Space Engineers

Lore & Background

Space Engineers was developed by the Czech independent studio Keen Software House. The game first became available through Steam's early access program in 2013, and over the following years of active development it sold over one million units. By 2024, total sales had exceeded five million copies. For approximately a year and a half starting in May 2015, the game's source code was officially available and maintained by Keen Software House to assist the modding community. The game entered beta on December 15, 2016, and was officially released on February 28, 2019.

Reader's Guide

Space Engineers is a 3D singleplayer and multiplayer sandbox game with no specific end goal, encouraging players to create their own objectives using engineering in space and planetary environments including asteroids and moons. Players use strategically placed blocks, game mechanics, and system interactions to build toward their goals, such as creating a spaceship capable of reaching space. The game includes built-in NPC interactions, pre-included story-driven scenarios, and the ability to use custom instances created by other users. Custom player-made scripts and mods can enhance or build upon vanilla content. Players can share their builds through blueprints. The game features two modes: survival and creative. Creative mode allows unlimited resources, instant building, invincibility, and tools like symmetry mode and voxel hands for manipulating terrain. Survival mode requires mining, collecting, and refining elements to craft tools, weapons, and blocks, while monitoring health, energy, and oxygen levels. A unique characteristic of Space Engineers compared to other games in its genre is that it allows players to fully interact with their creations without major limitations.

Did You Know?

• The game's source code was officially available and maintained by Keen Software House from May 2015 for about a year and a half.
• Planets were released on November 12, 2015, after development beginning in February 2015.
• The game includes hostile NPCs: Sabiroids (spider-like) on alien planets and wolves on Earth-like planets.
• Players can create three types of grids: small grids, large grids, and static grids/stations.