I'm still star-hopping in No Man's Sky, and finding the interesting new biomes introduced in the Atlas Rises update at a rapid pace. In the past couple sessions I've found a second artificial 'hex' planet and two planets covered with weird supposedly sentient metal orbs.

This morning I came across two more oddities. The first was a planet awash with bubbles. Big bubbles, bigger bubbles, tiny bubbles, medium bubbles, bubbles that were bigger than the big bubbles but not as big as the bigger bubbles, and even some solid iron bubbles sitting on the planet's surface. I named the planet 'Bubble Planet' because I am a creative writer.

The bubble planet, like the hex and orb planets, have the same types of terminals that eject semi-mysterious texts that seem to have been created by some sort of artificial intelligence. The bubbles themselves don't seem particularly intelligent, but even if they are, they're bubbles and I'm not sure how they would display intelligence. They can't go around reading books: they have no arms or eyes or Kindles.

The iron bubbles can be harvested but the transparent bubbles, as far as I can tell, can't be popped.

Meanwhile, In the same system as the bubble planet, I found this even-stranger planet:

I don't know what these things are, but they're really cool looking (you can enlarge the images by clicking on the upper-right corner). These things can be mined with a Colossus laser for Detrium, same as the metal orbs. Unlike the orbs, even the floating ones can be destroyed.

Like the other three new planet types, there are no alien creatures strolling and stumbling around on Thing Planet. These new planets are also bereft of language monoliths and the typical scattering of outposts and vendors as far as I can tell, though they have all contained a habitable base if you want to make one your new homeworld.

Is there anything else new out there? I'll keep hunting. As always, share any new discoveries you've made in the comments.

I'm on a bit of a roll in my exploration of No Man's Sky's new content. On Friday I found a planet covered in hexagons, and spent some time exploring it. Today, I found a second hex planet (which I decided to make my homeworld), and shortly after, I stumbled on something else: a planet littered with weird metallic orbs. Most look like they've been dropped and are resting on (or partially in) the planet's surface, some are broken in pieces, and some hover, glow, and slowly spin.

Take a look below.

There are no alien creatures on this weird planet, just like the hex planet. The intact fallen orbs (they look kind of like the rollermines from Half-Life 2) can be harvested for Detrium, provided you use the mining laser mounted on the Colossus exocraft. The shattered pieces can be mined with a standard laser.

As for the hovering orbs? They're glowing and spinning, and try as I might I couldn't destroy one. I tried mining lasers, grenades, my ship's lasers, and even smashing straight into them at high speeds. Nothing seemed to have any effect.

It's worth noting that scanning one of these orbs tells me its age is 'Millennia' and that its root structure is 'Sentient' so maybe I shouldn't be trying to destroy it anyway. Nice orb. Friendly orb.

I explored the planet a bit, hoping to find interactive terminals similar to the ones present on both the hex planets I've visited. As it turns out, they're not similar, they're exactly the same. Same shape and same messages as the hex planet, as far as I can tell.

If you're looking for some of these new planets yourself, both of the hex planets I discovered were described as 'Airless' when I scanned them (also, they're covered with hexes, which is hard to miss unless you're really far away). The rollermine planet (as I'm calling it) shows up in scans as a 'Dead Planet'. So, if your scans turn up one of those, you might want to land and take a look.

I've been tooling around No Man's Sky a bit since the last update, mostly aimless exploration, jumping from solar system to solar system and landing to harvest enough plants and rocks to jump to more. I've been low on Thamium9, the gunk used with antimatter to craft warp cells, which I can never seem to find a sizable supply of. Thamium9 appears in scattered plants in small amounts that need to be hand-picked, and also in certain asteroids, but I always seem to be fresh out. The wiki informs me a good place to look is on barren planets, so I've been keeping an eye out for one.

While scanning a gray, distant planet called Elfannovi Umvel, which is described as an airless planet, I realize I can faintly make out what looks like a series of hexagons covering its surface. If it weren't for the sunlight glinting off the hexes, I may not have even noticed.

I jump toward it and the closer I get the better I can see this this isn't just a typical planet (well, each planet is procedurally generated, so technically they're each unique and thus not typical, but you get what I'm saying.) I've found one of No Man's Sky's new biomes. The big hexes give way to smaller and smaller ones as I approach and enter its atmosphere. It kind of looks like the planet is covered in solar panels.

Landing and wandering around, I don't see any signs of activity beyond the usual sentinels slowly hovering around performing their lonely duty of stopping players from quickly gathering rocks so they can get back to having fun. The synthetic plants, when scanned, are categorized as flora, and there are occasionally some hovering, slowly spinning hexes made of iron that can be harvested as well (there are also a few standard alien plants here and there). 

