The spiritual successor to one of the most popular space trade games of all times, Elite made its debut on PC last week. Elite: Dangerous is developed by Frontier Developments, the studio owned by David Braben, one of the makers of the first Elite game.

Elite: Dangerous offers players the option to choose what they want to play: trader, explorer or bounty hunter. Players can become masters in any or all of the three choices they make, as the game offers almost unlimited freedom of what you can do in the game.

But Elite: Dangerous is just one of the three space sims that fans of the genre are expecting. Two other titles have already been announced and they promise to be grandiose: No Man's Sky and Star Citizen.

Star Citizen is already an epic game, which is set for release in 2016. Developer by Cloud Imperium Games, Star Citizen is a crowdfunded project and a very successful one.

Star Citizen is very close to reaching $70M in crowdfunding

There are more than 690k people who already backed the project via official website. More than $67M (€5.5M) funds have been raised since the campaign kicked off a few years ago.

By the looks of it and given the already publicized stretch goals, Star Citizen will be one of the largest, most complex games ever released.

Hangar in NYC

No to mention that there will be dozens or hundreds of spaceships models included in the initial version of the game, but more may be added after release.

Star Citizen will have two components, a single-player campaign and a multiplayer more. The single player is called Squadron 42 and includes a story-based campaign.

The first part of the single-player campaign may be released as early as second half of 2015 and will probably offer around 10 hours of gameplay.

The upcoming No Man's Sky is bold and venturesome

Another highly anticipated space sim game that may be released next year as well, No Man's Sky, is in development at Hello Games studio.

No Man's Sky is a slightly different breed of space sim in the fact that it tries to offer players a little bit (or more) of everything. It's been dubbed as an adventure space sim game slightly similar to Freespace, but much more complex.

The most important aspect will be the procedurally generated open universe in which players will take the role of explorers. Players will be able to land on planets and explore both fauna and flora, as well as engage in space combat.

Becron 5

So, what's not to like about a game that allows you to explore entire planets, deep oceans and engage in epic space battles. From what devs claim, No Man's Sky will be the perfect game for gamers who love the unexpected.

But the game will have an objective as well, and that's for players to reach the center of the galaxy. If not engaging in any additional exploration, it may take a player between 40 and 100 hours to reach this destination, but few will want to do that.

Star Citizen and No Man's Sky are the most anticipated space sim games for 2015/2016 and if nothing wrong happens during development, we might actually be able to play them in the coming months. Which one would be your favorite?