SpaceEngine

Worth buying? What 300 Steam reviews say.Worth buying? Here’s what 300 Steam reviews actually say.

Overwhelmingly PositiveOverwhelmingly Positive · 96%2019

$29.99

US Steam price, checked 47 min ago

The verdict

A stunning, seamless 1:1 universe explorer and planetarium that inspires awe, but it's closer to software than a game. Skip it if you want goals, or can't tolerate clunky controls and bugs.

Great for

Space and astronomy fans who want to freely explore a realistic universe, relax, or learn

Main risk

No goals, so it gets repetitive fast, and awkward controls or bugs may frustrate you

What players love

Immense, seamless, realistic universe

Mentioned in ~1 in 5 positive reviews

“You can go anywhere in this game. ANYWHERE! Mount Everest? Saturn's moon Iapetus? That random star in the sky?”
Steam review · 40.9 h played ↗

“You could spend your whole life exploring and still only explore a small fraction of a percent of what is in the game.”
Steam review · 6.1 h played ↗

Educational and useful astronomy tool

Mentioned in ~1 in 8 positive reviews

“This is actually an incredible tool for astronomy. I use it all the time to see what is going to be in the sky and from what direction.”
Steam review · 9.8 h played ↗

“I use it as a demonstration for lessons with my students.”
Steam review · translated · 82.7 h played ↗

Beautiful visuals

Mentioned in ~1 in 8 positive reviews

“Visually, the game is stunning. Even on lower graphics modes the game is breathtaking.”
Steam review · 6.1 h played ↗

Humbling existential sense of scale

Mentioned in ~1 in 11 positive reviews

“Come for the stars, stay for the existential dread.”
Steam review · 17.7 h played ↗

“An existential horror simulator. Play with sound on; the ambient music sends you into the void.”
Steam review · translated · 3 h played ↗

Runs well on modest hardware

Mentioned in ~1 in 12 positive reviews

“I can run this game on AMD i5 Intergrated graphics.”
Steam review · 9.5 h played ↗

“My computer sucks. And this game looks insane and works AMAZING. Low lag.”
Steam review · 1.2 h played ↗

Relaxing and calming to explore

Mentioned in ~1 in 15 positive reviews

“It's actually pretty relaxing once you get into it.”
Steam review · 16.9 h played ↗

“I turned it on for 15 minutes before bed and ended up watching the sunrise while studying Saturn's rings.”
Steam review · translated · 5 h played ↗

What players complain about

Crashes, bugs and failure to launch

Mentioned in ~2 in 5 negative reviews

“You can't do anything meaningful because it just crashes after 10 minutes.”
Steam review · 5.2 h played ↗

“Every time i start this game, it opens up the launcher, and starts loading for a little bit and then gets stuck on "Initializing planets; Building hierarchies"”
Steam review · 8 h played ↗

“Just garbage: 8 years in early access, nothing but bugs, glitches, white screens, settings that reset, etc.”
Steam review · translated · 2.1 h played ↗

Still early access, slow development, dev controversy

Mentioned in ~1 in 4 negative reviews

“it has now been nearly 7 years, and the game is still in early access.”
Steam review · 46 h played ↗

“In 10 years almost nothing has changed.”
Steam review · translated · 2.1 h played ↗

Clunky, confusing controls and UI

Mentioned in ~1 in 6 negative reviews

“they overengineered everything making the controls super complex. Why should I need 2367 different key bindings”
Steam review · 0.9 h played ↗

“the controls are so terrible that I uninstalled and refunded after 10 minutes”
Steam review · translated · 0.7 h played ↗

Boring, repetitive, nothing to do

Mentioned in ~1 in 7 negative reviews

“The procedural generation is so limited that it straddles the line between "depressing" and "laughable"; once you've seen one planet, you've seen them all.”
Steam review · 34.5 h played ↗

“after playing a few days you'll get bored, since there's essentially nothing to do in the game”
Steam review · translated · 0.3 h played ↗

Planets render as black or textureless

Mentioned in ~1 in 14 negative reviews

“The solar system is bugged right now with planet texture won't load.”
Steam review · 6.2 h played ↗

“Planets, stars and so on don't load, just black balls.”
Steam review · translated · 6.6 h played ↗

Poor VR support and controls

Mentioned in ~1 in 19 negative reviews

“It is complete garbage on VR. The menu opens and closes constantly on itself”
Steam review · 0.3 h played ↗

“I found the controls to be the most confusing, counterintuitive and frustrating thing I have ever encountered in a VR title.”
Steam review · 0.5 h played ↗

System requirements

From the Steam store page

Steam Deck: Unsupported

Minimum

OSWindows 10

ProcessorIntel Core i3-3220T or AMD FX-4100

Memory6 GB RAM

GraphicsGeForce GTX 1050 Ti or Radeon RX 460 (4 GB)

Storage4 GB available space

Recommended

OSWindows 10

ProcessorIntel Core i5-4430 or AMD FX-8350

Memory8 GB RAM

GraphicsGeForce GTX 1060 (5/6 GB) or Radeon RX 480 (8 GB)

Storage50 GB available space

OSWindows 10

ProcessorIntel Core i3-3220T or AMD FX-4100

Memory6 GB RAM

GraphicsGeForce GTX 1050 Ti or Radeon RX 460 (4 GB)

Storage4 GB available space

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