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What are the best Space games on Steam?

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12 Games Considered

12 Options ConsideredPriceSteam RatingMINIMUM
Kerbal Space Program
Very PositiveProcessor:Core 2 Duo Memory:3GB RAM Graphics:SM3 512MB VRAM Hard Drive:4 GB HD space
FTL: Faster Than Light
––
Starbound
Very Positive–
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Very Positive–
Elite: Dangerous
Mixed–
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Kerbal Space Program

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Slant Bot
Top Pro

Teaches orbital dynamics & rocket design fundamentals in an accessible manner

•••
The physics engine does a reasonably accurate job of replicating the fundamentals behind both orbital dynamics and rocket design, so by going through the tutorials and experimenting, you're actually learning some real rocket science.
Slant Bot
Top Pro

Fun sandbox mode to experiment with rocket designs

•••
The rocket designer lets you experiment with as many different rocket designs as you can think up. The designer is based on components such as engines, fuel cells, structural elements and various other items such as parachutes.
Slant Bot
Top Pro

Huge modding scene

•••
There's a plethora of mods available that can change every single aspect of the game.
Paolo
Slant Bot
Top Pro

You just can't get bored with it, and you will learn a lot

•••
A "physics" game about space. Build rockets, space planes, space stations, rovers, landers, probes. Explore planets, moons, capture asteroids. With the addition of mods you can even test warp drive, set up a communications network, colonize a planet, mine for resources and much much more....
Slant Bot
Top Pro

In constant development

•••
KSP is a shinning example of early release done right. The currently available game is fun to play, and the developers are constantly adding new major additions.
Slant Bot
Top Pro

Construction sandbox for building and launching rockets

•••
Kerbal at its core is a rocket building and launching sandbox.
Slant Bot
Top Pro

NASA working on a mission pack for the game

•••
While not released yet NASA is working on a mission pack for the game.
Diego Floor
Top Con

Simulation might leave to be desired as you become a more advanced player

•••
Slant Bot
Top Con

Steep learning curve

•••
Kerbal Space Program is not really a pick up and play title. There is much to learn before grasping the core concepts of the game,
Slant Bot
Top Con

Graphics are not the most detailed

•••
The graphics of KSP are not the most detailed but they work non the less.
Specs
Steam Rating:Very Positive
See 9 more Pros & ConsSee 9 more Pros & Cons

FTL: Faster Than Light

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Slant Bot
Top Pro

Stress free timely decision making

•••
The game can be paused at any time, which allows for one to contemplate their next move in the game. This makes for a less stressful experience since one can leisurely make their decisions without it impacting the gameplay.
Slant Bot
Top Pro

Allows for highly strategic gameplay

•••
The rougelike game design combined with the huge amount of choices that can be made in both encounters as well as ship management makes FTL a highly strategic game as you never quite know what the game is going to throw at you. There are many decisions that can be made in the game, such as what p...
Slant Bot
Top Pro

Has modding support

•••
There are multiple mods available for FTL that can greatly change up the gameplay and looks of the game. This adds a lot of replayability to the title.
Slant Bot
Top Pro

iOS version includes extra content over the PC version

•••
The PC version of the game had extra DLC that one could pay for to extend the games gameplay. This content is included in the iOS version for the singular price of $9.99. So could be argued the iOS version is the better deal for the price.
Slant Bot
Top Pro

Morality based decisions

•••
The game works a lot like a text adventure in a roguelike wrapper. The decisions asked of the player during this adventure can affect much of the stories plot, making for an interactive story through choices such as telling aliens you are a god in order to potentially receive less trouble in your e...
Slant Bot
Top Pro

Great touch controls

•••
Even though the game was designed to be played with a keyboard and mouse originally the touch controls work exceptional well. Some could argue better that keyboard and mouse. The gameplay and design lends itself very well to the touch screen, which makes playing the game a joy on iOS.
Slant Bot
Top Con

Can be pretty difficult

•••
The amount of choices to be made (many not being good ones) and the randomization of the game makes for a situation that may be too difficult for some. This is not a game that you will beat in one play session nor 10, it takes a lot of time to get in a good run that results in winning, which some p...
Slant Bot
Top Con

Late game battles are long and boring

•••
In the later parts of the game battles are very long which can make for a bit of a boring experience, especially for those that would rather be exploring than spending so much time on battles.
Slant Bot
Top Con

Lackluster interface on iPad

•••
The weapons panel often covers up vital information on ones crew health. The problem being that this panel needs to be on screen when in a battle, which is also the exact time that crew health is very important.
Specs
Genre:Roguelite
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Starbound

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Endi Sukaj
James Howard
Top Pro

