SpaceEngine

absolutely crazy, it is the most realistic game ive ever seen and played, the price is so low for how good it is, i cant imagine practically having the universe in my computer, i even tricked someone to thinking a picture of jupiter from space engine is real!

its awesome and its horrifying, i always scream in terror whenever i go to a planet thats not earth.

Great game. I love space, and the dread of celestial objects so this is right up my alley.

I do have some criticisms though.

Astronomy data isn't complete, as TrES 2b, theorized to be a "Dark Jupiter"-- absorbing 99% of all light -- looks nothing like what it is in concept. It just looks like a faint orange jupiter like the rest.

J1407 also does not have any planets, but in data there is supposed to be; namely the famous J1407 B which is known as the planet with the largest rings.

With this in mind, while I do know there are limitations to astronomical data we have there is no reason why we couldn't have these anomalies programmed. Even if these planets are only a theory I think an effort to create more anomalies like these can serve to enhance the space delving experience. Space is known to be vast, diverse and unfathomable.

I do wish there was an easier way to finds voids too. Bootes void is famous and I do want to see how that looks, terrifying as it is.

If a planet has extreme weather, like sonic winds up to thousands of MPH, sound design or special effects indicating this would be powerful. Same with gas giants and their potential for violent thunder, rock rains, magma clouds, etc. If a planet is made of diamonds, their luminosity should be affected accordingly. Stars orbiting blackholes should have special effects indicating their inevitable demise.

Lastly, I know it does take some creative thinking but maybe there could be planets that we never thought of. A plasma planet? One with a violent geography, leading to massively unstable topography? A planet that is in the middle of being torn apart by it's parent star?

All of these things would massively progress the experience that Space Engine offers.

When I first saw and downloaded this game, I thought it would be cool. What I didn't realize was that it would be life altering. The endless beauty of this simulation never fails to bring me serenity and a greater appreciation for the incredible and awesome universe we live in.

The game is really immersive as you can land on planets and moons and even stars! They also have planets and stars and galaxies that is fake if you want to turn that on as well. If you try the VR mode, you aren't ready for the awesomeness.

EXTREMELY well optimized, i loved and still love this game since i first played

Absolutely amazing game for any space geeks out there. Needs a decent PC, but ain't that every game these days?

amazing so cool
i am a person that loves space and just exploring
Although i get tired of it after 30 minutes, I always come back every couple of days because its so entertaining

This game is like being in a museum but if the museum had endless masterpieces
fantastic

It shows Space. It's an Engine.

I usually use SpaceEngine to collect high-resolution desktop background photos for my OLED monitor and phone.

Graphics 10/10: Can it seriously get any better than this? A game like this should just... not exist. Yet, it does. Bonus, it also scales wonderfully and is quite stable.

Soundtrack 10/10: Yes, it has music in the background. And yes, it is better than your usual Spotify background music playlist.

Gameplay 10/10: NOT FOR EVERYONE. It's an amazing piece of software, not a game. But I can seriously get lost in the universe for hours, jumping around from planet to planet, galaxy to galaxy - only to realize I am millions of light-years away from Earth. It is a showcase of how mysterious, exciting, and incomprehensibly large the universe is. Everything they claim you can do, you can do.

Hey, the game also has Steam Workshop.

Reviewed on: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D, AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT, 64GB RAM, Game installed on an SSD.

If you're curious, depending on the situation and with maxed out graphics at 3440x1440, the game uses around 10GB-13GB dedicated VRAM (could be some variance as the base dedicated VRAM in task manager is high for me), usually around 4-7GB RAM, between 40 and 100% GPU, and up to 20% CPU. Game runs at flat 165FPS (Vsync) but will lower when loading terrain or viewing volumetric objects.

If you want to experience first hand and in control of just how irrelevant, small and unimportant (subjective) we are in this unfathomable scale of universe, a pale blue dot like said by Carl Sagan, please give this a try. It's worth the awe and wonder to play this for the first time and zooming out all the way so that even the milky way galaxy looks the size of a penny. Even for non space enthusiasts and astronomers it's bound to give some amazement. Or the opposite being fear but I prefer and hope for the first said reactions.

Other than that, you can have a close up and almost pretty accurate look into all of the planets in our solar system, their moons, the sun, and all other outer celestial bodies and asteroids/comets etc. Also most nearby found stars, planets, black holes, pulsars and nebulae are also named the same as in real life, explore able and pretty accurate. Even Andromeda and the known and found galaxies are there and visit able. Go far enough and rest is all procedural generated but still very diverse collection of stars and other bodies to visit. I can't recommend this enough.

