Astroneer

You are an astronaut-for-hire on a colourful, low-poly solar system, equipped with a terrain tool that vacuums up ground and puts it back somewhere else. You dig, you build, you research strange objects, and you work out how to get to the next planet.

It is a survival game with almost all the hostility removed. There are no enemies to fight, no hunger bar, and no thirst. What can kill you is running out of oxygen, falling into a hole you dug, or being a very long way from power when night falls. That constraint set makes it one of the best co-op games to play with someone who does not usually play games.

• The terrain tool is the whole toy: dig tunnels, flatten hills, build ramps into the sky.
• Oxygen comes from your base and from tethers, a chain of little posts you drop as you explore.
• Power is generated, stored and shared through the same connection system as oxygen.
• Seven planets, each with its own resources, hazards and reason to visit.

1. 1

   Drop tethers as you walk

   Tethers carry oxygen and power from your base or shelter. A tether line is your lifeline and your breadcrumb trail home.

2. 2

   Build the starter chain

   Smelting Furnace, Printer, and a Research Chamber. Everything else grows from those three.

3. 3

   Research everything you find

   Odd plants and buried samples go into the Research Chamber for bytes, and bytes unlock the catalogue. Explore, do not grind.

4. 4

   Set up real power

   Solar and wind are free but unreliable. Batteries smooth the gaps, and a small generator covers the night.

5. 5

   Dig down

   Caves hold the resources the surface does not, and the terrain tool means you never need a ladder.

6. 6

   Build a shuttle

   Getting off the starting planet is the real first milestone, and it opens the actual game.

• The connection network: oxygen, power and data all flow through the same lines, so extending your base extends everything at once.
• Vehicles (rover, tractor, trailers) turn expeditions into logistics and carry your infrastructure with you.
• Automation with sensors, auto arms and conveyors arrived later and turns a base into a factory.
• Soil is a resource: the centrifuge turns dirt into raw materials, which makes the terrain tool an economy.
• Planet hopping needs fuel, a shuttle and a plan for what you are collecting when you land.

Seven planets, arranged from friendly to hostile, each with distinctive resources and a distinctive look. Travel is a real project: fuel, a shuttle, and a decision about what you are bringing back.

• The starting world is gentle and forgiving, and is where your main base should stay.
• Later planets bring hazards: extreme storms, corrosive plant life, unbreathable dark, and much longer nights.
• Each planet holds a core structure, and activating all of them is the closest thing to a main quest.
• Resources are distributed deliberately, so late-game crafting means visiting several worlds rather than one.

The story is told almost entirely through the environment and through the odd corporate broadcast from Exo Dynamics, the company that hired you. There are structures here that predate the company, and the game is quietly about what they were for.

• The planetary cores and the gateway network are alien infrastructure, not human.
• Exo Dynamics presents itself as an employer and behaves like a treasure hunt sponsor.
• Activating the gateways changes things about the system in ways nobody explains beforehand.
• The tone is wonder rather than dread. This is a story about finding something wonderful, not something awful.

• Up to four share a save, and the game is at its best with two people building one silly base.
• No friendly fire, no PvP, nothing to argue about except architecture.
• Split by planet once you have shuttles: one person building infrastructure, one prospecting.
• It is a genuinely good game to play with children or with someone new to games, precisely because nothing is trying to kill you.

• Always carry spare tethers. Always.
• Put a small shelter at the far end of any long expedition. It is a respawn and an oxygen source.
• Keep a packager or two on hand: it lets you pick up and move built machines instead of rebuilding.
• Do not dig straight down without a ramp back up. The tool giveth and the tool taketh away.
• Batteries before more generators. Storage solves night, capacity solves peak.
• Explore for research rather than grinding it. The catalogue fills faster that way.

• The official site and patch notes for automation and seasonal content.
• The community wiki for resource-by-planet tables and crafting chains.
• Ask in our Discord. This is the one to suggest when someone says they do not like survival games.