Endless space exploration

•••
Starbound offers literally quadrillions of procedurally generated planets to explore. The many biomes and worlds are smattered with a rewarding and consistent loop of mini-bosses, dungeons, dangers, and treasure, so you constantly upgrade your gear and technology.
Slant Bot
Top Pro

Boss levels

•••
For what is a procedurally generated game, Starbound offers boss levels that once beaten unlock new sectors of space to explore.
Slant Bot
Top Pro

Informative and well paced tutorials

•••
Starbound allows the player to go at their own pace while completing the tutorials. By the end of the tutorials the player will have the skills and equipment to succeed in the game and have fun doing it.
Slant Bot
Top Con

First few hours are boring

•••
Initially the player needs to amass enough coal to fuel their ship, which is a bit of a grind. It's been in Early Access for an entire year.
Specs
Steam Rating:Very Positive
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Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion

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Andris Pelcbergs
Top Pro

Leisurely real time combat

•••
The large scale of the game controlling fleets in may solar systems allows for a leisurely pace to play, which makes for worthwhile way of controlling ones ships across multiple places. This makes for less stress in the game due to how intuitive and evenly paced the game is.
Andris Pelcbergs
Top Pro

5v5 PvP team games are great

•••
The games are suspenseful. Over the course of about 1-2 hours your team's choice of strategy, ability to coordinate and maneuver the battlefield are tested in an intense environment.
Andris Pelcbergs
Top Pro

Very distinct races

•••
The game has three main races - Vasari, Advent and TEC and they offer completely different playstyles. TEC have the best economy, Advent's strength lies in their abilities and how they can be synergised and Vasari focuses on their tech - the incredible Orkulus starbase and Warp Stabilization.
Andris Pelcbergs
Top Pro

Large scale space combat

•••
Sins games range from 7-130+ planets and hundreds of ships per player, all in real time, giving the game a fairly unique scale. Battles can wage on multiple worlds simultaneously and thanks to Sins UI and unit AI you can successfully manage fighting major battles, keeping your economy and ship prod...
Andris Pelcbergs
Top Pro

Diplomacy used in a smart way

•••
Different factions will send you quests that may effect your relationship with other factions meaning you will have to choose who best to make a friend or make an enemy when taking these missions. This bit of strategy can greatly change the outcome of a game depending on how well you have chosen w...
Andris Pelcbergs
Top Pro

Many ways to play and win the game

•••
Andris Pelcbergs
Top Pro

Great modding scene

•••
While it doesn't support Steam Workshop, Sins specializes in having many great large total conversion mods, focused on major Sci-fi IPs. There's also a decent variety of smaller mods from font to planets to gameplay redesigns.
Andris Pelcbergs
Top Con

Very long games

•••
A game can last upwards of 4 hours for the medium/larger games. This can be a detriment for those that do not have the time to sit down and play a four hour game.
Specs
Steam Rating:Very Positive
Genre:RTS
Co-Op:Yes
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Elite: Dangerous

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Slant Bot
Top Pro

Very realistic representation of space & star systems

•••
Elite Dangerous uses publicly available real world star maps that we have of the Milky Way consisting of 150,000 star systems. Although in the current beta, full access to the entire galaxy is limited, in the final game, you will be able to visit any of the 400 billion stars in our galaxy on a 1:1...
Slant Bot
Top Pro

Built with future expansion in mind

•••
When Elite Dangerous come out, development wont stop. To build a game with the huge scope of Elite Dangerous, not all of it can be done at once, so the developers have adopted an approach of incremental improvement. Various game play elements are being designed as a foundation for later features. F...
Slant Bot
Top Pro

Exploration at every level of detail

•••
Full exploration of the galaxy is planned, allowing you to be able to jump from star system to star system, and fly around within a solar system from planet to planet, eventually going all the way down to a planet's surface at a 1:1 scale in a later update. Planetary landings will require a lot...
Slant Bot
Top Pro

Great Oculus Rift integration

•••
Elite Dangerous has very good integration with the Oculus Rift thanks to its cockpit view only gameplay philosophy. All ship UIs are part of displays that appear on each side of you that appear when you turn your head, so accessing the navigation or ship menus happens seamlessly just by looking in...
Slant Bot
Top Con

Really complicated to learn

•••
Looking up faqs and trade routes from first hand users will be the norm for figuring out many aspects of Elite: Dangerous. On top of this notes will have to be taken, which is made more difficult by the fact the game does not support in game not taking. So a pad and paper is recommended to remember...
Slant Bot
Top Con

"Mile Wide and an Inch Deep"

•••
The game has a serious problem with depth and requires the user to repeat the same few fun actions over and over again. The world is massive and beautiful but feels empty. The game gets stale quickly despite being visually stunning.
Specs
Steam Rating:Mixed
Genre:Space Sim / Open World / MMO
Co-Op:Multiplayer
Controller Support:Full
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Space Engineers (Early Access)

