helionaut

A broken television sends you across a colorful, procedurally generated galaxy where every distant speck in the sky can become your next landing site. Helionaut is a compact open-world adventure built around the pleasure of roaming between tiny planets, threading through asteroid fields, and poking into strange corners of space. Its tone is playful and lightly surreal rather than hard-science serious, with UFOs, hostile robots, and a mystery waiting at the universe’s center. The journey is small in scale but designed to make each new planet feel like an enticing detour.

You pilot a customizable ship through space, land on micro-planets, and gather the materials needed to keep expanding your capabilities. Exploration feeds directly into crafting: resources become weapons, tools, and upgrades that help you survive robot encounters and reach more challenging locations. Seven ship components are scattered across the galaxy, while blueprints unlock further equipment options and give discoveries a practical payoff. Three playable characters offer separate worlds to investigate, and the expected playtime of several hours makes it a focused adventure rather than an endless sandbox.

Helionaut stands out through its “fly there, land there” freedom, letting visible planets serve as real destinations instead of background scenery. The procedural universe keeps exploration from feeling completely mapped out, while the mix of on-foot action and ship combat adds variety beyond simple resource collection. A ten-track space radio strengthens the laid-back, homemade sci-fi mood during long flights between worlds. Players who enjoy the accessible exploration of No Man’s Sky but want something shorter, stranger, and more indie-scale should find plenty to like, especially if crafting upgrades and casual discovery matter more than demanding combat or a huge narrative.