Scratching my No Man's Sky and Satisfactory itches, this new space game from an acclaimed survival dev is finally on Steam

No Man’s Sky offers a lot – to dive deep into all of its systems and gameplay experiences requires more hours in the day than most have to spare. It’s huge, captivating, and constantly adding more to its seemingly infinite sandbox. It is, without question, one of the best space games ever. But for those who are time-strapped, how about a more condensed, focused space survival experience that, in true Satisfactory fashion, weaves in miles of hypnotizing supply lines? That’s exactly what StarRupture offers, and it’s just arrived in Steam Early Access.

Let me make it clear: just like in Satisfactory, you’re not going to be hopping in a spaceship and warp driving to a bazillion different planets in StarRupture. Things are contained to just one decently sized open-world planet. However, the on-foot exploration, resource mining, base building, and alien blasting gameplay feel very reminiscent of Hello Games’ and Coffee Stains’ respective masterpieces.

You can play it on your own or as a co-op experience with up to four players, and you get to choose from a range of archetypal ‘classes’ at the very beginning of your adventure. The biologist, scientist, soldier, and engineer all come with different backgrounds and specialisms. You’ll spawn onto a planet with an empty inventory, save for a mining laser that you can use to break down rocks for minerals, and it’s up to you to start finding and harvesting items and resources to survive.

There are hunger, thirst, and toxicity meters to keep an eye on, as well as your overall health bar. You can find and craft weapons too to defend yourself from alien threats. Given that developer Creepy Jar has already excelled in creating an intense survival game with Green Hell, this should be a pretty challenging world to live in.

While all of that sounds very manual, large-scale automation and a sprawling, industrious network of machines is the goal here. Just like Satisfactory, you can build structures that harvest, refine, or deconstruct materials, and everything can be connected with miles of conveyor belts. All of these need power, of course, and the planet’s proximity to a toasty star means that solar panels are a reliable way to get the electricity you need. However, you and your base are at constant risk of being fried by giant blasts of heat, which erupt across the planet every now and then. You must seek shelter, or end up being turned to ashes.

StarRupture is out now in Steam Early Access, and you can grab it for just $15.99 / £13.59, which is 20% off its standard price. Grab it on Steam here if it sounds up your street.

Of course, as this is an early access launch, there is plenty more to come from Creepy Jar. The roadmap above lays out its plans for the coming months, which includes map expansions; extra guns, resources, and building types; new combat mechanics; a wildlife system; and much more. While StarRupture’s environmental disasters are all about extreme heat right now, Creepy Jar also reveals that when 1.0 arrives, a more frosty cataclysm will arrive, with the Frost Wave and a new biome that I’m sure will be suitably wintery.