Endless Sky

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

Very Positive · 93%Very Positive · 93%2015

Free to play

US Steam price, checked 5 h ago

The verdict

A free, open-source 2D space trading and fleet sandbox in the Escape Velocity mold, with huge content and moddability. Skip it if you need mouse controls, a tutorial, or tight combat.

Great for

Escape Velocity fans and patient players who like trading, fleet-building and reading in a free sandbox

Main risk

Unintuitive keyboard controls, no real tutorial and sudden pirate deaths can bounce you in the first hours

What players love

Mods, plugins and active development

Mentioned in ~1 in 5 positive reviews

“truly devoted dev, games has been worked on consistently for 11 years”
Steam review · 31.9 h played ↗

“There's also an amazing amount of plugins available from the community”
Steam review · 56 h played ↗

Amazing quality for a free game

Mentioned in ~1 in 5 positive reviews

“What a fantastic game. How is this free?! At least let us tip you!”
Steam review · 142.8 h played ↗

“one of the best free games of all time, no micro transactions no dlc. just good game that's it.”
Steam review · 3.4 h played ↗

“Genuinely amazed this game is free!”
Steam review · 893.6 h played ↗

Freedom to play your own way

Mentioned in ~1 in 5 positive reviews

“You can really do just about anything whenever you want to, with as much power as you want.”
Steam review · 584.2 h played ↗

“A true sandbox game, go on adventures and advance the storyline, or just cruise the trade/passenger routs and rake in credits.”
Steam review · 129.9 h played ↗

Huge, deep content

Mentioned in ~1 in 6 positive reviews

“At 200 hours, I STILL haven't explored all there is to see, and I still haven't completed the story.”
Steam review · 200.6 h played ↗

“The game is surprisingly deep. Deeper then it looks by far.”
Steam review · 10.2 h played ↗

“Its already has as much content as the first two games combined.”
Steam review · 405.7 h played ↗

Faithful Escape Velocity successor

Mentioned in ~1 in 7 positive reviews

“This game is a clone of the wonderful Escape Velocity series from the 90s, but at this point is much better and more expansive.”
Steam review · 146.9 h played ↗

“Feels exactly like the spiritual successor to Escape Velocity should feel.”
Steam review · 3.1 h played ↗

Ship and fleet building, boarding and capturing

Mentioned in ~1 in 8 positive reviews

“I enjoy disabling enemy ships, stealing their parts, and making a Frankenstein fleet of my own using those parts.”
Steam review · 182.3 h played ↗

“You can build a huge fleet, there's a story, thought-out territories, alien races, tons of ships.”
Steam review · translated · 70.4 h played ↗

What players complain about

Awkward keyboard-only controls

Mentioned in ~1 in 4 negative reviews

“The controls are absolutely horrid. Honestly I cant remember a game with a worse control scheme.”
Steam review · 97.7 h played ↗

“The game has no mouse controls for the vast portion of the game”
Steam review · 0.5 h played ↗

“Do the developers even play their own creation? How can they enjoy this ship control, it's masochism.”
Steam review · translated · 0.2 h played ↗

Repetitive grind with a shallow loop

Mentioned in ~1 in 6 negative reviews

“you quickly realize it's Cookie Clicker.”
Steam review · 4.2 h played ↗

“It just felt like the game was really designed to be a "press j button" simulator.”
Steam review · 18.2 h played ↗

Weak tutorial and steep learning curve

Mentioned in ~1 in 6 negative reviews

“Would have been better to give you a starter ship and teach you from there.”
Steam review · 1.2 h played ↗

“There's no tutorial and it's unclear what to do in the game at all!”
Steam review · translated · 0.3 h played ↗

Pirates and enemies spawn-kill you

Mentioned in ~1 in 7 negative reviews

“The game's crappy mechanics will have pirates spawn kill you as soon as you warp into a system.”
Steam review · 37.4 h played ↗

“It's next to impossible to play this game without savescumming”
Steam review · 41.9 h played ↗

Bad combat balance and pacing

Mentioned in ~1 in 8 negative reviews

“Combat speed is doodoo. Things resolve before you know what happened.”
Steam review · 3.5 h played ↗

“The combat balance is ♥♥♥♥♥♥”
Steam review · 27.9 h played ↗

Story quests hard to trigger or missable

Mentioned in ~1 in 17 negative reviews

“Yes, whether or not you get to see the story is fully RNG.”
Steam review · 45.6 h played ↗

“the story quest may not appear for THREE hours of play time. You just fly and trade.”
Steam review · translated · 14.6 h played ↗

System requirements

From the Steam store page

Steam Deck: Playable

Minimum

Memory750 MB RAM

GraphicsOpenGL 3.0

Storage350 MB available space

Recommended

Memory2 GB RAM

GraphicsOpenGL 3.3

Storage1500 MB available space

Memory750 MB RAM

GraphicsOpenGL 3.0

Storage350 MB available space

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