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Slant Bot
Top Pro

Prefabricated ships available in game that are modifiable

•••
For those that do not want to build a whole ship from scratch there are prefabricated ships available upon start that are also modifiable so users can customize to their liking.
Slant Bot
Top Pro

Easy to build

•••
Space Engineers makes it easy to build any items or objects making sure any skill level can easily have fun in game. All one needs to do is select what they would like to build from the menu and then choose the parts they would like to add.
Slant Bot
Top Pro

Destructible ships

•••
Players are able to smash ships into each other with satisfying destruction physics.
Slant Bot
Top Con

Still not a whole lot to do

•••
Being an early access game there is still a lot of missing features such as missions, thus leaving no much to do other than the free building mode.
Specs
Steam Rating:Mixed
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Endless Space 2

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Kristaps
Top Pro

Deep turn-based strategy gameplay

•••
As most turn-based 4X games set in space, ES2 is about expanding your galactic empire, allowing you to create spaceships, build colonies, research technologies while interacting with your rival factions via diplomacy, economy, or warfare. While it starts out simple, requiring you to only manage yo...
Kristaps
Top Pro

Diverse and intriguing playable factions

•••
Endless Space 2 features 8 factions, each with its own interesting backstory and gameplay mechanics. For example, The Horatio is a faction lead by a bored trillionare who decided to clone himself billions of times to reshape the galaxy in his own image. This ties in with a gameplay mechanic where...
Kristaps
Top Pro

Excellent visuals

•••
Almost everything you see in the game looks spectacular. This includes very neat interface menus, detailed planet textures, intricate spaceship designs, and even gorgeous character models among many other aspects. All of these help to bring life to the space opera universe of ES2, making it a more...
Kristaps
Top Con

Limited control over space combat

•••
After organizing a fleet and sending it into a battle you can only view a cinematic video of the combat or auto-resolve it, immediately giving you the result of the battle. You have no control over the ships during a battle, preventing the use of tactics, maneuvers, or any minute adjustments, which...
Kristaps
Top Con

High learning curve

•••
While Endless Space 2 might feel familiar to 4X veterans, it can take a while for new players to fully figure it out. This includes learning interface menus, grasping how mechanics such as colonization work, and even understanding how to counteract another faction's expansion. It might feel li...
Specs
Steam Rating:Mostly Positive
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Star Wars: Rogue Squadron 3D

Slant Bot
Top Pro

Medal system allows for plenty of replayability

•••
Each missions has a bronze, silver or gold medal that can be earned by completing the stage and certain tasks contained withing under a certain time limit. With gold being the toughest to earn, there is plenty of reason to revisit stages in order to earn the gold medal. This means hours of extra ti...
Slant Bot
Top Pro

Easy to learn and play

•••
Rogue Squadron has very accessible controls that allows for the game to have a bunch of differing missions due to how easy it is to fly the ships. More akin to Starfox over Star Wars flight sim titles such as X-Wing, allows for arcadey controls that is no where near as punishing as other sims. This...
Slant Bot
Top Pro

Expansive content

•••
Even though this is an older game originally released for the Nintendo 64 back in 98, the amount of content is quite good as there is a plethora of missions available. Escort/rescue missions, dogfights and bombing runs make up some of this content, all of which take place on many different worlds...
Slant Bot
Top Pro

GIve a great sense of taking part in the StarWars universe

•••
From the fantastic voice acting, the cinematic sequences to the licensed music and sound effects, this game gives off a great feeling of taking part in the universe of Star Wars. While there has been many games that have held the license, this has been regarded as one of the better titles for some...
Slant Bot
Top Con

In game resolution settings may crash the game

•••
While there is a setting in the game to adjust the resolution the game is played in, changing this setting may make the game crash when a mission is launched. While this setting can be changed in an ini file which will not make the game crash, having a broken option in the game shows a lack of poli...
Slant Bot
Top Con

Controller settings need to be tweaked

•••
In order to get a controller working properly with the game, one will need to go into the settings of the game in order to change some options. Basically out of the box controller support is pretty poor, though once tweaked the controller will work fine.
Slant Bot
Top Con

Mouse and keyboard controls are very poor

•••
This game was originally designed for a controller, which shows when trying to play with a keyboard and mouse. While this port does offer keyboard controls, they work so poorly that it makes the game almost unplayable when using this control scheme.
Slant Bot
Top Con

No graphical options

•••
The game is basically a straight port of the N64 title, meaning there is zero graphical settings to be found other than resolution (which is broken). So for those looking for a more polished title that would allow them to take advantage of PC centric graphical settings, this may not be the game for...
Specs
Steam Rating:Mostly Positive
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Halcyon 6: Starbase Commander (LIGHTSPEED EDITION)