One thing of note is that scanning the synthetic plants and hexes doesn't pay you credits the way scanning organic plants and creatures does. I'm not sure if that's an interesting detail or just a bug. I'm feeling positive today so I'm going to go with interesting.

Flying over the planet's surface, my scanner picks up absolutely nothing for long minutes, and I don't see the usual dusting of outposts, crashed ships, language stones, monoliths, or anything else that requires investigation. Eventually, though, after landing to take a walk, I spot something in the distance. It's a structure, a large and metallic slowly spinning circle.

It turns out to be a terminal, which when activated, gives me a drizzling of text. After taking off again, I begin finding these terminals all over the planet. Most don't show up in scans, but having found the first one they become easy to spot.

They appear, for the most part, to be an AI that has been busy pondering various scenarios, and much of the text sounds like wargame simulations (one describes a hypothetical conflict between the Gek and Vy'keen). Sometimes the text has something to do with me (or you), the traveler, and some are musings about Atlas, life, and death. The planet, or whatever this is, appears to have had a lot of time to think.

One mystery, perhaps the most important one, I solved myself: yes, you can fly your ship through the rings. They don't transport you anywhere, but flying a spaceship through a big metal alien ring is still cool and if I had my own spaceship I would definitely do it as often as I could.

Another thing I discovered: at one point I landed near a terminal and found it was located next to a small cave. The cave's interior didn't appear synthetic at all: it was rocky with 'tites and 'mites and the usual procedurally generated clumps of alien plant life. So, it appears this planet isn't entirely artificial at all, but just covered by a layer of synthetic hexes.

I spent a couple hours just zooming around the planet, looking for more clues about what any of this means, and found probably a dozen or so terminals, always accompanied by vague text briefings, save beacons, and loot crates, but that's about it. I'm a little disappointed there weren't artificial creatures on the planet as well: some of those alien tigers with deer legs and cow heads and bird wings, only constructed from cables and solar panels, might have been cool to find. If you've found anything interesting on a hex planet, I'd love to hear about it in the comments!

One year later, No Man's Sky is a better game but still lacks magic and mystery, so said our Chris earlier this week after returning to the open world space exploration sim. Just over 12 months since launch, the game awaits its imminent Atlas Rises update—and Hello Games has now announced what we can expect.

30 hours of "new story content", which includes the appearance of a new "mysterious interdimensional alien race" tops the list, alongside "limited" online co-op. The latter (or lack thereof) created a stir at launch, so it'll be interesting to see what's on offer here. Under the heading 'Joint Exploration', here's the skinny from Hello Games:

"Glitches in the simulation have begun to appear. Visualised by strange floating orbs, up to 16 players can see and communicate with one another, and explore the universe together. While interaction with others is currently very limited, this is an important first step into the world of synchronous co-op in No Man’s Sky. 

"While interaction is very limited, VOIP (Voice over IP) allows proximity based voice chat with other nearby explorers. Use portals to quickly travel to more populated planets, or to meet up with friends."

Atlas Rises also promises to improve mapping and waypointing, as well as an overhaul to the game's trading system. The update also targets an expected amount of quality of life, texture and visual improvements, while terrain editing looks particularly interesting:

No Man's Sky's Atlas Rises update is expected to land later today. Full details can be found over here.  

A year ago this week No Man's Sky released on PC, and its bumpy launch was both the end of a string of troubles and the beginning of many more. In the months leading up to its release, Hello Games' expansive space exploration sandbox was hyped through the stratosphere—and I'll take my share of the blame for pouncing on every last tangible shred of news about it. Since its trailer was shown at E3 in 2015, fans had been eagerly awaiting its release, hoping it was the space game they'd always dreamed of, a near-infinite universe of infinite possibilities, mysteries, and the promise of the unknown.

At the same time, it had been a troubled lead-up to launch day. A change of release dates from June to August resulted in death threats aimed at the developer as well as Kotaku writer Jason Schreier, who broke the story. That July, a Dutch company claimed to own the "Superformula" that NMS used to procedurally generate its planets. Closer to launch, copies of the game leaked early and people were playing and streaming before it was supposed to be out.

And then, the first day NMS officially launched on PS4 (which was a few days before we got it on PC), something extremely unlikely happened. Two players wound up close enough in the near-infinite universe of NMS to arrange a meeting. The only thing more surprising than two players encountering each other on day one was that when they met, they couldn't see each other, despite Hello Games founder Sean Murray having said they'd be able to. In short, the thing that was extremely unlikely to ever happen in NMS happened immediately, but the thing that was supposed to happen if that ever happened, well, it didn't happen.

As for the game itself, there were plenty who were pleased with it, but most were disappointed and lots were downright incensed. In my review I found a lot to like but my enjoyment was hampered by the frustrating menus and endless, chore-like resource gathering. Procedural generation made sure I never saw the exact same thing twice, but after a few hours it became hard to not look at a never-before-glimpsed alien creature and think "Well that one has head-type 12 and leg-type 8, but it's pale blue and not bright blue like the last 12-8 I saw." 

