This game has been accused of being a No Man's Sky clone by some players. While there are definite similarities between the two games, I wanted to set the record straight about this idea. I actually had a working version of Star Explorers up and running well before No Man's Sky had even been announced.
Now I would not try to suggest that No Man's Sky copied my idea. That would be absurd, in fact there were other games with very similar ideas that predate both games. I wrote an article about this experience here:
The Time I Almost Invented No Man's Sky
After writing this article, and releasing Star Explorers, I did indeed spend some time playing No Man's Sky. I did enjoy it, but ultimately left me a bit underwhelmed. It is an amazing accomplishment in many ways, and I don't want to put it down, or to suggest that my game is in any way better. I am too close to this project to have anything resembling an unbiased opinion.
However, I will mention a few issue that bothered me about No Man's Sky, and how Star Explorers differs on those points.
1. Crafting:
No Man's Sky seems to require that the player spend a lot of time searching for resources and crafting things in order to get from one place to another. I think I spent 50% of my play time breaking rocks. I was playing on the standard game, for the record. I found this approach somewhat tedious, as, of course, I wanted to explore more than I wanted to look at the ground breaking things.
Star Explorers has a crafting system, but it is pretty much optional. You can find blueprints for objects and gather up resources in order to create certain items. These can occasionally help you in tough situations, and there are a few items that must be crafted if you want to use them, but they are not required to win the game.
2. Planet Types:
I found that every planet I landed on had a lot of very similar features. All of them had life forms of one kind or another, and all of them had those robot drones flying around. I also noticed that every planet I landed on had other spaceships flying overhead, and I could not help but notice that there was generally a lot more "activity" than I would have expected there to be.
Now I understand how this might be preferable to some players. However, I think Star Explorers has a somewhat wider range of experience with planet surfaces. I'm not comparing the artwork, graphics and/or realism, and these are surely also important to players, but by having some planets with no life at all, and by making life somewhat rare, I feel like Star Explorers offers an experience that feels more like exploration.
Landing on a completely dead world, with only rocks, may be somewhat boring. But this experience will make the discovery of life more exciting, and memorable.
3. Size:
No Man's Sky is very impressive and even breathtaking in its scope. Trillions of stars and planets make it potentially as large as a real galaxy! However, after landing on some of those planets, it is pretty much impossible to actually explore even one of them with any kind of thoroughness. As a video game completionist, the sheer size of No Man's Sky makes it really difficult to take in.
Star Explorers creates a new galaxy each time you start a new game. Each galaxy has around 200 or so stars. Each star can have between 1 and 9 planets. Planet surfaces are much smaller than those in No Man's Sky, so if a player wanted to, they could theoretically explore each planet in the Star Explorers galaxy. The game also lets you take notes, so a thorough adventurer could realistically map out each world and complete the game within their lifetime, really within a regular game's play-time of a few hundred hours or so. There is no requirement to do this, I'm just stating that it is possible.
For me, bigger is not always better. So while I am impressed and intrigued by the vastness of No Man's Sky, I also prefer my games to be within my personal ability to actually explore.
Conclusion:
These have been just a few thoughts on Star Explorers and it's comparison to the more popular No Man's Sky. Again, as the developer of Star Explorers, I am not an unbiased judge of either game, given their similarities. But I felt the need to express my thoughts and experiences with both.
I hope you, as players, would also consider sharing your experiences too.
P.S. I fully acknowledge that Star Explorers and No Man's Sky are in different leagues as far as quality and budget. Star Explorers is priced accordingly. But many people have asked how Star Explorers differs from No Man's Sky, so I feel it is important to give some information on how they compare.