MaybeGreatReviewer
Top Pro

Tactical Turn-Based Combat

•••
The game offers ship and ground combat that relies on weaknesses and exploiting status effects.
MaybeGreatReviewer
Top Pro

4X Elements

•••
eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate.
Know any negative aspects of this option?
Specs
Steam Rating:Very Positive
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Avorion [Early Access]

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Alex
ResponsibleGeshtuE
Top Pro

Awesome combat

•••
Blow parts off enemy ships; cripple then raid.
Alex
ResponsibleGeshtuE
Top Pro

Build your own ship

•••
It's like space Legos.
Alex
Top Con

Only a demo is available at the moment

•••
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Stellaris

Andris Pelcbergs
Top Pro

Great early game exploration

•••
The exploration, and the early game in general, is very interesting, with a plethora of events, not limited to Anomalies surveying player and AI science ships can encounter.
Andris Pelcbergs
Top Pro

Highly moddable

•••
The fact that Stellaris is so modifiable makes a huge difference to the game. There are so many ways to customize the game to your liking. If there's a design decision you dislike, you are always capable of changing it yourself (within certain limits), and you can make the game completely diff...
Andris Pelcbergs
Top Pro

Emergent stories

•••
Oftentimes, if you play the game without min-maxing everything, you will find yourself with interesting stories to tell. While the coded events themselves may lose their touch after a while, the interactions with the various races nearby will often be different. You might find yourself in situatio...
Andris Pelcbergs
Top Con

Weak sector AI

•••
In the game, you can create "sectors" to manage the planets that you cannot manage yourself due to the "core worlds" limit. However, these sectors are managed by the game's AI, and the AI often times makes foolish choices with how they develop the planets under its care, ev...
Andris Pelcbergs
Top Con

Imbalanced gameplay systems

•••
As the game is right now, without mods, the weapons and other ship modules are sorely in need of a rebalancing. Currently, when you hit the end-game, the best way to go is to stack shields, health, and as many Tachyon Lances as you can fit onto as many Battleships as you can muster, then send them...
Andris Pelcbergs
Top Con

Lack of vanilla content, currently

•••
Unfortunately, the game is lacking a bit in certain types of content. There is a great number of events in the game, but not enough as it is. With how many events there are, it is likely that you will see many of these events occur over multiple games. For instance, finding Sol or Sanctuary once m...
Specs
Steam Rating:Mixed
Genre:Hybrid: 4X / Grand Strategy
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Empyrion

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thermoplastics
funny0frank
Top Pro

Easy to get into

•••
thermoplastics
funny0frank
Top Pro

A lot of content and survival elements

•••
thermoplastics
funny0frank
Top Con

No mining attatchments

•••
Don't have space ship mining attachments, you have to do all mining by hand.
thermoplastics
funny0frank
Top Con

Not that advanced building system

•••
Specs
Steam Rating:Mostly Positive
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26 Community Recommendations

Ryan
Kristaps
Diego Floor
MaybeGreatReviewer
James Howard
NonchalantAlcyone
ThriftyAergia
VigorousEpona
ResponsibleGeshtuE
BraveDionysus
EnterprisingCronus
+7
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Request recommendations from the community
Diego Floor
Diego
Contributor for 10 months
8
Total 
Recs.
45
Total 
Karma
Kerbal Space Program
Recommended 18 hours ago
By far the most satisfying gaming experience I ever had. Bold words, I know, but very true. It's a mix of management (a space company), engineering and exploration. I could never get into the managemenet part of it, and somehow that makes my bold statement even more impressive. My favorite game of all ti...
Pro
 You just can't get bored with it, and you will learn a lot
Pro
 Teaches orbital dynamics & rocket design fundamentals in an accessible manner
Pro
 Huge modding scene
Pro
 Fun sandbox mode to experiment with rocket designs
Con
 Simulation might leave to be desired as you become a more advanced player
1See full
MaybeGreatReviewer
MaybeGreatReviewer
Contributor for 2 days
14
Total 
Recs.
1K
Total 
Karma
Halcyon 6: Starbase Commander (LIGHTSPEED EDITION)
Recommended 2 days ago
Great 4X-Lite with turn-based combat and ship and crew management. Took 25 hours to beat on normal difficulty.
Pro
 4X Elements
Pro
 Tactical Turn-Based Combat
See full
ResponsibleGeshtuE
ResponsibleGeshtuE
Contributor for a day
1
Total 
Recs.
30
Total 
Karma
Avorion [Early Access]
Recommended a day ago
Freelancer and crossout fans unite! I don't have a lot of play time into this game as of yet, the ui is a little strange.. but once you get into it it is a great game. Very fun space combat... with a freelancer feel and an added crossout style build mechanic!
Pro
 Build your own ship
Pro
 Awesome combat
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Currently displaying 3 out of 26 total recommendations.
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