The game was beautiful at times, but the dice-rolls that determined the compositions of plants, lifeforms, and planets failed to enchant for long, and I never really came away feeling like I was discovering anything truly special in No Man's Sky. The buildings, outposts, and stores littering the surface of every planet I visited didn't make me feel much like a pioneer or explorer. I wasn't the first astronaut to stand upon these planets, I was the last. Traveling to uncharted solar systems quickly lost its wonder and became a routine. Land, gather, leave, repeat.

Meanwhile, the drama surrounding the game continued. Reddit did as Reddit does, scouring every available interview, statement, and video clip of Sean Murray talking about NMS pre-launch to see if what he said then lined up with the game he eventually presented. Sony, who had partnered with Hello to market the game, suggested Murray "sounded like he was promising more features" than he could deliver, a statement that might be accurate but certainly a shade unfair, considering a Sony VP once described No Man's Sky as "potentially one of the biggest games in the history of our industry" prior to the game's launch. The hype backlash was in full swing.

The E3 trailer was laid side-by-side with footage of the game as released, and many players felt the had been misled by 'bullshots' and gameplay video that didn't represent the finished product. This even led to an investigation by the Advertising Standards Authority, though the claim was eventually dismissed.

Murray and Hello Games as a whole retreated into a void of silence for months, save the occasional patch notes detailing bug fixes. It's not too hard to understand why: when every word you've said pre-launch is being scrutinized, it's not much of an impetus to keep on talking. While I could certainly sympathize, I didn't think it was helping anyone—neither Hello Games nor the NMS community—to completely close off communication, and I suggested in September that they needed to start speaking to their community again.

When Hello did begin communicating, it was with only a few words but a boatload of new content for No Man's Sky. While silent, Hello Games had been listening to feedback, and The Foundation update included base-building features, new survival and creative modes, and plenty of fixes and improvements. Foundation was followed by Path Finder, an update that introduced hover bikes and land rovers, a fantastic photo mode, and other new features. This week we'll receive a third big update called Atlas Rises, which arrives after a winding ARG and will bring portals and new spacecraft to NMS.

That's a hell of a lot to happen in a single year to a single game, but expectations for No Man's Sky were so high they'd have been nearly impossible to live up to. I think it's great that Hello Games has remained hard at work to add new features that players have requested, but at the same time adding new parts and pieces doesn't change the core of the game, and that core is what I found ultimately disappointing. As good as they may be, it's hard to believe bases, hover bikes, portals, and ARGs will do much to bring back the mystery and curiosity that made No Man's Sky such a phenomenon before its release.

After weeks – or months? – of ARG shenanigans, it looks like Hello Games is gearing up to unveil the next major No Man's Sky update. Today they lifted the curtain just a tad, enough to reveal that update 1.3 is called Atlas Rises and that it will release some time this week.

Announced via email to the game's followers (via NeoGAF), Atlas Rises "focuses on improving the central story of No Man's Sky and adds the ability to quick travel between locations using portals". 

Patch notes are forthcoming, so there may well be more to it than that. On the topic of the ARG itself, that was studio Hello Games' attempt to "reach out and celebrate the devoted community that means so much to us". Which, well, if you enjoyed it – great. But it might well have stoked a level of hype that this expansion might not be able to live up to. 

"When we posted those cassettes we didn't know what to expect. In the last eight weeks a quarter of a million players from across the globe (174 countries, to be precise!) have come together - united by a shared love of mystery and science fiction - to form the Citizen Science Division. You’ve travelled great distances both real and virtual, undertaken complex tasks, and explored the depths of simulation theory. New friendships have been forged, and a tight-knit community has been created. Most importantly a cute hamster has a new home."

Whatever other secrets the patch notes may hold, I'm looking forward to finding out later this week, because I still play this beautiful and frustrating space adventure game a lot. 

At the beginning of June, Hello Games launched Waking Titan—a hype-stirring ARG for its open-world space roamer No Man's Sky. Complete with strange cassette tapes, snippets of vague information and an expected deluge of Reddit back-and-forthing, the alternate reality game was said to offer clues tied to NMS' incoming update 1.3. 

New images suggest this will involve portals of some sort, as well as a new ship. 

First, here's another look at the portal image: 

And here's the ship:

Speaking first to the former, one Reddit user named m-p-3 suggests the glyphs shown on the shot-facing console mirror those featured at the foot of the Waking Titan website. 

Other users also point out that the console features an extra icon that isn't listed on the ARG's site. It's worth noting that messages housed within the aforementioned cassettes have since been decoded by the NMS community to read: "portals", which of course plays into this nicely.

