Starseeker: Astroneer Expeditions early access feels like an extraction shooter without the shooter

Cozy extraction? Maybe, but Starseeker also has some satisfying challenges to tackle solo or with other players.

Starseeker: Astroneer Expeditions has taken its maiden voyage into early access, and it is an excellent takeoff to say the least. I jumped into my own voyages to see how it played out, and on top of what we’ve seen in pre-launch previews, Starseeker doesn’t just compartmentalize the broad strokes of Astroneer into bite-sized missions and chunks. It also creates an engaging gameplay loop whether you run one expedition and call it quits or a gauntlet of several in a row, for the good of yourself and the Astroneer program.

A different kind of mission

Starseeker sees the return of the Astroneers on a new journey. Aboard the ESS Starseeker station, we travel to different planets and biomes, running bite-sized, 30-minute expeditions in which we gather, scan, and carry out different missions given to us at the space station. At first, it takes us to verdant water planet known as Tephra where a previous space expedition crashed, and where the skeleton of its catastrophic failure remains strewn about. Our goal? Gather information, resources, and the science to determine if any given place can become our home, as well as finding out what happened to those who came before.

Astroneer Expeditions might as well be an extraction shooter without the shooting. On the station, you talk to NPCs, get quests, earn blueprints, craft gear, buy supplies, and set your loadout for the next trip from the persistent resources and equipment you’ve gathered and stored. After tagging the quests you want to pursue, you can take off on an expedition solo or with other players, though you can also run into random players on the planet on their own expeditions.

On the planet, we try to finish any given objectives we have active. We mentioned a few above, like gathering information or resources, but more specifically, you get quests like scanning or collecting certain components, interacting with certain wildlife in various ways, making it to various landmarks on the map. You have a terraforming gun that erases nearby terrain you fire it at, as well as optional equipment like air-blast, water hose, gravity lassos, water/fire/goop canisters, and other such tools. You can’t really do harm to other players, but certain wildlife can do harm to you, and if you blast them with your components enough, you can stun them and take a resource from them. Some animals are aggressive on sight, but others will leave you be unless you attack first.

And that’s important because you can get downed by planetary hazards, and if no one comes to pick you up or you run out of your 30 minutes (represented as oxygen), your Astroneer dies and you lose all the stuff you’d collected and brought with you. That can be devastating if you have some important goods. Also, your tools can break when you get knocked down and you’ll have to use resources to repair them. You can also randomly help other Astroneers on their expeditions through sharing and field operations like getting a device to the highest elevation, so there’s a lot of natural teamwork to be had whether you go it alone or bring some friends. These biomes are big. It’s not just the surface. You can dig into caverns underneath with their own vast mysteries, and sometimes a helping hand is just what you need to make it back to the shuttle in one piece.

All working towards the same goal

One of the cooler aspects of Starseeker: Astroneer Expeditions opened this week, and that’s the Tangle Community Challenge. Our goal is to work together with other Astroneers to deliver the Challenge’s requested items. By doing so, we’ll fill out a quota, and when that quota is filled, a new biome will unlock: Tangle. I really love this idea. When Tangle is unlocked it will feature a new land to explore with new missions, resources, wildlife, and more. I do kind of wonder if that also means future players will just have access right out of the gate, but given that you must work your way up to some important tools through progressing your shipmates’ quests, I think newbies will have a good path to learn before heading there.

It also has big implications for Starseeker’s progress through early access. I’m really excited to continue contributing to these kinds of challenges and unlock new content for the game. It will be interesting to see if they extend beyond biomes to things like unique equipment or cosmetics so we can do these challenges more often than a biome can probably be created. I think it’s a great idea and I hope System Era Softworks stretches their legs

Besides, the cosmetics in this game have been quite fun. Much like in Astroneer, you get to customize your space suit type, visor color and effects, helmet accessories, color palette, and more. You can unlock emotes and other cosmetics, too, and all it usually takes is doing enough work to collect certain credits that can be used specifically for cosmetics. After a full weekend of expeditions, I was able to dress my Astroneer in a funny space bunny-styled setup with a cool purple and orange palette. I hope we keep seeing additions to this part of the game so I can continue to style my character as well.

Expeditions and adventures await!

Starseeker: Astroneer Expeditions feels so familiar, and yet so different from what I’ve come to expect when I see the franchise name. Things like gathering, exploration, and the striking charm of it all are distinctly Astroneer, but the expedition and community nature of this endeavor have really taken it to a different place. I like the bite-sized experience, but I especially like the emergent co-op interactivity and support through the live events. It feels like a cozier version of the loops from games like ARC Raiders and Elden Ring: Nightreign. I look forward to unlocking the next location with my fellow Astroneers and seeing what it has in store for us, and I hope that’s something I get to look forward to in different forms as this game continues to grow through early access.

These early access impressions are based on a PC edition of the game. Starseeker: Astroneer Expeditions is out now in early access on PC, Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and Nintendo Switch 2.

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