Explore other star systems. Earn money by trading, carrying passengers, or completing missions. Use your earnings to buy a better ship or to upgrade the weapons and engines on your current one. Blow up pirates. Take sides in a civil war. Or leave human space behind and hope to find some friendly aliens whose culture is more civilized than your own...
Endless Sky is a sandbox-style space exploration game similar to Elite, Escape Velocity, or Star Control. You start out as the captain of a tiny spaceship and can choose what to do from there. The game includes a major plot line and many minor missions, but you can choose whether you want to play through the plot or strike out on your own as a merchant or bounty hunter or explorer.
See the player's manual for more information, or the home page for screenshots and the occasional blog post.
Official releases of Endless Sky are available as direct downloads from GitHub and on Steam. A PPA is available for Ubuntu. Other package managers may also include the game, though the specific version provided may not be up-to-date.
Endless Sky has very minimal system requirements, meaning most systems should be able to run the game. The most restrictive requirement is likely that your device must support at least OpenGL 3.
| Minimum | Recommended | |
|---|---|---|
| RAM | 500 MB | 1 GB |
| Graphics | OpenGL 3.0 | OpenGL 3.3 |
| Storage Free | 250 MB | 1 GB |
Most development is done on Linux and Windows, using CMake (build instructions) to compile the project. For those wishing to use an IDE, project files are provided for Code::Blocks to simplify the project setup, and other IDEs are supported through their respective CMake integration. SCons was the primary build tool up until 0.9.16, and some files and information continue to be available for it. For full installation instructions, consult the Build Instructions readme.
As a free and open source game, Endless Sky is the product of many peoples' work. Contributions of artwork, storylines, and other writing are most in-demand, though there is a loosely defined roadmap. Those who wish to contribute are encouraged to review the wiki, and to post in the community-run discord beforehand. Those who prefer to use Steam can use its discussion rooms as well. For those who do not wish to use either discord or steam, we do have access to github discussions, although these are quite new and don't have a lot of traffic yet.
Endless Sky's main discussion and development area was once Google Groups, but due to factors outside our control, it is now inaccessible to new users.
Endless Sky is a free, open source game. The source code is available under the GPL v3 license, and all the artwork is either public domain or released under a variety of Creative Commons (and similarly permissive) licenses. (To determine the copyright status of any of the artwork, consult the copyright file.)