It really puts the world into perspective when you get to experience the sheer enormity of the universe in such a visceral way like this.

Also this game has black holes and you can kinda go inside them. First time I did, it was existentially terrifying in a way I can't quite describe. 10/10 would let the black abyss swallow me whole again :D

amazing visuals of the real-world universe. check out the DLCs and Add-Ons for more detailed scenes.

This highly realistic is very exciting to see, and if you like to adventure, well this is the game. Come check it out! For only $30 to see the Universe, that is a deal!

In all seriousness, this game is honestly means a lot to me. I've always seen gameplay of it back when I was in High School and I got really into astronomy. Now been playing it and it's a comfort game of mine. I love mindlessly drifting off away from Earth in a spaceship to another planet far, far away... maybe even a galaxy, ;_; oh and looking at all the cursed planets that 100% would kill anyone landing on them on contact but hey, they look pretty. Banger OST too

This game looks awesome, but I am screwed if I can figure out how to play it. I load the game occasionally and sit and look at it wondering what buttons to press. Sorry I don't get it, but well done anyway. Maybe one day I'll get properly into it.

amazing realistic and real-life planetarium software, 100% recommend on sale.

my new favorite game and i have played many many games before (not too many on steam but many on xbox and mobile) the graphics are amazing, you can never run out of things to do. There are over 10 trillion galaxies in the game and each galaxy have anywhere from 50 billion-2 trillion stars and each star has anywhere from 5-15 planets from my experience. It is a must have game.

Endless exploration and endless fun.I recomend this game.

Amazing way to explore the Universe! Can't wait to plug this into the navigation system of my interstellar drive.

Everything looks so realistic, GREAT 3D SPACE!!!! Worth the money, honestly.

while this "game" isn't any kind of universe sandbox, or physics simulator. it is a phenomenal engine, with amazing visual accuracy in how our universe looks. one of my favorite things to explore in space engine are black holes. i don't think i've seen a better, more accurate representation of a black hole. if you're looking for a physics simulator, this game isnt for you. but if you're looking for endless exploration on how our universe looks, this is a must have.

i have fallen in love with this game, its so unique like every planet has its own characteristic. since august 2023 i have never stopped playing this game, i dont know why but it gives me a sense of calm just knowing that it all really exists or could exist in our universe and the massive scale of it, not millions or billions but trillions of miles just from one star to the other. its humbling in a sense knowing that whatever day you had good or bad, it wont matter in the eyes of the universe and thats comforting to know. sometimes life can be hard but on days like that i would imagine myself being on a barren rocky planet billions of light-years away with nothing on it. this game has changed how i view the world, we are special but also not, when this world ends another starts, when we die the universe will continue.

buy this game if you feel stressed about life it cured mine.

the space stuff is just so high graphics

Space, space indeed.

For some advice, the game can take very very long to load up on first load, if you the controls are complicated then you probably accidentally selected aircraft of spacecraft mode, to fix it, go to the bottom left settings bit of the screen, on the right of the settings bit, there are 3 buttons, the leftmost one will fix the control issues and set it to wasd movement and most importantly, this game is not for everyone, the game cycle is;

Step 1; Find cool thing
Step 2: Look at cool thing
Step 3: Repeat

Some may find it boring, I am not one of them, the only thing I would potentially improve about this game is making a setting to get a 2D map of the selected planet in a Mercator of other projection style, like space-engine, also some kind of button to automatically go to the highest or lowest point on a planet, also being able to see the highest point on a planet, not just the lowest below sea level.

But really it is an absolutely amazing game, if you like space or know someone who likes space, go by it for yourself or them.

The game is very cool and fun for space lovers! there are some downsides like surface on planets, but its a amazing game overall. i totally recomend it!

love it, would be absolutely amazing if there were parallel universes aswell

This game is very fun and i've been only playing for 3 days the plus side is that i can zoom in to planets and the details of the planets are amazingly detailed

I love this as a tool to understand what I am looking at while I am stargazing. From everything I can tell the the scale, distance, and timing of everything is shockingly accurate. Also while being very beautiful to look at.

beautiful graphics. surprisingly worked on my non gaming PC with the textures all the way up. it can still run well on pretty low end devices

this was fun but even more fun with mods

This game is absolutely beautiful. If you're looking for a space game where you can just explore at your leisure without distractions, this is it. The game is as faithful a recreation of our observable universe (with some generated content) as it can get. If you know of a specific planet, star, nebula, or even black hole, it's in this game, and you can find it.

There are two modes to explore the universe; Planetarium and Flight Simulator. Planetarium comes with an in-game tutorial that teaches you all the basics of movement and what the interface does, and while Flight Simulator doesn't have a tutorial, there is an Online Manual button you can click that will take you to an unofficial, but recommended, page.