As for the new ship image, complete with mountainous backdrop, Reddit users seem less sure of what it might entail.

With No Man's Sky's imminent 1.3 update expected in August, my guess is that we'll hear from Sean Murray in the coming days/weeks.

Last month, Hello Games kicked off its Waking Titan ARG whereby mysterious cassette tapes were distributed to Reddit mods. This megathread documents the initiative's subsequent progress, however the latest breakthrough points to an August patch—update 1.3.

A PDF file marks the latest discovery which talks of "180 Access IDs" and "new experiences in version 1.3 of a familiar universe". The 180 IDs reference is most likely tied to the free copies Hello Games has steadily distributed throughout the ARG, while its almost certain version 1.3 of a familiar universe reflects an update of the same number.

The PDF reads as follows: 

"We want to extend our gratitude to everyone who has contributed to the Mercury Subroutine so far. We hope you have enjoyed the successful distribution of 180 Access IDs, and we hope you will also appreciate the other interesting artifacts we have in store for you going forward.

"We intend to keep the process alive until the completion of Project Waking Titan in August. It is important to mention that we are very excited by the coming Phases 2 and 3. Input from the Mercury Subroutine will pave the way toward new experiences in version 1.3 of a familiar universe. We look forward to the successful conclusion of this ground-breaking experiment. 

"Regards. S.M."

No Man's Sky's patch 1.22 brought "exocraft" buggies to every planet in the galaxy, but it remains unclear what's in store for update 1.3. Watch this space. 

Thanks, VG24/7.

It's been a few months since we last saw any activity on the No Man's Sky front, when Hello Games released the 1.22 patch that brought "exocraft" buggies to every planet in the galaxy. But it appears that something new, and potentially big, is in the works. Reddit mods have been receiving packages from the studio since late last week containing NMS merchandise of various sorts and a single, numbered audio cassette, each of them carrying a hidden message. 

There are apparently 16 audio tapes in all, and they're very slowly being uploaded to the net for examination—not all of them have been received yet, and as NeoGAF user legacyzero pointed out in his summary of events so far, "Nobody owns a goddamn cassette player." Another problem, as seen in these captures of Discord chats, is that some users don't want to share what they've received, although one of them claimed that Hello Games said it "expected this to happen and will help us out when needs be." 

So at this point it's impossible to say what information they will collectively contain, but spectrographic analyses of two of the recordings have revealed the same set of characters on both: 706s7274616p. Run that through an ROT13 converter and you end up with a proper hexadecimal string, 706f7274616c, which when converted to ASCII leaves a single word: Portal.   

The word is especially portentous in light of a note that came with at least one of the packages: "The giant gateway calls out to me, filling my mind with whispered secrets of a far-flung world." That's actually a line from the game, and also an allusion to the portals that appear on certain planets that, to this point, nobody has been able to figure out how to operate. 

It seems fairly clear that whatever is going on here—if there is in fact something happening at all—is somehow related to those structures. Passageways to exciting new planets, or even an entirely different galaxy, possibly one more in line with initial player expectations? Perhaps it will work the other way, and we'll have strange new visitors coming to us. Or it could be something much more mundane, which I'd guess is the most likely outcome—a way to meet other intergalactic explorers, maybe. 

I've emailed Hello Games for more information, and will update if and when I receive it. For now, you can keep up with the unfolding mystery in the Cassettes Megathread. 

One of the shortcomings of No Man's Sky's Path Finder update was that the three new vehicles (called exocraft) could only be driven on your home planet: that is, the planet you built your base on. To drive the buggy, hovercraft, or cargo tank, you need to build an exocraft geobay to summon your new land-based rides, and you could only build those as part of your planetary base. (You could also use the geobays of someone else's base to summon your cars, provided you were lucky enough to discover such a base on your travels.)

Patch 1.22, released today, changes that for the better. Now you can craft your vehicles' geobays on any planet you like, meaning you can summon your wheels and go bouncing around on the surface of any planet you happen to be on, even if you don't have a base there. This will give you far more freedom to explore with your new vehicles, or, like me, to callously run over every rock, tree, and alien creature in your path. See, I've been finding the new vehicles have turned me into a real space-jerk.

Here are the full patch notes:

• Exocraft Geobays can now be crafted on any planet - this means vehicles can be summoned anywhere (whereas previously, vehicles could only be summoned on your home planet).
• HUD markers have been added to allow you to easily navigate back to an Exocraft Geobay
• Fixed a bug that caused vehicle weapons and mining lasers not to drain charge
• Fixed an issue which could cause the Starship cockpit to vanish when exiting
• Fixed some freighter door texture issues
• Fixed a rare crash when scanning from a vehicle
• Fixed a rare crash when feeding creatures
• Fixed an issue which caused weapons to miss-fire when using Plasma Launcher
• During warp the quick menu now hides properly as intended