After years of cryptic teaser trailers and a fair few delays, Bethesda Game Studios’ latest sprawling open-world RPG,
Another great choice for those enamoured by Starfield’s promise of exhilarating dogfights and the ability to fully customize starships, Everspace 2 is entirely framed around both of those mechanics. Allowing you to tinker with your ship before flying it through the vast reaches of space, this sci-fi adventure has players embarking on daring missions and engaging in fierce battles amongst the stars.
While charting your way across the universe, you’ll be able to fly a variety of ships in both third and first-person, with the ability to customize each vessel with new upgrades, parts and weapons. You’ll need them too, with various factions standing between you and your objectives. Everspace 2 is all about the thrill of travelling through a version of outer space where everyone and everything wants you dead, and with Starfield hoping to capture that same feeling, it looks to be an ideal way to get into the galaxy-hopping mindset.
Read our review of Everspace 2.
Outer Wilds
The Outer Wilds is a game with a very unique selling point. Waking beside a campfire, you star as a young alien undertaking his first voyage around his solar system. After learning the ropes, you’re handed the keys to a beat-up spaceship and begin to explore, travelling between planets and investigating the history of your galaxy. Unfortunately, it’s here your voyage is cut short. Twenty minutes after you set forth, the sun explodes, wiping out all life around it. But death isn’t the end. You awake beside a campfire once more, returning to the beginning of your adventure with your memories still intact and your curiosity about the mysteries of the solar system officially piqued.
That’s merely the introduction to The Outer Wilds, and from there, you’re only further encouraged to explore, discover and learn. It’s an experience that turns information into a currency, with the history and secrets you uncover revealing why the sun keeps frying you to a crisp and how you can stop it. But beyond its captivating central hook, it’s also just an adventure that allows you to traverse a huge solar system and chart a series of supremely detailed planets. The Outer Wilds is like a blended cocktail of Groundhog Day and Interstellar, with a sprinkle of The Witness on top, and is a top-notch way to kill some time in space while waiting for Starfield to hit shelves.
Read our review of Outer Wilds.
Hardspace: Shipbreaker
While most sci-fi games give you the ability to construct and fly a spaceship, Hardspace: Shipbreaker comes at you with a slightly different hook. Instead of building a spaceship, why not destroy it instead? Employed as a Shipbreaker by the Lynx Corporation, your job throughout Hardspace: Shipbreaker’s campaign is to systematically tear space crafts apart, selling debris and scrap for cash.
Along the way, you’ll have to deal with hazards, using various laser-powered tools to survive being crushed by soaring debris or blown up by unstable generators. It’s similar to the various manual labour simulators that have become big in recent years, except instead of flipping houses or power washing factories, you’re lasering open derelict freighters with the knowledge that one wrong move could send you flying into the vast, unending void of space… don’t you just love a nice, cosy game?
Read our review of Hardspace: Shipbreaker.
Prey
A criminally underrated space thriller, Prey marks another of Bethesda’s biggest studios taking on the sci-fi genre, with Arkane creating one of its hallmark immersive sims aboard a haunting space station. You play as Morgan Yu: a scientist that wakes up aboard a starship known as the Talos I with no memory of how or when they got there. However, their amnesia is the least of their worries. Not only is the ship falling apart, but it’s also infested with a mysterious alien species known as the Typhon.
Hoping to discover what happened to the other passengers and locate the source of the Typhon outbreak, you must explore the ship in search of answers, battling alien threats and acquiring new gear along the way. As expected from the minds behind Deathloop and the Dishonored series, Prey boasts a dynamic world that welcomes you to interact and manipulate it, whether that’s using powerful abilities like Mimic Matter to shift into cups and hide from enemies or ascending to inaccessible platforms with the handy glue gun.
There are few experiences that allow you truly experiment with your arsenal of abilities in a sandbox that welcomes true creative freedom, but Prey is one of them and an experience that will give you plenty to do in the window before Starfield releases.
Read our review of Prey.
FTL: Faster Than Light
Offering a more strategic spacefaring adventure, FTL: Faster Than Light is yet another game that sees you flying across the galaxy aboard a starship in search of fame, glory and adventure. However, while other games lodge you in the cockpit and focus entirely on soaring through space, FTL is a punishing roguelike that has you manage your ship’s systems entirely from a top-down perspective.
After creating a small crew and picking a ship, you’ll be told you’ve intercepted a data package with information on how to defeat an unstoppable fleet of enemies known as The Rebellion. From here, every solar system, ship and planet you interact with will be randomly generated. Your goal is to cross the galaxy, deliver the information to the Galactic Federation and avoid the Rebellion. But that’s much easier said than done. En route to the drop-off point, you’ll need to maintain your ship’s systems, keep your crew alive, endure battles with rival star cruisers, evade bandits and upgrade your gear.
FTL is a tough game, and it’s made even tougher by the fact that every death resets your full run. However, it’s that challenge that makes it such a rewarding experience for those that learn its systems and overcome its threats. For those looking for something to really sink their teeth into while waiting for Starfield, you can’t go wrong with FTL.
Read our review of Faster Than Light.
EVE Online
Starfield promises to be a fully single-player RPG that focuses entirely on the player exploring the vast reaches of space alone. So, for those looking for something a little more communal before they step foot into Bethesda Games Studios’ latest open-world sandbox, EVE Online could be a solid bet.
This giant starship-based MMO offers a nigh-on endless galaxy full of opportunities for its thousands of daily users. But while other games would add strict rules to that world, EVE Online lets its players set up their own rules, create their own factions and fully immerse themselves in the role of a space explorer seeking fortune amongst the stars. The outcome is a dynamic open-world adventure where players can wage giant space battles alongside hundreds of allies, make cash by mining resources, claim bounties and generally play as any character they desire. If you’re looking to dive into a truly immersive space experience alongside a thriving community, EVE Online is the MMO you’re searching for.
Callum Williams is a freelance media writer with years of experience as a game critic, news reporter, guides writer and features writer.
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