The original Astroneer came out of Early Access all the way back in 2019, and at the time, it was seen as a fun new take on the survival crafting genre thanks to its more whimsical tone and light factory-building elements. While it never really caught mass market appeal like titles like Valheim would in the following years, the game still held a fond place in many of our hearts. Fast forward more than half a decade later, developer System Era Softworks has now released its follow-up—STARSEEKER: Astroneer Expeditions—and as the name would imply, it is a major departure from the formula set by its predecessor.
Rather than expanding on the survival crafting elements of the original, STARSEEKER instead largely leaves those gameplay systems behind. Rather, it jumps into an entirely different genre altogether, with more similarities with extraction shooters than anything else. The title puts you in the role of an Astroneer on the ESS Starseeker—a spaceship tasked with exploring the far reaches of space and conducting scientific experiments. You’re not alone in this, however. The ESS Starseeker, which essentially acts as the central hub where you can do things like take on missions or change gear, is filled with other Astroneers as well. Right from the get go, STARSEEKER makes its emphasis on multiplayer quite clear.
"Rather than expanding on the survival crafting elements of the original, STARSEEKER instead largely leaves those gameplay systems behind."
While the core game loop is quite simple, setting you up to take drop pods to strange alien planets where you can explore, gather resources, complete objectives for more rewards, and get science points by scanning flora and fauna, the general structure of the whole experience revolves around completing simple missions, which task you with, for example, scanning a certain number of alien plants, or gathering a certain amount of Resin. Each expedition allows you to team up with up to three other Astroneers, and even if you jump in alone, you will often get thrown into expeditions that already have other players running around.
Once on the planet itself, you also have to deal with a strict time limit. You have a limited amount of oxygen, after all, and you need to complete all of your objectives in 30 minutes. Dying has severe penalties as well, denying you all of the resources you may have gathered. Once you’ve accomplished everything you wanted on a given run, you then have to make your way to one of the many launchpads all over the map, and call in a drop pod to take you back to the ESS Starseeker.
Much like other extraction-styled games, each expedition in STARSEEKER: Astroneer Expeditions also has other players and teams running around completing their own objectives. Thanks to a complete lack of any PvP mechanics in the entire game, players are instead incentivized to work together to complete the many objectives on the map. To help you accomplish this without having to worry about potential language barriers that are bound to pop up in a typical multiplayer game, STARSEEKER also features a simple pinging system where, on pinging something on the map, other Astroneers can acknowledge your objective and offer to help by pinging back. The entire system works quite well, and is context-sensitive, changing the meaning of a ping depending on what you’re looking at.
"Thanks to a complete lack of any PvP mechanics in the entire game, players are instead incentivized to work together to complete the many objectives on the map."
Unfortunately, one of the biggest issues with STARSEEKER: Astroneer Expeditions is its poor tutorialization. While it encourages trial-and-error, letting you learn from mistakes you might make throughout your time with the game, it doesn’t really teach you much about how its many systems work, and even its UI can often be incredibly clunky. When you first get to the ESS Starseeker, for example, it can be difficult to figure out how you’re even supposed to start an expedition, and it took me around 15 minutes of running around the place and interacting with just about every in-game terminal I could find to finally get to the one that let me start missions. The “map” you get in the hub area is also quite possibly the most useless thing I’ve ever seen in the game. Aside from the position of a few of the NPCs, this map doesn’t really tell you anything, including your own position in the starship.
The expedition menu also certainly needs further development. While other co-op games give you options to create a party before you start a mission, and STARSEEKER: Astroneer Expeditions certainly has menu elements that imply that you could do so here as well, there just isn’t any menu option, or even a confirmation dialogue box about if you’re sure you want to start your journey solo. You can also only track up to three of your missions at a time, which, combined with the inability to get the full mission list while on an expedition, makes attempts at knocking out more missions in a single go all the more frustrating.
Progression also feels incredibly opaque throughout STARSEEKER: Astroneer Expeditions. There isn’t really any skill tree to speak of, and new outfits are just cosmetic choices. That’s not to say there aren’t some progression systems in the game; you can upgrade some of your capabilities by crafting and installing new modules in your suit. These boosts tend to be quite simple, like raising your maximum stamina, for example. Each of the major NPCs also has their own distinct reputation track which you can progress through by completing the missions they give you. Making it further up these reputation tracks will reward you with more items, like new modules or extra resources to use in crafting.
"Progression also feels incredibly opaque throughout STARSEEKER: Astroneer Expeditions."
Visually, STARSEELER: Astroneer Expeditions certainly has a lot of charm. Just about every character, despite being covered head-to-toe in their Astroneer suits, oozes plenty of charm thanks to simple things, like how they stand around. Mission descriptions also do quite a bit to help flesh out some characters, letting their quirky personalities shine through. Even the game’s various regions can often be quite fun to explore thanks to a plethora of strange flora and fauna that look equal parts interesting and gross, depending on the scenario. All of this was combined with great performance on the PS5 version, where I didn’t suffer a single hitch or slowdown despite how chaotic things could sometimes get.
Generally speaking, STARSEEKER: Astroneer Expeditions feels quite half-baked in its current incarnation. However, it is worth noting that it is an Early Access release, and System Era Softworks has confirmed that it will continue to work on the title for at least a whole year. The studio’s roadmap has also outlined how it plans to expand on the game’s content over the coming year with additions like biomes, regions, and points of interest. Thankfully, STARSEEKER: Astroneer Expeditions’ problems aren’t foundational ones, and many of my biggest complaints largely come down to the fact that the title simply needs more time in the oven.
As it currently stands, STARSEEKER: Astroneer Expeditions is a difficult game to recommend. While the core loop can certainly be quite fun, especially if you jump into an expedition with a full party of friends, it just doesn’t offer enough in the way of gameplay depth or variety right now to be worth more than an evening of fun. Combined with an incredible number of rough edges all over the title, I would say that you should give STARSEEKER a few months before jumping in.
This game was reviewed on PlayStation 5.