Endless Sky Price History & Deals Across Stores

Language	Interface	Subtitles	Audio
English	Yes	—	—

RecommendedSteam player

01/06/2017

- felt inclined to mention that the following applies to version 0.94 of the game. - started as transport captain - payed off mortage bought 2nd transport - bought 3rd transport - not enough transport missions - sold all ships and bought superfast transport - had fun exploring the galaxy - took saved money and started 2nd career as trade fleet captain - calculated that a lot of small cargo ships are more cost efficient than one big cargo ship - was puzzeled about weird game mechanics - explored best trade routes - built up trade fleet - discovered alien sectors - bought superhot alien equipment - got annoyed with pirates - thought "it is time to start fighting" - was afraid of fighting - no aim - bought war ship - war ship performed outstanding - was happy - noticed other ships can be disabled and captured - got watered mouth - captured other war ships - got greedy - expanded fleet - noticed costs of several mio a day due to death benefits - had sour awakening from greed - sold entire fleet, payed off debts, took money and started 3rd career as war fleet commander - bought super war ship, outfit it with the best stuff - went pirate hunting, capturing and selling - captured pirate ships - if no navy was around, captured civilian ships - made a fast fortune - bought 3 more super war ships - finally got mad at navy fighter pilots always blowing up disabled pirate ships ready to be captured and sold - started to capture and sell navy fighters - navy sent capital ships to eliminate me - captured and sold navy capital ships - entire republic decleared war on me - felt alone and was sad - started 4th career as outlaw - went to hostile republic sector to buy more super war ships to fight republic navy - hostile republic planet governor: "if you bribe me with a chewing gum ... sure, no problem!" - understood that all hostile republic planet governors can be bribed with a chewing gum to murder their own children. - spared governors children but bought more super war ships to stand against republic navy fleets. - made warfleet even faster to outrun republic navy - found sector with steady pirate activity and a non-hostile ship yard nearby - captured and sold pirate ships - noticed capturing small ships is more efficient than capturing big ships - no death benefits - made even bigger fortune by capturing small pirate ships - got bored just hitting b,b,b,b,b,b,b,b,b,b,b,b on the keyboard - wrote forum entry about unbalanced game mechnics - got nice replies - started 5th career as captain in the free worlds militia - obliterated everything with already super powerfull outlaw fleet - just played for the storyline - got a bit bored - started to read the forum and the reviews - read funny reviews - wrote review - review is not funnyShow moreShow less

51.2 hours at review263 people found this helpful

Not recommendedSteam player

12/16/2022

Endless Sky is not quite the game it could be. I spent a bunch of time playing it spaced over a couple of binges several years apart, and both times it was an easy timesink. The initial game sucks you in and makes you want to keep going. You're trading, you're exploring, occasionally you're getting a mission that reveals more about the galaxy. It feels like you are part of a colorful, hard sci-fi universe. It's Elite, but its interface is 2D, like Star Control. And then... and then the main story mission kicks into overdrive, and completely destroys any chance you had at enjoying yourself. Before you cross a particular threshold in the game, it is completely viable for you to fly around in a very fast one-man ship, transporting passengers and cargo across the galaxy. You get to roleplay as the classic smuggler/explorer/adventurer archetype. But when the war kicks off for real, you're forced into building a fleet and upgrading to a mothership, hiring crew and buying guns and getting into epic space battles. You can't remain neutral. You can't play both sides against each other. You can't join one side as an undercover operative. It gets to the point where just flying from one star system to the next whole swarms of bad guys attack you immediately, for no apparent reason, even if you're just one guy in a scout with nothing of value. It's not realistic and it's not fun. This, incidentally, is what made Star Control 2 suck as well. Start of the game you're flying around exploring, just meeting different people and trying to solve their problems, able to run away from any kind of trouble, but at some point you're forced into larger battles, and while that might be fun for the people who enjoy building dreadnoughts and blowing ♥♥♥♥ up, it kinda sucks if you were trying to roleplay as more of a diplomatic, sneaky or unaligned character. If you're into becoming the biggest, baddest dude in the galaxy, this might be the game for you. If you are hoping for a story where you can participate without becoming Rambo, it is not.Show moreShow less

