
Space Engineers is a sandbox engineering game where you design and build ships, stations, and planetary bases in a fully destructible environment. Explore planets and space, mine resources, survive hazards, and engage in combat alone or with friends in Creative or Survival modes.
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About
Space Engineers is an open world sandbox game about designing, building and testing your own space machines. Construct ships, stations and planetary bases in a fully destructible environment, then explore planets and space, mine resources, survive hazards and engage in combat alone or with friends in Creative or Survival modes.
Play solo or in multiplayer, from small co-op outposts to huge community servers. Start with a simple lander, grow into a mining and industrial empire, or focus on warships and planetary fortresses – the game gives you the tools and physics, you decide what to build.
Space Engineers uses a volumetric physics engine: every block and voxel has mass, inertia and damage. Ships break apart, stations crumble and terrain can be drilled, carved and reshaped, so your engineering choices really matter.
Space Engineers is grounded in real engineering and hard science fiction, driven by realism and plausible near-future technology. Think modern space programs extrapolated into the future: realistic ships, stations, tools and systems where everything is built and simulated block by block. It’s about the machinery you build, not about magic or scripted set-pieces.
10+ years of active development with many free updates every year – and still ongoing
Huge Steam Workshop with thousands of ships, bases, mods, scripts and scenarios
Stable, feature-rich sandbox ideal for long-term saves and big community servers
All DLC is cosmetic-only – everyone plays with the same gameplay
Active player base, dedicated servers and modding community
Design and pilot small and large ships, asteroid stations and planetary bases
Over 200 functional blocks: thrusters, rotors, pistons, turrets, conveyors, production blocks and more
First- and third-person building, symmetry tools and blueprints for fast large-scale construction
Manual building in Survival: weld to assemble blocks, grind to disassemble and reuse components
Voxel planets, moons and asteroids with atmospheres, gravity and climate zones
Drill, cut and blast terrain; carve tunnels, craters and underground bases
Ships and structures take block-by-block damage and can break into pieces
Deformable and destructible objects with real mass, storage capacity and integrity
Creative – unlimited resources, instant building, no death
Survival – manual assembly, resource and power management, death/respawn
Singleplayer or multiplayer (co-op or competitive) with privacy settings and dedicated servers
Scenarios, Workshop worlds and custom worlds so you can start in exactly the kind of universe you want
Super-large worlds with procedural asteroids and exploration encounters
Exploration systems that add ships and stations to discover, capture and conquer
Visual Script Editor to create your own missions, game modes and campaigns
Cargo ships, factions and AI-controlled threats to interact with – or defend against
Deep Steam Workshop integration for worlds, blueprints, mods and scripts
Modding API in C# to change game behaviour and add new systems
Programmable block for in-game automation and custom logic
Support for custom textures, models and many other mod types
Electricity, power grids and generators powering your entire base or ship
Oxygen and hydrogen for life support and thrusters
Weapons and combat blocks for ship-to-ship battles and base defense
GPS, remote control, voxel hands, controller support and more quality-of-life tools
Extensive language support with official and community localizations
Genres
Stats
All-time low is the lowest price we've recorded for this game since we started tracking it.
Languages: English, German, Spanish - Spain, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Polish, French, Italian, Finnish, Hungarian, Norwegian +4 more
Updates
Build ids and update times come straight from Steam's PICS — the same source SteamDB reads. Patch history grows as we record new builds.
Engagement
Hours played at review time, across 607 reviews with recorded playtime.
Reviews
Themes across 605 recent reviews and how positive each mention is. A keyword signal, not full sentiment analysis.
positive critical· bar length = how often the theme comes up
Reviews
Space Engineers is still a good game, but it's hard not to feel like Keen has spent the last few years turning it into a DLC machine. A lot of the DLC content could have easily been part of the base game instead of being split up and sold separately. What's even harder to understand is that Space Engineers 2 has been out for a while now, and there really hasn't been much to show for it. Updates have been slow, major features are still missing, and progress feels incredibly sluggish. Meanwhile, they keep pumping out more DLC for Space Engineers 1. I get that development takes time, but when players are being asked to buy into a sequel, you'd expect a steady stream of meaningful updates and new gameplay systems. Instead, it feels like SE2 is barely moving while the focus remains on selling more content for the original game. The frustrating part is that the core gameplay is fantastic. That's why people are critical. Most of us want to see the game succeed, but it's hard to stay excited when years go by with limited progress and a constant flow of DLC. At some point players start wondering whether the priority is building great games or just finding the next thing to sell.
Very scummy and annoying (at least for a beginner) when half the items in the creative inventory are greyed out to advertise the DLC they're from with no way to turn them off. Didn't make me want to buy the DLC at all (or the second game which I was considering buying), made me want to refund the game instead if I hadn't already spent more than 2 hours on it.
