a b c Vore, Bryan (10 December 2014). "Stop Thinking Of No Man's Sky As A Multiplayer Game". Game Informer. Archived from the original on 13 July 2016 . Retrieved 12 July 2016. Kris Graft for Gamasutra commented that many players and journalists had both high expectations for the game as well as wide expectations, with some believing that it would be, among other aspects, the "best space sim", the "best multiplayer action shooter", and the "best pure exploration game". [249] Ars Technica 's Kyle Orland found that unlike with the developers of Spore or Fable, games promoted with "saturation PR campaigns that promised revolutionary and industry-changing gameplay features" which failed to appear in final releases, Hello Games's statements about No Man's Sky were "relatively restrained and realistic about what they were promising". Orland surmises that many players and journalists "layer[ed] their own expectations onto the game's gaps" from what Hello Games actually claimed. [247] Vlambeer's founder Rami Ismail considered the strength of the marketing campaign by Hello Games and Sony to generate interest in the game, calling the pitch using the concept of magnitudes and scale rather than absolutes as "a little masterclass in explaining an abstract concept to the largest possible audience"; Polygon 's Ben Kuchera agreed on this point, but considered that the marketing may have gotten away from Sony and Hello Games since players did not have a concrete understanding of the game's limitations prior to launch. [259] Murray himself was aware of the "unrealistic, intangible level of excitement" that fans had of the game and given that they had been waiting three years to play it, would be expecting it to be perfect. He countered that he felt he and Hello Games tried to be "reasonably open and honest about what the game is" all throughout the marketing cycle to set expectations. [260] On the day before the official release, Murray cautioned players that No Man's Sky may not have been "the game you imagined from those trailers" and instead that the title was meant as a "very very chill game", giving players a universe-sized sandbox that makes you feel as if you "stepped into a sci-fi book cover"; Murray believed the game would have a "super divisive" response from players due to some of these expectations. [261] Elliott, Matt (15 August 2016). "No Man's Sky review". Game Revolution. Archived from the original on 12 August 2016 . Retrieved 15 August 2016. No Man's Sky is an action-adventure survival game developed and published by Hello Games. It was released worldwide for the PlayStation 4 and Windows in August 2016, for Xbox One in July 2018, for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and Series S consoles in November 2020, for Nintendo Switch in October 2022, and for macOS in June 2023. The game is built around five pillars: exploration, survival, combat, trading and base building. Players can engage with the entirety of a procedurally generated deterministic open world universe, which includes over 18 quintillion planets. Through the game's procedural generation system, planets have their own ecosystems with unique forms of flora and fauna, and various alien species may engage the player in combat or trade within planetary systems. Players advance in the game by mining for resources to power and improve their equipment, buying and selling resources using credits earned by documenting flora and fauna or trading with the aforementioned lifeforms, building planetary bases and expanding space fleets, or otherwise following the game's overarching plot by seeking out the mystery around the entity known as The Atlas.

Hartup, Phil (2 June 2016). "The delay of No Man's Sky, a scorned Kotaku journalist, and the paranoia of gamers-in-waiting". New Statesman. Archived from the original on 3 June 2016 . Retrieved 3 June 2016. Machkovech, Sam (15 August 2016). "No Man's Sky review: Total eclipse of the galaxy's heart". Ars Technica. Archived from the original on 15 August 2016 . Retrieved 15 August 2016. Walker-Smart, Sam (26 July 2016). "65daysofstatic - No Man's Sky: Music For An Infinite Universe". Clash. Archived from the original on 16 August 2016 . Retrieved 9 August 2016. Porter, Jon (15 March 2019). "No Man's Sky Online announced, coming as a free update this summer". The Verge . Retrieved 15 March 2019.Stapleton, Dan (16 August 2016). "No Man's Sky Review". IGN. Archived from the original on 17 August 2016 . Retrieved 16 August 2016.

Hillier, Brenna (11 October 2016). "Officially the No Man's Sky development team is still silent, but at least one staffer says everyone's fine and working hard". VG247. Archived from the original on 11 October 2016 . Retrieved 11 October 2016.Trinca, Jamie (12 August 2016). "No Man's Sky Review". VideoGamer.com. Archived from the original on 14 August 2016 . Retrieved 12 August 2016. Newhouse, Alex (2 July 2016). "Making Sense of No Man's Sky's Massive Universe". GameSpot. Archived from the original on 5 July 2016 . Retrieved 2 July 2016. a b c d e f Khatchadourian, Raffi (18 May 2015). "World without end: creating a full-scale digital cosmos". Annals of Games. The New Yorker. Vol.91, no.13. pp.48–57. Archived from the original on 29 July 2015 . Retrieved 5 August 2015. Faulkner, Cameron (13 April 2022). "No Man's Sky's new free update turns you into a space outlaw". The Verge . Retrieved 14 April 2022.

