Despite its staggering size, No Man’s Sky was created by a a tiny British company called Hello Games (or, more specifically, by just four of its employees). Its co-founder Sean Murray wanted to visualize his dreams of embarking as an astronaut to unexplored alien worlds; he and his team created a complex game engine that could generate near-infinite random environments, plants, and creatures. The indie-game phenomenon Minecraft used similar technology to create a Neptune-sized planet with unpredictable landscapes for players to roam around on. No Man’s Sky takes that principle and multiplies it: Instead of one planet to explore, it has 18 quintillion.

Hello Games

It’s that boundless possibility, and the independent spirit of Hello Games, that made No Man’s Sky so appealing when it was first announced. The game exists in an online world that ever player is connected to; everyone is exploring the same universe in their own separate ships, naming planets, flora, and faunae that they discover and that other intrepid explorers might later stumble across. On paper, it sounds like a revolutionary title, one that could bust open new avenues for the medium of gaming. Super Mario 64 turned the side-scrolling platform game into a 360-degree experience. Metal Gear Solid presented itself as a work of living cinema, one the player could move through and affect with their actions. Grand Theft Auto turned the “sandbox game,” where players roam an open world, into an industry norm. No Man’s Sky aims to do the same, but with an open universe.

The early hours of the game are slow going, as it introduces its core mechanics one by one. Stranded on a planet, you have to harvest its minerals and isotopes to repair your ship; once you’re in space, you begin to learn the vagaries of interstellar navigation, first hopping around a local solar system before upgrading your engines to faster-than-light travel. The planetary landscapes are suitably bizarre: The skies are every color in the Crayola box (from pine green to burnt sienna), the ground covered in misshapen, glowing outcroppings, with hybrid animals walking around that look like escapees from the Island of Dr. Moreau.

Hello Games

You might stumble across remote outposts, or colossal space stations, and meet aliens looking to trade goods or initiate diplomacy. Much like Minecraft, No Man’s Sky takes a perverse pleasure in not making things easy—if you don’t speak the alien’s language (and you probably don’t), you’ll have to communicate through simple gestures to get things done. There’s an undeniably social aspect to a game this vast—already, the internet is pooling its resources to figure out the game’s secrets and pass around tips and hints. That collective spirit is part of Hello Games’ mission, but like many big titles, No Man’s Sky has also laid bare some of the more uncomfortable aspects of gaming fandom.