No Man's Sky adds The Abyss update next week

Lead developer Sean Murray has announced that No Man's Sky is getting a spooooky new update called The Abyss, coming next week in time for Halloween. Details are scarce--when aren't they with this game?--but according to Mr. Murray the update "focuses on some of the eerier elements of No Man’s Sky." I hope this is more than just some tweaks to the biological horror class of alien creatures, as I found them to be not particularly scary and little more than mildly annoying when I was playing around with the NEXT update.

Try as I might, I just can't get back into No Man's Sky in a meaningful way. Hello Games has put in some incredible work to redeem the game through free updates and they're releasing new content at a much brisker pace these days. That said, the core gameplay still required enormous amounts of grind and a lot of waiting around for lucky drops from the procedural algorithms, and with so many amazing games coming out these days I just don't have the time or motivation to devote to No Man's Sky. I'll probably check out The Abyss but it will have to be really good for me to invest any significant time into it.

Hello Everyone!

No Man’s Sky NEXT launched just a couple of months ago. We have been absolutely overwhelmed by the positive response. We are excited to be on this journey with you.

Over the months since release we have been adding new free content, community missions and improvements to No Man’s Sky every week. From small features like allowing players to customise body shape, to large gameplay additions like the Pilgrim motorbike, and companion features such as addition of discovery leaderboards to the Galactic Atlas, allowing the community to track progress between factions.

We have enjoyed posting weekly development updates and highlighting some of what players are up to in our game. It’s so gratifying, and often quite touching, to see how No Man’s Sky and the community have grown and evolved.

We’ve been listening intently, and are hard at work on fixes and improvements. We wanted to share a little news from behind the scenes.

Whilst most of the team have been busy on weekly updates, a handful have been working on something else, our first titled update since NEXT.

A new free update is releasing next week for all players. We’ve called it The Abyss, because it focuses on some of the eerier elements of No Man’s Sky, in keeping with the theme of this season.

This is another small step on a longer journey for us. Thank you for joining us.

Thanks so much,
Sean