It appears that things are once again happening in the No Man's Sky 'Waking Titan' ARG that began way back in May 2017. As noted by Game Detectives (via Eurogamer), the Atlas Passes that were promised in an earlier stage of the ARG have begun to arrive, and rather than answering questions they are deepening the mystery.   

In late December, the tenth of 15 glyphs along the bottom of the Waking Titan website unlocked, leading to a password prompt and a Google Drive folder called 1.5 that's filled with images of the NMS logo reflected in various arrangements of mirrors. The names of the images, when strung together and converted from hex, decode to the letters "moirrr," an anagram for "mirror." The Myriad website, uncovered during an earlier stage of the ARG investigation, also contains the hex code for the word.   

An image in the background of the most recent glyph link makes reference to the completion of 10,000 passes, and says that "you should have them in time for the next phase." The first of those passes reportedly turned up on January 17: It was made of cardboard with a "textured pass" on it, a CSD category ranking, and another hexadecimal number that translated to "Phoenix." More numbers, including a CSD-ID and serial number, were on the back.  

Those numbers are now being collated in this Google Docs spreadsheet. All the entries so far appear to originate in Canada, although whether that's a matter of timing or something more significant is impossible to say. Gaming Detectives recommends that anyone submitting a pass includes all numbers on it, and a photo of the front as well.

No Man's Sky creator Sean Murray contributed to the tease with a January 10 tweet that also referenced mirrors, and contained an image of the Netflix series Black Mirror and an excerpt from an interview with Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker, in which he says he's playing No Man's Sky and "there's an idea for the second season that's sprung from a procedurally generated universe." 

The whole thing seems incredibly complex, and there appears to be quite a bit left to come, as five glyphs on the Waking Titan site are still locked. The 1.5 references are also perplexing, because there hasn't been a 1.4 update yet: That could suggest that 1.4 will be a surprise drop, or too minor to warrant all this fuss, or perhaps will be skipped altogether. Or it might mean something else entirely—I'm bad at ARGs so while I find them interesting, I'm rarely much use when it comes to moving things forward. 

I am, however, happy to see that No Man's Sky is still a going concern, and I continue to hold out hope that it will eventually evolve into the game we were promised—or at least as close to it as we can reasonably expect. A full rundown of what's happened so far in the Waking Titan ARG is available here. 

Our Ongoing Game award goes to No Man's Sky. After a rocky 2016 launch, the game's in better shape after this year's updates. Check out our other GOTY awards here.

Phil Savage: Here's a new category for this year's awards, designed to recognise an older game that had a great 2017 through patches and free updates. And whatever you originally thought of No Man's Sky when it released last year, this year marked a period of significant growth and improvement.

Andy Kelly: At launch No Man's Sky felt like a shell of a game. I squeezed 20 hours out of it, which is not insignificant, but in that time I felt like I'd experienced everything this supposedly infinite universe had to offer. But over time, thanks to a procession of hefty free updates, the game has evolved into something much deeper and ultimately much better. Whether it's base-building, vehicles, new biomes, or the story's clearer, more hand-crafted structure, Hello has slowly been transforming the game into something approaching the grand promise of those early demonstrations. I still think there's a lot of room for improvement, including more varied planet surfaces, but the developer's efforts to expand, deepen, and improve its colourful space simulator is something I think we should celebrate.

Philippa Warr: I was one of those people who actually loved No Man’s Sky when it came out. Not in an all-encompassing passionate frenzy which blinded me to its shortcomings, nor the differences between marketing and game, but there was so much in that ambitious universe which already gave me joy. It was built for pottering in a way that reminded me of meandering along country trails with my camera, investigating pleasing views and tailing odd creatures. 

The first big update to the game—Foundation—came towards the end of 2016 bringing things like base building, freighters and farming. In terms of how that made the game feel, it didn't specifically impact how I played it because I wasn't interested in commerce or on settling down. I was content to drift along in normal mode.

