# No Man's Sky 97 Hacker News commenters recommended No Man's Sky and 100 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 7 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 10 years (16 owners). **Verdict:** A space exploration and base-building game that recovered from a rough launch through years of free updates, though many find its gameplay shallow and its procedural planets repetitive. ## Why people recommend it - Years of free content updates (8 comments): "NMS is a great example of a developer who was devoted to their customer base, kept updating the game for free, and saw great market success in return." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49629442)) "Hello Games offered a mountain of content that's right in the bullseye center of game's core vibe and identity" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49630287)) "Every expedition is like a whole new DLC, but they've released every single one of them for free." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49332000)) - Turned around after bad launch (6 comments): "No Man's Sky and Cyberpunk 2077 are actually proof you can have an awful launch and still pivot into a large player base" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49635155)) "It's a completely different game, it just doesn't look like it if you picked back up where you left off." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49629235)) "Wouldn't a better example be No Man's Sky, if we're talking procedural gen and eventually a good game." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47260868)) - Creative base and ship building (4 comments): "It's a great game to play with friends. Explore, find cool animals, and most of all - build your fantasy space home." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49629972)) "They've done an incredible job fleshing out the universe, giving us new things we can build" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49630284)) "People build some seriously intricate bases and it really makes the worlds feel lived in." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49638905)) - Fun, good value space game (4 comments): "The gameplay is completely engaging and this update looks like it fills in even more spaces than were hoped for." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49629303)) "NMS is still a great fun space game to play, the lore / back story of each faction is quite bleak though" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49331971)) "I got many hours of enjoyment out of a game I paid maybe $20 for. It's a hell of an entertainment deal." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49637344)) ## What people warn about - Shallow, repetitive gameplay loop (7 comments): "It's a very cool and ambitious project, but there's fundamentally nothing substantial to it in terms of gameplay." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49628743)) "the actual depth never feels that much deeper. It feels like the shallow pond got wider." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49644083)) "it still feels like a well polished demo to me. The interactions with intelligent beings are very repetitive and boring." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49332276)) - Procedural planets feel samey (6 comments): "If you lean on it too heavily then yes, you will just have 10,000 variations on plain oatmeal" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49644968)) "It's even worse when you see the exact same animal asset but scaled differently with a different color hue on a completely different planet." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49634547)) "each planet is just lifeless, and it's basically the same few square kilometres copy and pasted over the whole planet" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49332309)) - Misleading launch marketing (4 comments): "they had pre-made videos sold off as actual gameplay and the worlds and space were very shallow." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49642695)) "The game always looks far more dramatic in the trailers than it actually is in practice." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49640883)) "the founder of the studio claiming it had multiplayer when it very clearly didn't" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49635795)) - Too easy, few real stakes (3 comments): "it does feel a bit too relaxed for the kind of experience I'm typically looking for" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49331786)) "the game is terribly easy. All that extra content you're implying is there, I find to be very shallow, unchallenging, and unrewarding" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49637377)) "NMS either takes too long to get to a part of the game where stakes become relevant, or doesn't have any." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49628833)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Kerbal Space Program](https://hackerapproved.com/p/kerbal-space-program.md): 24 recommend - [Starflight](https://hackerapproved.com/p/starflight.md): 17 recommend - [Elite Dangerous](https://hackerapproved.com/p/elite-dangerous.md): 15 recommend - [Star Citizen](https://hackerapproved.com/p/star-citizen.md): 11 recommend - [Wing Commander](https://hackerapproved.com/p/wing-commander.md): 7 recommend ## Where to get it - [Visit the official site](https://www.nomanssky.com/) ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "No Man's Sky", https://hackerapproved.com/p/no-man-s-sky/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).