The Traveller (the player character) wakes up on a remote planet with amnesia and must locate their crashed starship. After finding their starship, its computer guides the Traveller to make the necessary repairs and to collect the resources needed to fuel a hyperspace jump to another planetary system. En route, the Traveller encounters individual members of three alien species, the Gek, the Korvax and the Vy'keen, that inhabit the galaxy. During their voyage, the Traveller is compelled by an unknown force to reach the centre of the galaxy. Grant, Christopher (6 December 2018). "The Game Awards 2018: Here are all the winners". Polygon . Retrieved 7 December 2018. Kollar, Philip (12 August 2016). "No Man's Sky review". Polygon. Archived from the original on 13 August 2016 . Retrieved 12 August 2016. Blevins, Tal (15 August 2014). "Gamescom 2014: The Sun Will Burn Out Before You See All of No Man's Sky". IGN. Archived from the original on 1 April 2016 . Retrieved 1 April 2016. Hello Games announced the development of a PlayStation VR2-optimized port of the game in June 2022. [84] This version was released as the "Fractal Update", coinciding with the VR2's release on 22 February 2023, and included many visual updates for VR users and more options and activities for all players. [85] The "Interceptor" update in April 2023 expanded the number of different enemy Sentinels the player may face, as well as corrupted worlds where some of these Sentinels run rampant. [86]a b "No Man's Sky investigated over 'misleading' adverts". BBC. 29 September 2016. Archived from the original on 30 September 2016 . Retrieved 29 September 2016. Stuart, Keith (3 March 2020). "Death Stranding and Control dominate Bafta games awards nominations". The Guardian . Retrieved 5 March 2020. Kratsch, Benjamin (9 August 2016). "Sean Murray talks about the future of No Man's Sky". Red Bull. Archived from the original on 10 August 2016 . Retrieved 11 August 2016. Do you have a friend on another gaming system with whom you’ve always wanted to explore the great unknown? A legendary base you’ve seen videos of but never been able to visit? A mission that you think would be great to play with friends on other platforms?

A second update released in March 2017, known as the "Path Finder Update", added several new features to the game. Among these included the ability to share bases with other players, as well as new vehicles called exocraft to help in exploration. The exocraft can be built on the player's set home planet and called upon on any other planet. The update also contained a permadeath option that wipes the player's progress completely on death; support for Steam Workshop for user modifications on the Windows version; new base building features and materials, ship and multitool classes and support for PlayStation 4 Pro enhanced graphics. [29] [30] [31] Savov, Vlad (1 July 2014). "This is the most ambitious game in the universe". The Verge. Archived from the original on 25 September 2015 . Retrieved 24 September 2015. Krupa, Daniel (8 July 2015). "No Man's Sky: How the Economy Works". IGN. Archived from the original on 9 September 2015 . Retrieved 17 September 2015.One of the more significant features that appeared to be absent from the release version of No Man's Sky was its multiplayer capabilities. Hello Games had stated during development that No Man's Sky would include multiplayer elements, though the implementation would be far from traditional methods as one would see in a massively multiplayer online game, to the point where Murray has told players to not think of No Man's Sky as a multiplayer game. [26] [261] Because of the size of the game's universe, Sean Murray estimated that more than 99.9% of the planets would never be explored by players, [20] and that the chance of meeting other players through chance encounters would be "incredibly slim". [272] Murray had stated in a 2014 interview that No Man's Sky would include a matchmaking system that is similar to that used for Journey when such encounters do occur; [273] each online player would have an "open lobby" that any players in their in-universe proximity would enter and leave. [26] This approach was envisioned to provide "cool moments" for players as they encounter each other, but not meant to support gameplay like player versus environment or fully cooperative modes. [261] According to Murray in 2018, Hello Games had worked to try to keep this light multiplayer element in the game through the final part of their development cycle, but found that it was very difficult to include, and opted to remove it for the game's release, believing that with the size of the game's universe, only a few players would end up experiencing it. [274] This article's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed. Please help improve it by removing unnecessary details and making it more concise. ( April 2019) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Guarino, Ben (10 August 2016). " 'No Man's Sky' is so huge – and popular – players found 10 million virtual species in one night". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 12 August 2016 . Retrieved 10 August 2016. Starkey, Daniel (13 August 2016). "The Power of No Man's Sky Is Making You Feel Insignificant". Wired. Archived from the original on 13 August 2016 . Retrieved 13 August 2016.