16 hours at review282 people found this helpful

RecommendedSteam player

10/30/2015

"A plugin system allows anyone with a text editor and a paint program to create new ships, weapons, or missions, and the galaxy editor can be used to add new star systems and planets. Endless Sky is free, open source, and cross platform (Windows, Mac, and Linux). " Nuff said. It's a good game. Similar to Space Rangers.Show moreShow less

1 hours at review245 people found this helpful

Not recommendedSteam player

03/01/2022

Before I start, it's worth noting that this was played on the continuous build, 0.9.15. That's right, even the steam beta version is one stable patch behind (.13 vs .14). Needless to say, this isn't a good look, it gives the appearance that the game is abandoned. Getting into it, after the tutorial ends your main goal is going to be making money so I'm quickly going to summarize your options: -Mining: This isn't a real option, it's only good early and the process is mind-numbing. -Trading: Raw, non-mission related trading. This method has the highest potential output late-game since your fleet size has no limit. -Missions (non-combat): These don't scale well beyond early, even those found in wanderer space end up outclassed by combat actions. -Combat missions and combat as a whole: Your goal here is capturing the ships you've disabled, since that's where the money is. This is by far the quickest way to get your foot in the door early and depending on your location it ends up second only to mass trading late. Hunting korath in remnant space nets you upwards of 25mil per captured dredger and said missions cycle rapidly. The combat itself isn't exactly riveting. Even in smaller ships you cannot meaningfully dodge and maintain fire on a target simultaneously since you only have one direction of thrust by default. After upgrading to something bigger it degenerates into a stat measuring contest, either you have more/better ship(s), or the enemy does. This is further exacerbated late-game when fleets clash together causing a large mess where your piloted input means almost nothing. I'd recommend giving innate side and reverse thrust to all engines, maybe even some sort of rolling mechanic (with i-frames) in smaller ships so that they have some sort of meaningful reason to exist alongside the larger ones. Strafing as a whole would let you actually sidestep enemy shots and continue to fire back, range permitting, instead of having a glorified jousting match. Ironically, the game itself actively pushes you away from piloting in combat. The fact that all capturing actions have to be done by your flagship means that optimally you're going to be in the ship with the most bunks/cargo, with no guns attached to allow more bunks to be slotted and reducing the odds of enemies choosing to shoot you over your escorts. I cannot even begin to describe how bad of a design choice this is. There's simply no good reason to not be able to draw from your fleet's crew pool when boarding, or use their cargo when looting outfits. It is both unintuitive and un-fun. If your argument here is going to be "balance reasons" then I regret to inform you that intentionally keeping mechanics janky and frustrating is actively detracting from the gameplay. Surely when depreciation has already been implemented, you could leverage that instead of leveraging anti-QoL? In the same vein, outfits cannot be swapped in space. Usually this means very little, but if a ship is deprived of its engines before boarding you can't even scuttle it for the parts, you have to abandon it for a big fat zero. Certain areas of the map also lack a way of attaching a jump drive to your newly-captured vessel. Besides the obvious shared pool or allowing escorts to board in your stead, you could pull a Starsector and have a salvage screen appear when the fighting is over, allowing you to rapidly pick what you do and do not want to attempt capturing. Would save a whole lot of downtime when moving around and capturing. Friendly AI should also back off when I've started to move towards a ship I intend to capture, even navy units. I'd understand it if they were on their own and had contributed 100% to the kill, but when there's someone willing to board, shooting potential salvage seems counterproductive. At least the remnant have the right idea. Speaking of which, combat should actually end at some point. I've had moments where there's so many disabled ships on screen that one exploding sets off a chain reaction of death across the entire screen. Systems should have a hard limit of how many fleets can pass through daily, I refuse to beleive any military is infinite. As for outfitting ships, besides the naked flagship, usually every outfit has a "best" version or at least best at your current point of progression. This essentially means that if you try for optimal ship loadouts, they'll be almost identical in what you're using bar for the weapons. Although since the goal tends to be capturing, the answer there is also always "beams" since the AI lacks the foresight to stop shooting a little early and not blow everything to smithereens. Missiles are useless, both because they destroy their targets very often and because they tend to cost more money to fire than you'll make back ... because they destroy their targets very often. Seems I've entered a loop. Now to talk about the main draw here: the story. Funny thing is I almost missed it. I had reached the point where I had stolen a bactrian (since there's no indication how to get the license either) and had fat stacks in my pocket. If I hadn't checked online I would've been content to close the game at that point, having never: -started the main story -the deep story -seen any alien race What this game is in desperate need of is some signposts, pointing you to where stuff starts. Hell, where stuff continues too. Some missions have hidden timers that you gotta wait out, if you don't and simply assume it's over, you end up missing a lot. Story-relevant missions should also be visibly marked somehow, since I had declined TMBR, thinking it was a radiant quest. Even worse is that that specific mission ties into another, seemingly unrelated one (the Emerald Sword). Honestly if I wasn't rooting around in the data files the stars would literally have to align for me to ever even realize that quest existed. Hidden content might as well not exist, since you won't be experiencing it. What's even worse is that this quest's reward is an OK ship ... for 10 hours ago. I can't even begin to describe why someone thought this was a good idea. The same way the kestrel is unlocked when you have much better tech available already at that point in time. As for the storylines themselves? Well I finished them, I guess they can't be written off as terrible. Though I wonder if I did so because I wanted to see the end or if I simply wanted to say I completed them because I had already started (sunk cost fallacy?). Overall, lots of running around, combat which I already stated isn't great, frustration at triggering the next part. Rewards are usually in the form of X new item being available for purchase. The credits you get usually only cover the expenses for 4 of the 16 jumps you had to make. I'd also rag on the game for walls of text, when this is a medium that prefers showing over telling, but I'm running out of space. I'll also briefly touch on modding, since I just had to try and make some edits for myself. It's easy to get into, since plugins consist of text files. For the same reasons, it's incredibly shallow. If I want to make edits beyond the scope of what's in the text files, I have to recompile the entire game. There is no system in place to allow you to make these changes in a plugin and distribute that. TLDR: combat is shallow, jank is used as balancing, outfitting is binary, story is easy to miss and contains no memorable on-screen events (just text) In conclusion, shell out 15 money units and buy yourself Starsector. Pushes you towards combat, the combat is deep and potential fits are many. Story has meaningful rewards and a few memorable scripted events. Large modding scene, excellent API for implementing custom stuff. No I will not be cutting this game several miles of slack because it's free, the issues present are too major to overlook. P.S. I would have also touched on how the game encourages turning it into a save-scum simulator and others, but character limit.Show moreShow less

