Space Engineers is a game about exploring planets, building spaceships and stations, and mining resources from asteroids. It was a precursor of sorts to No Man’s Sky. The player explores worlds and systems that are based on the settings and options selected by the player; for example, the use of procedural generation, the speed of processes, and the hostility of the environment. Space Engineers allows a lot of options for customization, and the game’s code is open source, making it popular among modders.
The player assumes control over the human protagonist in a space suit and, at some stages of the game, an exploration ship (with options for both first and third person view). The player can build a variety of structures using different types of blocks and tools. Available structures include ships, planetary outposts, and space stations.
The game includes a campaign and a set of standalone scenarios. Each of the scenarios, in turn, can be played in “Creative” or “Survival” mode. The former is an easy sandbox in which the player is not limited in resources and cannot die. The latter requires the player to mine resources and to keep track of the main character’s health and oxygen level. The game’s graphics are based on voxels (3D pixels), though, unlike some other voxel-based games, it doesn’t look like pixel art.