But, taking a more general view, the update felt like a statement from developers, Hello Games, about how they would be approaching the game post-release. The update implied a willingness to be more flexible over what the game could be—instead of forcing players to keep moving, never settling, base-building was a specifically supported element of the game. There were also a couple of modes to tweak the difficulty should you fancy it. 

Foundation ended up being exactly that—a support structure and a statement of intent for 2017’s set of updates. Path Finder was the first and offered up vehicles, vehicle racing, base sharing, photo mode, permadeath mode, a whole bundle of quality of life improvements and more. It was photo mode which absolutely blew me away and either ruined or perfected the game for my purposes, depending on which way you approach it.

Photo mode was developed in collaboration with Dead End Thrills’s Duncan Harris. It lets you pause the game in the middle of what you're doing and switch into a free-ish camera mode. At that point you can line up your shots, apply filters as you might on Instagram, fiddle with FOV and depth-of-field, change the position of the sun in order to get the perfect shadows or the exact right time of day and more. Where I used to spend minutes on shots, I can now spend hours. I have previously spent entire sessions within the same five foot radius captivated by different light effects on a group of trees. 

I believe Chris Livingston rather liked photo mode too, but the big draw for him in that update was the ability to ram wildlife with his new space car. Perhaps we should have combined our interests for some kind of artsy inverse Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition. 

Atlas Rises came in August and, along with terrain editing and ancient portals, it seemed to sow seeds for co-op play. Multiplayer, or rather the ability to "see" other people in your game is one of the big sticking points from launch—the reality of the game didn’t match what had been described during development. The ability still isn't exactly in the game but there's a version of the idea in that you can see other players as floaty orbs with proximity-based chat, and Hello Games are billing that as a precursor to some kind of synchronous co-op. 

These updates don't erase launch criticisms but they do reframe the game. Hello Games are using the process of post-release patches to respond to those criticisms and flesh out the game in ways that reflect and expand how people play it. More specific to my own interests is the fact that the game just keeps getting more beautiful through a multitude of changes both big and small. In my current game I’ve discovered a planet populated with trees that sprout octopus-like tentacles. Finally I’m ready to call somewhere home. I just have to stop taking pictures of it long enough to find a habitable base and claim the world as my own...

For more recent No Man's Sky words, check out Chris's experiences with the game's synthetic planets and other varied environments.

If you're looking for a new way to explore the procedurally generated splendors of No Man's Sky, you can now fly around in the Millennium Falcon—once you find it. The Morships for Atlas Rising Mod for No Man's Sky adds a dozen new ships, including the Falcon, to the game's procedural generation lists, meaning that a) the new spacecraft don't replace any existing ships, and b) they'll show up randomly as you explore. So, if you want to pilot Han Solo's famed smuggle-mobile from Star Wars, you'll have to keep your eyes peeled for it.

The ships have been crafted by a number of creators—see the mod's page for all the credits. All the ships are pretty sweet looking, and there's even a pod racer from The Phantom Menace included, if you can stomach the bad memories. As the ships appear on various docking pads and space stations you can purchase them as you would other ships. They might even show up as pirates and attack you.

One warning from the modder: "...uninstalling the mod will result in a crash to desktop if/when any save game tries to load the ships from the uninstalled mod." That's pretty serious, so keep it in mind if you decide you want to install this mod. The MorShips Mod will also be included in the next version of the (hopefully) soon to come RaYRoD's Overhaul. (I'd link to the old version of it, but it's been taken offline while its creator works on the next version).

There is something painfully sad about a man building everything from a strip club to a Taco Bell in a videogame where no one will ever interact with them. But such is the path that YouTuber Boid Gaming has embarked upon—a path to fill his No Man's Sky galaxy full of empty KFCs, McDonalds, and, yes, even a monolithic Pepsi can. This dude loves brands.

I wish I could understand what motivation there is for such an endeavor, but I can only guess that Boid Gaming, after getting to the center of No Man's Sky's galaxy and realizing there is no meaning or purpose, has gone absolutely mad. For several months, he has been showcasing his intergalactic fast food restaurants on his YouTube channel.

