No Man’s Sky: five years of metaphysical adventures

As it celebrates with a teaser of a new update, the strange, metaphysical space exploration has survived a tricky take-off and retained its vital spirit

As soon as I set foot on my first planet in No Man's Sky five years ago, dying almost immediately in the boiling atmosphere of an utterly barren, deserted world, I was hooked. Here at last, was a space game for the rest of us, and by the rest of us I mean kids who grew up watching Silent Running and Solaris, and reading the trippy existential sci-fi of Ray Bradbury, Stanisaw Lem and Ursula K le Guin. Here was a space game with no space marines, where making a bad decision on a hostile alien planet or in some distant asteroid belt could have deadly ramifications, and where existence among the stars was about toil and patience and long periods of silent travel.

This wasn't how everyone felt about the game upon its much-hyped launch in 2016. No Man's Sky was famously revealed at the 2014 Game Awards, a hugely popular showcase for new mega-budget blockbusters, the gaming equivalent of advertising during the Super Bowl. This high-profile introduction, together with some ludicrously ambitious plans from tiny Guildford developer Hello Games, led to wild expectations - a gigantically detailed massively multiplayer space opera, combining elements of Elite Dangerous, Eve Online and Star Citizen into one giant production.