these are the moments that make Elite essential. Trading, missions, mining - non and then much. Merely information technology'southward all right, we're not going anywhere.
ii. Kerbal Space Program
Information technology could be argued that Kerbal Space Program doesn't belong on this list, considering information technology's a game about trying but (more often than not) failing to go into space. Sometimes it's a game about smashing into the ground. Botched attempts and hopeless failures litter the path to success, but it's those disastrous experiments that often show to exist the most fun.
That might not be the Kerbal Space Program everybody recognises, though. We're sure it feels bully to successfully get the Kerbals on and off the Mun without breaking a sweat, but we're simply happy to see them drifting around in space. We don't fifty-fifty see our many misadventures as failures anymore because that implies that we haven't washed what we set out to do, which is to draw a bare on everything we know about physics and just muck around with some cool rockets.
one. Freespace two
Was information technology Freespace 2 that near killed the space combat genre? Some similar to recall it was the game's commercial failure that did the damage; that there was no involvement in infinite gainsay games any more and that if anyone persisted in making i, their sales would suffer the same fate. If it always was a wreck, we now know that Freespace two wasn't left empty for very long, and that the message in the static was soon changed to offer a place of refuge, a rallying point for gamers uninterested in a New Globe Order of terrorist take-downs.
It's non simply that Freespace 2 is a highly accomplished sequel to what was arguably the finest game in its genre, but that it has go the source of so much creativity over the years. For space genre fans, Diaspora, The Babylon Project, Blue Planet and Fly Commander Saga have been some of the brightest releases in what has, until the last couple of years, been a veritable dark age.
The thing is, standard outcome Freespace two remains largely unchallenged. Considering it was barely a year in evolution and many of Volition's ideas for ground attacks and super weapons went unrealised, it offers a number of improvements on the original game. Prior to Freespace two, uppercase ships were largely treated as static backgrounds, but now they were part of the foreground, one that fizzed and crackled with explosive energy like never before. Of form Freespace wasn't perfect. But what the Freespace games did better than anything else was put the player in the midst of a series of ballsy battles, fighting against the odds versus a relentless and unknowable foe. The spectacular weapons, the frenetic and desperate movement that remains a perfect marriage of UI and controller and graphics that were so in advance of everything all those years agone that, even un-modded today, the game can maintain the fantasy. Fifty-fifty in this new space age, one of procedurally-generated universes and forceless feedback joysticks, Freespace two stands equally a titan of the genre. The Galactica amidst Battlestars. The game that has lead the genre home.
Source: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/best-space-games-on-pc
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