Here's a dramatic reveal of a Kentucky Fried Chicken.

There's a surprising level of artistry here, in that each of his fast food restaurants definitely captures their aesthetic while still feeling suitably sci-fi. The No Man's Sky Foundation update introduced base building, but the tools aren't too complex, so putting together a rather nice looking McDonalds is a win in my books. But with each video I watch, I get a little sad seeing how empty these establishments are. They should be full of people, but instead, just like No Man's Sky, they're lifeless. I mean, can you even call it a strip club if no one is stripping inside of it?

And I don't even know where to begin talking about this giant Pepsi can he built. But I like to imagine that, millions of years from now, some civilization will discover its existence and send a manned mission to see it in person, triggering the conception of a giant, fizzy, god-baby.

Boid Gaming has a lot of impressive builds on his YouTube channel you should check out—especially if you just love brands. You can also check out this complete list of everything he's made so far and download his bases into your own version of No Man's Sky.

Developer Hello Games has overhauled No Man's Sky's save system to try and make it easier to manage saves between game modes. 

The new system has five save slots. If you select an empty slot you'll be taken to the game mode select screen before you start a new game, and there's no limit to how many saves you can have for a particular game mode: you could have five saves from the same mode if you like. Any existing saves will map to the five slots.

Also, each save has two sub slots, one for auto saves (when exiting your ship, dying, purchasing a Freighter or claiming a base), and one for manual saving at save points or beacons.

Hello Games has twice patched issues with save games in the past couple of months, so here's hoping the new system is bug-free.

The new patch makes a number of other changes, the most interesting of which is to the player's Analysis Visor. The visor can now scan farm plants and see their remaining growth time, scan ships at a distance and see their class, type and value, and judge the approximate distance of resources discovered with the Scanner, another player tool. 

An army of bugs are squashed, too, including errors in the mission system that would make it impossible to complete delivery missions or randomly change mission requirements when you spoke to NPCs.

Read the full patch notes here.

In the fifth patch since No Man's Sky's massive Atlas Rises update last month, developer Hello Games has fixed an annoying save issue and added more variety to the way ships handle.

Some players were previously unable to save their game if they'd played for a very long time, which must have been infuriating. Now there should be no more issues.

On the ship handling side, different types and classes of ships now have distinct handling styles, which could give players more incentive to save up for a new craft. "Each individual ship now has procedural handling and speed characteristics, based on their type and class," Hello Games said.

There's a whole cargo hold of other tweaks under the hood, many of which relate to improving the user interface (which is now easier to navigate with the keyboard) and fixing visual anomalies, such as large white markers showing up permanently over certain buildings. Read the full list of changes in the patch notes.

When I wrote about a previous patch I asked whether now was a good time to jump on board. The response was a resounding yes, with people saying it's now close to the game they wanted when it launched. It's good to see it being continually supported, and hopefully it will only keep improving from here.

If you're interested in more reading about the current state of the game, check out Chris's deep dive (written pre-Atlas Rises).

No Man's Sky's Atlas Rises update has added a bunch of interesting biomes that Chris has enjoyed exploring. But it's also brought some bugs to the game—bugs that developer Hello Games hopes to squash with its latest patch.

The update will fix a number of issues, the most pressing of which was players being unable to save their game because of artificially bloated save files. Unfortunately, some players are still having trouble post-patch, and Hello Games says it is continuing to investigate.

The patch also fixes bugs linked to the terrain editor, glyphs, unresponsive NPCs and some missing animations, all of which are detailed in the patch notes.

But it's not just a repair job: the patch tweaks teleporters so that players can now warp from one space station to another, rather than just back to their base. It should take a bit of hassle out of getting around its functionally infinite world.

It's the third patch in the last 10 days, and you can expect more to come to fix other problems with the Atlas Rises update. 

I've still not jumped into No Man's Sky, but most of what I've read about the update— which overhauled the game's central story, added a new mission system and introduced watered-down online co-op—has been positive. For those that have played around with it: is now a good time to hop on board?

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!