[i]Общее время игры: 48.7 часов. (Играл на другом аккаунте. )[/i] Как человек, который является приверженцем одиночных игр, не могу порекомендовать это. Всё потому, что единственный интерес, который я увидел в ней, это кооператив. В ином случае, я кроме бессмысленности и скукоты ничего не получил. Стоит заранее отметить и момент с двумя десятками DLC. Которые "являются сугубо косметическими и никак не влияют на вашу игру", да-да, конечно. В игре отвратительно агрессивная реклама. Про дополнения сочиться из всех щелей. Да вы доступные блоки будете, буквально, высматривать в куче DLC'ишных. И это никак не фильтруется и не отключается. (Может есть какие-то моды для этого, но это уже какой-то бред.) И влияние на игру имеется, потому что это не просто перекраска моделей. [quote]Есть, например, более компактные кабины для пилота и в мастерской очень много тех, кто использует её.[/quote] Хорошо, если дело только в кабине. Да, конструкцию корабля придётся править, но это ещё можно пережить. Зачастую у меня даже макет не открывался, ибо "отсутствует 8 дополнений" и узнать я об этом мог только после установки предмета из мастерской. И так, порог вхождения. Он здесь несколько высок, что и хорошо, и плохо. Обучение имеется, но оно в общих чертах. Функционал игры же доходит аж до уровня написания скриптов... Впрочем, с трудностями можно столкнуться и раньше. [quote] Например, я построил солнечные панели, первый доступный электроисточник. Сделал это по подобию той конструкции, что видел в обучении игры. Вот только это стало ошибкой, ибо вырабатывались буквально крупицы энергии. На деле же, нужно было строить механизм с ротором и камерой, а затем подключать это всё и настраивать так, чтобы всё это дело отслеживало солнце и следовало за ним. И без туториала здесь не обошлось.[/quote] Выживание — это ужаснейший гринд. Куча беготни между шахтами, тонны времени около переработчика и медлительное улучшение базы. Что всё по-сути оптимизируется, автоматизируется и ускоряется, но, точно не в начале игры, когда тебя выбрасывают с голой попой в открытый мир. До этого всего нужно идти и путь этот тернист, и долог. Пока я построил "верстаки", наладил добычу и хранение электроэнергии (потому что в ином случае ты можешь просто вставать в АФК ночью), стал хоть немного добывать еды, чтобы прервать цепочку смертей от голода. Я настолько задолбался, так меня тошнило, что я даже до постройки добывающего ровера не дошёл, ибо на это ушло бы ещё одно столетие. [quote] Для более понятной картины: было потрачено не пара тройка часов, а намного больше... Как новичок, который разбирался самостоятельно, я потратил на это 20-30 часов. [/quote] И да, всё выше описанное, это не постройка базы, а банальное жизнеобеспечение, которое стояло почти на голой земле. Что-то большее я построить пытался, но там потребовалось такое безумное количество ресурсов, что я бросил эту затею на уровне отстроенного каркаса. В творческом режиме все выше описанные проблемы, конечно, исчезают. Вот только на их место приходят новые. Строить базы смысла уже нет. Ресурсы все при мне, а угроз для жизни нет. Красоты в простой стройке тоже не найти. Без DLC и всяких текстур с торговой площадки, любая постройка выглядит крайне грубо и скучно. Можно построить верфь. Я бы даже сказал [b]нужно[/b] построить верфь. О которой мне, к сожалению, удалось узнать лишь после того, как я вручную, отстроил несколько макетов кораблей. (Это было ужасно.) Однако, верфь тоже то ещё испытание инженера-программиста. [quote]А, да. Помимо DLC многие корабли ещё используют разные модификации и скрипты, которые нужно дополнительно скачивать, а потом ещё и настраивать-подключать в корабле.[/quote] Вот, отстроил я корабль значит, а делать то с ним оказывается и нечего. Мир пустышка. Что, конечно, было понятно ещё на моменте моего выживания. [quote]За всё то игровое время ко мне лишь единожды обращался пират, который отправил один агрессивный дрон в мою сторону. Тот, кстати, не справился с управлением и самолично разбился об землю около моей базы... Даже ни разу не выстрелив.[/quote] Вот только, теплилась во мне надежда, что я просто ещё не на том этапе. Что где-то там есть цивилизации, интересные противники, а не летающий металлолом с агрессивным искусственным интеллектом. Что где-то есть занимательная флора и фауна, а не только волки и инопланетные пауки... Увы. Весь интерес, для меня, сосредоточен в кооперативе. Ибо единственное, что меня зацепило, так это то, как может интересно нарушаться целостность баз и кораблей под гнётом вражеского огня. Противостояние может быть интересным, но быстротечным. Подготовка к ним, похоже, будет дольше самих битв. Публичные сервера даже рассматривать не брался. Не думаю, что там кто-то со мной стал бы сюсюкаться, просто в сопли размазал бы кто поопытнее и всё. В общем-то, вышел специфичный продукт, который свою аудиторию, конечно, нашёл, но явно не в лице меня. Пустой мир, гринд, бессмысленность, агрессивная реклама DLC и то, как они востребованы, хотя и являются косметикой — здесь нет ничего, что могло бы оставить мне положительные воспоминания.
