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.

Rather than going into in-depth detail about the content, the trailer instead showcases how players can work together to conduct research experiments on the various planets they have to visit. There is also quite a bit of chaos shown off in the trailer, with players needing to deal with the consequences of some of their actions during any given mission.

At launch, STARSEEKER: Astroneer Expeditions will feature cross-platform multiplayer and progression, with all of its online systems working. The studio has promised that it will offer a “fun action sandbox” along with hundreds of missions and tasks. Players will be able to complete these missions to earn a variety of rewards, all while they climb up different reputation paths, which form the basis of the title’s progression systems.

STARSEEKER: Astroneer Expeditions will also feature an ongoing narrative that will change as the title gets more content through post-launch support.

System Era Softworks has noted that it is aiming to spend a year in Early Access as it slowly works towards the 1.0 release of STARSEEKER: Astroneer Expeditions. Among the content planned for the game is the addition of new regions, items, characters, and sandbox systems, among many other things.

As you would expect from a multiplayer-focused entry in the series, the showcase for STARSEEKER: Astroneer Expeditions leans quite heavily into giving us a look at the multiplayer gameplay. The showcase also features creative director Adam Bromell providing a few details for the upcoming title, while also teasing some of the new content coming to Astroneer in its Megatech DLC.

“With this game, I didn’t want to just make a sequel to Astroneer,” explained Bromell in the video. “This is not Astroneer 2. This is a game that really represents the kind of online sandbox games that I want System Era to be known for, so much so that it is a whole new genre, and it is a whole new title. That game is STARSEEKER: Astroneer Expeditions.”

STARSEEKER: Astroneer Expeditions has been described as a “full-blown expedition game” with the gameplay revolving around improvisation as well as co-operation. In the title, players are recruits on an experimental space station dubbed the ESS Starseeker. Working under the leadership of the Fronteer Force, players are tasked with setting off on timed missions on different alien worlds.

The showcase for STARSEEKER: Astroneer Expeditions focused on three main steps that players will have to go through: gearing up for a mission, deploying on to a hostile planet, and surviving and celebrating the success of their missions. The video gave us a look at these three steps by showcasing a mission on planet Tephra.

Tephra itself is described as being “a lush and mysterious planet” that features vast oceans, cavernous depths to dive, and tangled jungles to navigate. Through Tephra, System Era Softworks has also highlighted the fact that each planet in STARSEEKER: Astroneer Expeditions will be hand-crafted, which will allow players to revisit points of interest that the might have spotted in a previous run but didn’t have the time to go check out.

In the video, a squad deployed on to Tephra with the mission to help in repairing critical equipment used by the science team. The squad was forced to improvise the repairs when the equipment was found to have been gooped up by the local fauna.

As for the original Astroneer, its Megatech DLC will bring with it a host of new content for players that enjoy the game’s base-building and automation aspects. This means the ability to create massive structures and more complex automation system using expanded versions of tools already in the game like rail lines. The DLC will be accompanied by a free update that also brings with it a few new items, as well as a new megastructure-styled project that will have players dip their toes into the large-scale automation offered by the DLC. Megatech, along with the free update, are slated for release in November 2025.

STARSEEKER: Astroneer Expeditions will be coming to PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch in 2026.

After spending over two years in development on Steam Early Access (and even heading to Xbox Game Preview), System Era Softworks’ Astroneer is finally available. PC and Xbox One players can now partake in update 1.0, which adds a new solar system, new items for crafting, new vehicles, and much more.

With almost 40 early access updates till date, Astroneer sees players exploring the solar system, exploiting the sandbox as they see fit. You can create bases, mine the terrain (or shape it with the deform tool), craft gigantic structures, or just explore numerous crafted planets. Four player online drop-in/drop-out co-op is also supported, which makes for even more hijinks.

There are plenty of mysteries abounding in the universe as well, as the launch trailer below teases. Whether players work to understand these or simply gallivant around, making their own way, is completely up to them. For more information on Astroneer’s premise and how it got started, check out GamingBolt’s interview with the development team from 2017.

Among the bigger blockbusters making the rounds at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, smaller releases like System Era Softworks’ endearing space exploration/survival title Astroneer has received a snazzy new trailer. Not only that but the developer also confirmed that version 1.0 would finally be releasing in December 2018. The game has been in Steam Early Access since December 2016.

The trailer itself features ample amounts of gameplay, from the world changing to enemies and cave exploration. Various planets can be explored and effectively mined for resources to survive. System Era Softworks also revealed that the game would update research systems, introduce new resource types, vehicles and modules, support Mac and even include a narrative.

Post-launch plans currently include cartography, mod support, weather systems and liquid on the planets. Head here for more information on the same. The real question is: Will the Xbox One version also be ready to leave Game Preview in December 2018? We’ll have to wait for confirmation on the same.