This is a game I keep meaning to bring up: DUAL Universe. Now, love or hate No Man's Sky, [GN score 7] the ideas that went into its composition have opened up a big possibility space. To be honest, No Man's Sky wasn't able to bring those possibilities to fruition in ways that some people hoped.
All that notwithstanding, it appears that DUAL Universe wants to deliver on some of the ideas that No Man's Sky couldn't (or never was going to in the first place). DUAL Universe is also setting up a single shared universe for all of its players. There will be multiple planets--probably not 18 quintillion, but several--and in the spirit of Minecraft 2.0, with voxels pretty much powering everything you see around you, you can affect the landscape, you can build your starship from scratch and from preexisting components, you can build miles-long space stations, and you can engage in interplanetary hops.
DUAL Universe is about emergent gameplay. It's very sandboxy. Developer Novaquark isn't going to tell you to head for the center of the universe, or to piece together alien languages, or name all the flora and fauna lying about. It's still in alpha tech demo mode, so a lot can (and will) change from now until who-knows-when it'll launch. But I just kept having this one catch my eye, so I wanted to ping your radar about its existence. Let's all just learn our lesson, though, and take it easy on the expectations, and just see where this one goes. This developer is quite interested in showing you what they have in mind, though. They're thinking that a little bit of transparency could go a long way.
DUAL Universe is on PC and probably years away. Here's the official site.
