Hello Games

Orbital, Omega and the Adrift expedition all released in fairly quick succession in early 2024!

Omega was an especially challenging update. We essentially built a demo in the form of a free expedition, which has different technical requirements on different platforms, and which also had to serve as a sort of tutorial for new players. We also allowed players to start expeditions from existing saves - something the community had been requesting for a while - which required some delicate data-masking and context-handling of save games. We always feel extremely cautious around anything related to save data. Many of our players have thousands of hours of progress by now.

Orbital introduced two massive features we'd been working on for a while: a complete redesign of space stations, and constructable starships.

Some players have been wanting to customise ships forever, but ship-hunting is such a core part of No Man's Sky that we couldn't simply remove that feature. Instead, we implemented the ability to collect modules and construct new ships from scratch, while acknowledging naturally-occurring ships with an "authenticated" badge.

We decided not to redesign the abandoned versions of space stations. It feels somehow fitting that they are a relic of the old design...