this game is fun, but i tell you all new players. please take your time build and dont rush your builds and if you do not know how to make things work, well just dont worry about that first, just build the shell first like in away you do in minecraft, then add the important stuff later, after you get done with what you would wanted, then add power or the core to give your ship power so you no your ship has power, the lights will come online. also never start Survival mode first start creative mode to laren how to make things work well you build and just play with what you make and just test things out how you want it, to work. dont be scared of trying things out, you could say your builds and save them as blueprint's or save world, if you f up or you save by accident or have auto save on, just go to your world and go to back up save's then click any back up save's and click the save file and you will load in your world on that last save... okay now for mods dont worry about that yet until you get a hand of the game just baby step's mods are nice but not the important than learning how to make your firt build's also in the settings when making a new world there are options somthing like minecraft dose, when you get there turn off damage blocks as off for now just to get hang of the game, for real so you could have better experience also, comes to bit more advace theres some youtube videos will show you on how to do thing's or ask the community for help also there is SE discord its most likely get help there.. its the best i could explan it to new players
In its current state, the base game easily delivers around 400 hours of pure enjoyment. However, the modding community unlocks literally thousands of hours of extra playtime (some people have tens of thousands). I have 2,708 hours so far, and the game still feels as fresh and exciting as day one. For almost 2 years now on our dedicated server, we run a model(ish!) of the solar system where it takes a ship ~14 real-life days to travel the diameter of the solar system and we so far we have only conquered the Earth, Moon and Mars. No matter how you want to play this game, there are the community and tools to make it happen.
Been playing this game for a long time and this is one of the truly limitless sandboxes. ive pushed this game beyond what its built to do and have yet to find a limit. If you want something you can truly explore and feel progress playing space engineers is it.
Yeah I'm gonna come back some time in the future to try this game, definitely after watching a tutorial on youtube. I'm pretty sure this game has one of the absolute worst built-in tutorials.
I first got my hands on this game when I was little. A friend introduced me to it, and to the whole concept of it, and I understood almost nothing. Building blocks, oxygen, power grids, thrusters, inertia, none of it clicked. I poked at it for a bit, didn't get what I was supposed to be doing, got bored, and wandered off to something simpler. Then years later I came across it again, and something had changed. Maybe it was me. With a bit more age and patience, all the stuff that used to fly over my head suddenly made sense, and I realized this game is way more intriguing than I ever gave it credit for. Space Engineers is basically a sandbox that respects your intelligence and your willingness to fail. You mine, you build, you wire up power and conveyors, you slap thrusters on something and pray it doesn't tip over and grind itself into a wall. The physics are the real star. Everything has mass, everything has momentum, and the game is more than happy to let you learn that the hard way when your half finished ship drifts off into the void or folds in on itself the moment you forget a support. What got me the second time around was the freedom. There's no hand holding telling you the "right" way to do anything. You want a tiny mining pod, build it. You want a massive capital ship that takes three real life hours and a small amount of your sanity, go for it. The satisfaction of watching something you designed from scratch actually fly is hard to beat, and the failures are honestly just as fun in hindsight. It's not a game that explains itself well, which is exactly why little me bounced off it. It asks for patience and rewards curiosity, and if you give it both, it opens up into something genuinely special. Coming back to it as someone who could finally appreciate what it was doing felt like discovering it for the first time, except this time I actually got it. ⭐ 9 out of 10. Steep at first, brutal with physics, but one of those rare sandboxes that grows with you. Glad I gave it a second chance.
The best engineering game on steam. And by engineering I mean: you have a set of tools, techniques, and parts you can use to create completely new solutions to the problems the game presents to you. It's a better engineering game even than Factorio. That said this game isn't without it's weaknesses: - Non-sandbox play is good but not at all obvious how to do it. (You want to play Solar System + Earthlike start and then hunt pirate bases and take contracts) - The game has very little quality of life tools for diagnosing what's going on: inventory connectiveness, batteries, h2o2 generators, etc; I frequently find myself wasting a lot of time wonder why something isn't working, and they could just show you more info. Better yet make it diegetic like give us a multimeter! It's baffling to me that in Steam's best engineering game the core engineering loop is still so under developed. (Big opportunity for some indie studio.. maybe future me)
I am leaving this review to remind myself not to buy this again even if it's on sale. Start up the tutorial, it wants me to repair a solar panel with a Welder. Attempt to do so. You need Components to do this. Go open box nearby, grab Components, attempt to repair solar panel. You need Girders to do this. Go open same box ten feet away, grab Girders. Attempt to repair solar panel. You need Computers to do this. Open same box, grab Computers. Attempt to repair solar panel. You need Solar Cells to do this. How about uninstall and refund instead, I'll go work on expanding my base in Dune Awakening where it uses components from storage.
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Trends
Modeled estimate over time, reconstructed from Steam's monthly review histogram.
Engagement
DAU/MAU are modeled from peak concurrent players (≈×8 and ×28) — Steam publishes no active-user counts, so treat these as rough estimates, not reported figures.
Audience
Audience
Games most often reviewed by the same players — an audience-affinity signal from our review sample, not full ownership data.
Estimated from the language of this game's reviews — a proxy for where players are, not official Steam demographics.
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