Friends and colleagues have always looked at me weird when I say I findDark Soulsto be a relaxing experience. Aside fromSekiro: Shadows Die Twice, I feel the same about every titleFromSoftwarehas produced over the last decade. They have you facing up against terrifying bosses and hordes of bloodthirsty enemies, but when you aren’t fending for your life, you are encouraged to embrace your perpetual solitude. To go it alone and explore the world at your leisure. I welcome the quiet, and the opportunity to lose myself for hours.
It doesn’t matter if I die, because I can simply try again. Or I can walk away and do something else, safe in the knowledge that my ability to progress is never hindered. Games like this are special to me, especially as someone who struggles to exist in the real world without falling apart at the seams. I value virtual escapism, a space to create a story of my own by walking through foreign environments and putting the disparate pieces in places I deem appropriate. While a different genre entirely,No Man’s Skyis much the same.
The Sky Is What You Make It
Ahead of previous free updates for Hello Games’ ambitious space-faring epic,I mourned the sense of loneliness that permeated the game at launch. Despite feeling unfinished, nothing else could match the feeling of isolation that comes from exploring a universe where you can never encounter a fellow human being, while the alien life you stumble across is only ever hostile or dismissive.
Future expansions would add base-building and online multiplayer that transformed isolation into co-operation as you were encouraged to have friends by your side as you mapped out the stars. A magical idea to be certain, but one I still turn down, so I can go it alone and lose myself for hours at a time.
The new update is once again being given away for free, which is a huge boon for Hello Games given most other studios could (and would) charge good money for this sort of thing.
I want to tackle things on my own, not because I don’t want help or that I’m terrible when it comes to asking for it, but because No Man’s Sky makes me feel at ease despite its grand nature. I have been dealing with an anxiety disorder ever since I was a kid, and I was cast into a vast melting pot of neurodivergence that labelled me as something different. But that didn’t mean I lacked the capacity to belong.
Sometimes I might need to hide myself away to recharge, or maybe I’ll interpret a social situation in the wrong way thanks to the irrational pressure found in my mind, but that doesn’t make me any less of a human being. No Man’s Sky presents us with a lonely universe where I can cast aside all those preconceptions and be alone with my thoughts for a while, knowing that wherever I go or whatever I do, it’s an opportunity to relax and ground myself again.
For a long time I thought this game was lost, that No Man’s Sky had become an online title where I would be missing out if I didn’t play with other people or make use of the deluge of crafting mechanics. But with the arrival of theWorlds Part 1 update, I’m proven wrong. It’s still the same game at its core, but implements greater planetary diversity, detailed clouds, and a more sophisticated model of procedural generation that just wasn’t possible before.
It was Sean Murray’s deep dive into the update that truly convinced me, where you can see his enthusiasm for No Man’s Sky in full force as he touches on the melancholic waves that can now be found on various planets, and how one of his favourite things is to land his ship and watch them crash against the shore for hours on end. Every planet is a mystery. While I imagine the procedural generation will eventually give way to repetition, I will never fall out of love with boarding my ship and piercing the atmosphere into the unknown. Its visuals, music, and baseline mechanical simplicity means I can still enjoy No Man’s Sky in the original form, a game which, despite its vastness, helps me feel relaxed, subdued, and resolutely myself.
No Man’s Sky
WHERE TO PLAY
Lose yourself in a vast sci-fi odyssey as you explore a near-infinite, procedurally generated universe.
Set out from the edge of the Euclid galaxy and carve out your own interstellar existence in a vast universe teeming with life, danger and near-endless mystery.
No Man’s Sky is a hugely-ambitious, heavily-stylised, sci-fi adventure that spans entire galaxies all brought to life with procedural generation. Travel through an endless array of increasingly diverse and dangerous star systems, prospecting for rare materials, trading with alien life, populate planets and searching for clues to the meaning of the universe’s mysterious existence.
How you survive is up to you. Assemble entire fleets of dreadnought-class freighters and tear across the universe; build sprawling habitable bases across planet surfaces, beneath the ground or under the ocean; buy and upgrade your own weapons and star ships and do battle with outlaw space pirates, hostile alien fauna or the mysterious sentinel fleets.
The universe is yours to explore - trillions upon trillions of planets, waiting to be discovered.