I personally recommend just picking Planetarium, going through the tutorial, and just flying around the universe in Free Mode, as this will give you the best beginner experience. The controls for Free Mode are WASD to move forwards, backwards, and slide left and right. R and F move your camera up and down respectively. Holding down the left mouse button moves your camera to look around. Scrolling up on the mouse wheel increases your movement speed, and scrolling down decreases it.

Clicking on any object in the game will give you its basic information on the left of your screen, and right clicking them will give you some options. You even have the option to land on any planet, star, moon, or asteroid! However, you're just a camera, and while you can zip about on the surface of these objects, you have no avatar to walk around with. There are also no cities on any planets, including Earth, and no aliens to encounter.

The game is massive, and there are literally trillions of stars to explore. However, I strongly urge players to take it slow when playing this game. Many planets will appear similar to others, as do stars and moons. Don't burn yourself out exploring too quickly. The game is best enjoyed at a slow pace.

This might be one of the most fascinating "games" ever made. It would be even better if they added complex randomly generated vegetation on planets with multicellular life, like different types of alien trees. Enough variation that you are unlikely to find the same types of vegetation on two different planets. And make planets with life rarer at the same time so they're harder to find.
Someone should make a mod for this.

8.5/10 game.

Yea it's great, I recommend turning off procedurally generated planets and galaxies to get a sense of how little we know about the universe. There isn't too much stuff to do (vaguely speaking), close-up terrain isn't as great as something like Outerra Anteworld, alas this one is purely focused on Earth. Lots of options and controls to tinker with, Steam Workshop items were underwhelming with some good ones. Gives existential crisis or fear at times, just set up your expectations this is really an overpowered planetarium observatory for chill experiences.

After the year $year-of-the-linux-desktop it surely will serve as an intergalactic map for lost ones in space!

this game is really cool it is a good simulation. there is one problem it does crash a lot but still good game

While most games strive to delight their audience with fast paced game play, this game manages to bring emptiness and existential dread at 1 astronomical unit per second!
4/4!

This is the dream come true for people who wish to explore space in its full glory. A brilliant software unlike any other, crafted like never before.

So far the best and one of the most realistic space simulators I've played. Love how easy it is to navigate to different systems and Love the graphics, also really great with mods!

This game is a space nerd's wet dream. I can also see this being the base for an epic space game similar to elite dangerous or no man's sky (more the former than the latter, visually and realistically).....someone should do that, actually.

Unbelievable. Stunning graphics and and practically a perfect scale of the universe. Billions of light years big

Its a cool game that you can explore the universe ik some of galaxies are generated and nebulaes too but its really good i recommend you to play

This game is probably the greatest space game on steam, the graphics are insanely realistic and the fact you can land on planets is just amazing

really good game with cool graphics but i recently updated my pc and my planetarium planets are gone but still a great game

This is an amazing experience. It is stunningly beautiful and at times mysterious. I recommend it to anyone who wants to experience moving beyond an earth centered view of reality. They did an outstanding job on this and it is still under development. You will not be disappointed.

You think you have an understanding of the scale of the universe, and then you exit the Milky Way. Then you go to a nearby galaxy like Andromeda or Triangulum. Then you fly through the field of galaxies at 200 million light years a second, only to meet a seemingly infinite spread of galaxies.

What an impressive tool to not only explore the known universe that we've charted, but to also get an idea of what might be out there based on scientific procedural generation. Absolutely recommend buying this full price, the developers deserve the support for their work.

This game is incredible its so amazing to see and play.

An absolutely amazing game for anyone with even the slightest interest in astronomy.

It is an awesome game and is totally worth the money. You can do so many things such as land on planets, look at nebula's up close, check out black holes etc. Space Engine is amazing.

I absolutely love it! There’s really not much else to say. It’s a breathtaking experience that captures the sheer vastness of the universe while showcasing the immense power of black holes and neutron stars for example. Space Engine is a truly impressive and solid piece of software/game.

That said, I do have a few wishes for improvement:

- Customizable units and values – It would be great to have more flexibility in displaying data (e.g., temperatures, age, gravity) to make them easier to read and understand.
- Faster development – Progress seems a bit slow, with very few new features in the past two years. For example I would love a Side-by-side object comparison – a feature that allows you to directly compare two celestial objects, like placing Earth next to a black hole to better grasp the size difference and compare their data.

Overall, Space Engine is an incredible experience, but with a few additions, it could be even better!

I really liked how the graphics were when I first got the game, I think this has both style and graphics and realism for people who are interested in space.