No Man's Sky is getting 'trillions of new planets,' some with oceans 'several kilometers deep,' plus explorable 'end-game' gas giants

(Image credit: Hello Games)

If you thought 2025 would be any different from the last nine years of No Man's Sky updates… why would you think that? That would be a weird thought to have. Stop having weird thoughts.

That's my way of saying there's a big new No Man's Sky update landing today, and once again it's free, and once again it's packed with interesting stuff for the ever-expanding space sandbox from Hello Games. It's also being delivered alongside a missive from Sean Murray, who also wants to reassure everyone that, yes, Light No Fire is being worked on. In fact, the development of Light No Fire is one of the reasons we're getting new No Man's Sky stuff today.

Here, I'll let him explain:

"Across the universe we’re adding billions of new solar systems and trillions of new planets, and introducing new biomes and terrains without changing what people already love about the game," Sean Murray said in an email sent to PC Gamer.

Those changes include, for the first time in the No Man's Sky universe, massive gas giants that Murray says are "ten times bigger than our biggest planet. It’s truly end-game stuff to explore them with huge storms that rage across the surface."

That's not all. Many of the new planets have a "new terrain system" and that allows for truly towering mountains and even "oceans that can be several kilometers deep," Murray says. You can see some of that in the trailer for the Worlds Part 2 update that's going live today.

Murray also says the game's lighting system has been rewritten and new water physics have been added. "Water reacts physically to the world around it. Creatures wade through it. There’s little dimples in the rain, and there are large waves as ships fly overhead. Sometimes there’s these moments where a ship just flies past the still ocean and the water ripples underneath and it’s just so peaceful to watch." Naturally, there will be new alien creatures to find, which Murray says may be "weirder than ever before."

I imagine a lot of players might be thinking "Cool, more No Man's Sky planets, but where the heck is Light No Fire, the fantasy game that has only one planet but it's the size of a real planet?" Well, in a way, this update to No Man's Sky is a bit of Light No Fire:

"The team is extremely busy on Light No Fire. Each time we push our engine to new places though we have this urge to share it with the community, with No Man’s Sky," Murray said, noting that he especially enjoys the new terrain system. "I’m genuinely at my happiest working on this stuff," he said.

Sean's happy, I gotta imagine No Man's Sky fans are thrilled, and Light No Fire pre-fans at least get to hear that development is happening and see some of that progress reflected in NMS. Plus, as always, this update is free for everyone who already owns the game. Win-win-win. Check out the full patch notes here, and a special "deep dive" video below.

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.