Gameplay[edit]
No Man's Sky allows players to explore planets with procedurally generated flora and fauna.
No Man's Sky is an action-adventure survival game played from a first or third person perspective that allows players to engage in four principal activities: exploration, survival, combat, and trading.[6] The player takes the role of a specimen of alien humanoid planetary explorer, known in-game as the Traveller, in an uncharted universe. They start on a randomized planet near a crashed spacecraft towards the edge of the galaxy, and are equipped with a survival exosuit with a jetpack, and a "multitool" that can be used to scan, mine and collect resources as well as to attack or defend oneself from creatures and hostile forces. The player can collect, repair, and refuel the craft, allowing them to travel about the planet, between other planets and space stations in the local planetary system, engage in space combat with alien factions, or make hyperspace jumps to other star systems.[7] While the game is open ended, the player may follow the guidance of the entity known as The Atlas to head towards the centre of the galaxy.[8]
The defining feature of No Man's Sky is that nearly all parts of the galaxy, including stars, planets, flora and fauna on these planets, and sentient alien encounters, are created through procedural generation using deterministic algorithms and random number generators from a single seed number. This 64-bit value leads to there being over 18 quintillion[c] (1.8×1019) planets to explore within the game.[9] Very little data is stored on the game's servers, as all elements of the game are created through deterministic calculations when the player is near them, assuring that other players will see the same elements as another player by travelling to the same location in the galaxy. The player may make temporary changes on planets, such as mining resources, but these changes are not tracked once the player leaves that vicinity.[10][11] Until July 2020, the game used different servers for each platform versions; following a July 2020 patch, cross-platform play was enabled for all supported platforms.[12]
Through exploration, the player is credited with units, the in-game currency, by scanning planets, alien bases, flora and fauna in their travels.[13][14] If the player is first to discover one of these, they can earn additional units by uploading this information to The Atlas, as well as having their name credited with the discovery to be seen by other players. Players have the opportunity to rename these features at this point within limits set by a content filter.[15][16] No Man's Sky can be played offline, but interaction with The Atlas requires online connectivity.[8][10]