50.6 hours at review88 people found this helpful

RecommendedSteam player

12/06/2015

This game is awesome. And free. Get it. Timeline of Events: -Start off with sorry excuse for ship. Literally a cargo crate with a thruster -Realize you are in massive debt -Slave for hours making petty cargo runs between worlds -Havn't made dent in massive mortgage -Buy another cargo crate with thruster -Double average income -Break 'J' key, buy new keyboard -Pay off massive Mortgage -Do more cargo runs -Buy bigger ship -Start transporting people instead of cargo -Run out of gas in middle of nowhere -Get raided by pirates -Buy warship to protect you from said pirates -Discover that looting pirates is much faster money than cargo runs -Buy more warships -Attempt to take over a pirate planet -Get bodied -Buy more warships -Break 'J' key, buy new keyboard -Start main quest line -Holy crap this storyline is awesome -Get bodied by the Republic during main questline -Accidentally discover alien sector of space -Sell everything for shield beetles -Decimate Republic with new sheild beetles -Finish main questline -Wow that was awesome -Discover the quarg -Try to capture quarg ship -Die -Try again -Die -Repeat previous steps over and over -Buy more shield beetles -Spend life savings on ship modifications -Finally defeat quarg ship -Use quarg technology to destroy everything -Take over galaxy -Break 'J' key, buy new keyboard In all seriousness, this game is amazing. I highly recommend you try it out, it is free after all!Show moreShow less

