Today we got our first look at gameplay from Starseeker: Astroneer Expeditions, the next game from Astroneer developer System Era Softworks and published by Devolver Digital. It looks like a lot of fun, though I do have a couple reservations right out of the gate.
Beginning at a space station crammed with astronauts, up to four players can embark on missions together, visiting a weirdo planet for some co-op chaos that includes completing objectives, battling alien lifeforms, and collecting "space loot." You can glide across colorful landscapes, swim through alien oceans, and have encounters with everything from monstrous extraterrestrial brutes to harmless sentient carrots.
Your tools let you deform the alien planet, too: tunneling through the ground, building land bridges to cross gaps, and aiming water nozzles to "de-goop" important scientific equipment that the local fauna has gummed up. When a mission has been completed, you return to the space station and prepare for the next expedition.
That all looks like a good time, but where I'm a bit iffy on Starseeker is that every mission is on a timer. "The clock starts ticking the second you step out of your landing shuttle," says System Era. "On every expedition, you only have a limited amount of oxygen and will need to get back to the Star Seeker [the space station] before it runs out."
Yeah, that part. I don't love it. I'm aware a time limit can add a sense of excitement and urgency, and that extraction games and session-based co-op missions can really raise the stakes and get your heart racing. But I think timers can also put the kibosh on different kinds of fun, especially when it comes to exploration and chill co-op hangs with friends. Do I really want to be rushed off a planet by a timer if I'm having a great time with my pals?
What's also unclear, even after about 15 minutes of gameplay, is what you do after missions. Do you have any sort of player base you can build with your friends? Is there any building at all, collaborative or otherwise? Or do you just hang out in the space station, which kinda looks like a lobby or common area, sort of like the Space Anomaly in No Man's Sky?
I know it flies in the face of the very concept of expeditions, which is the point of Starseeker, but ultimately wouldn't players prefer to carve out a home on a weird alien planet instead of hanging out on a somewhat generic-looking space station they didn't get to design themselves? The Steam page does describe the space station as "ever-evolving," which could mean that the loot you gain from missions allows you to unlock upgrades for it, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's a place you can actually build on.
Am I just jumping to rash conclusions without enough information? Could be, and if I want to build bases with friends I could just shut up and do it in Astroneer, which is still being developed alongside System Era's new game. Hopefully we'll learn more about Starseeker: Astroneer Expeditions in the near future—it's planned for 2026, which will be here before we know it.
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