When I was much younger I use to play a lot of space games such as Wing Commander and wishing I could build and fly my very own space ships.

I noticed in the last couple years quite a few alpha stage games have popped up that let's you do just that, and it's amazing just what they are capable of.

Here is a list of the newer space ship "sandbox / building / simulation" games that I know of. If I missed one, let me know !

================================ Playable ================================

Blockade Runner

Space Engineers

Star Made

Scrumbleship

Kerbal Space Program

Starbound

Master Space

Starship Corporation

Xeno Galaxies

Avorion

Starwright

Build Your Spaceship and Explore the Universe

Corneroids

Shores of Hazeron

================================ Unplayable ================================

No Man's Sky

Boss Constructor

Kinetic Void

Universe Edge

InfiniExplorers

================================ Dead In The Water ================================

Galaxy55

Black Space

================================ Failed ================================

0x10c

Infinite Pixels

I forgotten about that game ...

I cannot wait for KSP to get a little more finished... It's a huge time-sink now, but if they get around to implementing something like a real campaign in career mode, maybe with actual costs factored in and objectives with rewards, I might not have time for anything else for a while...

In some ways, it reminds me of another of my old favorites that did the paid-alpha thing, before there was kickstarter to make it cool, Mount&Blade. Not only was it fun as hell (riding on horses, chopping up guys!), but the anticipation and speculation as to what it might eventually become when it was "finished", and the rush when you saw that a new point release was available, kept me playing it steady for a long time.

KSP is a game that every geek and kid should play. Especially geeky kids. I have spent far more time puttering around with KSP and tinkering with rockets than a grown man should admit to in public.

Personally I've been looking for a space sim game that would include exploration and colony development. Something like FTL blended with an exploration game and less combat focused.

Star Made - Very diverse universe generation. Unfortunately it's core language is Java which cause lag on lower end computers.

Holy cow this one is great. Pirates are tough as fck tho.

They don't even need to add that much to it, populate the space with more factions/structures and it would be pretty complete already.

There's always the X Series.



(Full disclosure: I worked on a few titles in that series.)

I've bought a bunch of them, and always wanted to really get into them... But it never happened. I never had enough enjoyment in the first few hours of play to keep me wanting to load up the game later. Not really sure why. Still might buy the latest few and give them a shot.

I've bought a bunch of them, and always wanted to really get into them... But it never happened. I never had enough enjoyment in the first few hours of play to keep me wanting to load up the game later. Not really sure why. Still might buy the latest few and give them a shot.

Same. I really like what I see in the trailers and gameplay videos, but the start is so damn slow that several hours in I am still not enjoying myself.

I want to try X: Rebirth, because it looks like they have scoped the game down considerably. Though it appears they may have pissed off their entire existing fan-base in the process :)