39.9 hours at review225 people found this helpful

Not recommendedSteam player

10/31/2015

Beyond what is a very competent EV Nova clone, with trading, combat etc. I never felt like I was playing a game. You will be pressing two key an awful lot and these keys almost define the gameplay. Lets say you are doing a trade run. You use the map to plot a course and leave the station. To get across space, on a journey of what could be many, many jumps you only need two keys! J to jump L to land And that's it. You don't have to steer, you don't have to brake. When you press those keys the autopilot flies the ship for you. I never saw a lot of combat but was attacked on a couple of occasions by pirates. Fortunately my shields and armour held. But on those two occasions the only keys I pressed were J and L. Oh, almost forgot. The game has almost no sound assets at all. No music and precious little effects. You can hear your thrusters and gunfire but the effects are entirely underwhelming. UPDATE: It's 2019! Just for fun I decided to re-install and have a look at what 4 years of development has brought us with the beta release of 0.9.9. Created a new pilot, got the small freighter, accepted a mission to delivery cargo 4 jumps away, pressed M, selected the next system, pressed J, pressed M, pressed J, warning klaxon, pirate hammers me with missiles, some of which are intercepted....ship disabled, Alt-F4, and uninstall. Still garbage. UPDATE: It's 2024. Yes, still fully playable even if you are profoundly deaf, as you won't be missing anything.Show moreShow less

1.1 hours at review36 people found this helpful

RecommendedSteam player

10/31/2015

So I land on a planet and check the space port for any missions and I wind up with a woman holding a gun to the back of my head. It gives me two options, one is raise my hands like a smart person and the other is "Do a karate move". I kind of just stared at the screen for a couple seconds before clicking the "raise my hands" option. The woman with the gun tells me to move or something and two choices pop up again. "Comply" or "Now do the karate move". I stared at it. And it stared back. For what seemed like eons I watched it. It was seducing me. It was corrupting my morals and everything I hold dear. I wanted to stay in the immersion but it did not care what I wanted. It wanted me to click it like Miley Cyrus wants attention. I clicked it and she went off on a rant about how she's a she-badger. 10/10 best dialogue ever, would karate chop againShow moreShow less

15.8 hours at review208 people found this helpful

Not recommendedSteam player

04/12/2018

Decent game ruined by an absolute requirement for the player to savescum. It's next to impossible to play this game without savescumming because the game randomly spawns in NPC ships when you leave a planet, and in a lot of situations you can end up completely surrounded by enemy ships the second you leave port. Not only that, but the missions actively encourage you to fly through contested and hostile systems, and you have no way of controlling whether you run face first into twenty enemy capital ships the second you enter a system. Reloading ten times per hour is pretty standard with this game, and after a while that just made me lose interest in playing because I couldn't shake that feeling that I was "cheating", even though this seems to be the way that the game was designed to be played.Show moreShow less

41.9 hours at review31 people found this helpful

RecommendedSteam player

10/31/2015

Ship was disabled by pirates. Hail nearest friendly ship for help. On its way to help me gets killed by said pirates. Happens two more times. Finally decide to bribe pirates for help. Before they get the chance other pirates come and kill them and then finish me off. 10/10Show moreShow less

10.8 hours at review180 people found this helpful

Not recommendedSteam player

12/17/2017

Being an old fan of space-trading games, I played for quite some time and built up a small fleet, so it's time for a review. Pro: -it's a free game -open-source, too -has lots of different ships, weapons and equipment, although most items are not usable for most ships -retro look and feel -text-driven tutorial and storyline Con: -after paying off the initial debt, there is basically no way to loose the game, except from being killed by pirates which happens from time to time and can't be avoided no matter of your skills -the above forces you to save-scum if you're not willing to grind for ships again -trading is pretty basic, prices go up and down in a random fashion -combat is ridiculous, the pirates often attack while you're still taking off from a planet, your small ships are destroyed very quickly -combat controls are limited, no formations except 'guard flag ship' which often fails because of different jump and movement characteristics -often you don't even see where your ships are destroyed, because they a fighting offscreen, and you can't react in any way -fleet management is hampered by different jump speed and range, and ship aggression, often splitting up your fleet. Should you encounter pirates at the jump destination, losses are sometimes unavoidable -the interface it not desgned very well, at least if you don't act like the devs intended you to act -some missions simply spawn lots of attackers that are hard to fend off without loosing ships -ships and items degrade over time, reducing your expensive stuff to trash, this means you'll loose lots of money -ship outfit screen is limited in functionality -the grind required for the bigger ships is quite boring, basically you buy lots of cargo space and haul goods from A to B and HOPE you don't loose a ship on the way -generated missions soon get boring As a result, I'll thumb this down, but since it's free, just install it and see for yourself.Show moreShow less

24 hours at review26 people found this helpful

Endless Sky

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01About Endless Sky

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