The countdown had been running for six years before Mara Solano ever heard her name attached to it.
She found out the same way everyone else did — a push notification on a Tuesday morning, between a weather alert and a grocery delivery confirmation. The subject line read: CREW SELECTION CONFIRMED — ARES LONGFALL MISSION. Her coffee went cold before she remembered to drink it.
Longfall was not the flashy mission. The flashy mission was Ares Prime, the one with the live broadcast launch, the celebrity endorsements, the children waving flags at Cape Canaveral. Longfall was the other one. The one that went further. The one with the longer silence between transmissions. The one the agency described, in its internal documents, as optimistically survivable.
Mara had applied because she believed in the work. She had not entirely expected to be selected.
Three months later she was strapped into a seat on the Vespera, watching Earth shrink in the porthole beside her left shoulder. She did not cry. She had cried the night before, alone in her quarters at the training facility, so that she would not have to cry now. Planning ahead was a core competency for deep space personnel.
They were four aboard the Vespera: Mara, Commander Ilya Petrov, mission specialist Dr. Chidinma Okafor, and engineer Tomás Delgado.
The ship was not large. It was not meant to be large. Every gram launched into orbit cost money that could have funded three hospitals or half a school, and space agencies had long since stopped pretending otherwise. So the Vespera’s interior was efficient, intentional, and exactly three degrees too cold at all times because the heating calibration had never been quite right since the third system test.
They ate from sealed packets, slept in rotation, and exercised for two mandatory hours a day on equipment that folded into the wall when not in use. The exercise was non-negotiable. Bone density in microgravity did not maintain itself out of good manners.
What surprised Mara was how comfortable it became. Not pleasant, exactly. But known. The sounds of the ship became a language she understood without thinking: the periodic clunk of the attitude thrusters, the low cycling hum of the air processors, the specific creak Tomás had named Gerald that came from a joint in the port bulkhead whenever the temperature differential passed a certain threshold.
At night — ship’s night, which was arbitrary but respected — she would float beside her porthole and watch the stars. They did not twinkle out here. Without atmosphere they were hard and constant, scattered so densely that the darkness between them seemed like the afterthought.
She found it peaceful in a way that she struggled to transmit back to Earth in her scheduled communications. It is very quiet here felt insufficient. I feel like I finally understand what rest means felt too intimate. She settled, most nights, for mission is proceeding normally. Crew morale is good.
Both things were true.
The approach to Kepler Station took eleven days of careful deceleration. From a distance, the station looked like a dropped handful of silver coins, slowly spinning against the dark. Up close it was the size of a small town, a network of interconnected modules and habitat rings and docking arms that had been assembled over twelve years by crews who never shared the same launch window.
Mara’s job at Kepler was atmospheric spectroscopy. She was looking for biosignatures — chemical traces in the thin envelopes of gas surrounding the three rocky worlds in the system’s habitable zone. The work required patience and precise instrumentation and the ability to feel genuinely excited about parts-per-billion variations in methane concentrations.
She was very good at it. She had always been good at finding signal in noise.
Six weeks into her rotation, she found something.
It was a methane spike in the northern mesosphere of KH-3, the second rock in the belt. Not dramatic. Not the screaming trumpet blast of first contact that science fiction had promised. It was a number, and then a second number, and then a graph that looked wrong in a specific, non-random way that made Mara’s hands go very still above her keyboard.
She checked her calibration. She ran the data through a second reduction pipeline. She asked Chidinma to look at it without telling her what she was looking for.
Chidinma looked at the graph for a long time. Then she said, very quietly: “That’s seasonal.”
Methane spikes that tracked a planetary season were consistent with biological metabolism. Not proof. Not even close to proof. But consistent with.
The transmission to Earth took forty-three minutes at the speed of light. The reply took forty-three more. In those eighty-six minutes, Mara sat in the observation bay and looked at KH-3 through the main viewport — a rust-brown disc, cloud-streaked, unhurried in its orbit — and thought about everything that word consistent might and might not mean.
The reply from mission control was careful and measured and asked for seventeen additional data products. She started generating them before she finished reading.
The return trip was different.
Same ship. Same cold. Same creak from Gerald in the port bulkhead. But the data was with them now, archived across three redundant storage systems, and in the evenings Mara would pull it up and look at it again even though she had long since memorized every value.
Ilya found her at it one night, floating beside his bunk, reading her work on a tablet with the screen dimmed to the lowest setting.
You should sleep, he said.
I know, she said.
He pushed off from the bulkhead and drifted over to look at the graph. He was not a biologist or a chemist. He was a pilot and a commander and a man who had spent more of his adult life off Earth than on it. He looked at the data for a moment and then said: Is it real?
She had thought about how to answer this question for eleven months. She had precise scientific language for the uncertainty, the confidence intervals, the alternative abiotic explanations that could not yet be ruled out.
What she said was: I think so.
He nodded. He did not say anything else. He pushed back to his bunk and turned off his light.
Mara floated there for another hour in the dark, watching the stars that did not twinkle, thinking about a rust-brown planet forty-three light-minutes away where something might, against all the vast indifferent silence of the universe, be alive.
The paper ran to sixty-two pages. The peer review took fourteen months. The press conference was smaller than the Ares Prime launch, but the room was quieter, and the questions took longer to ask, because everyone in it understood that they were participating in a sentence that had no definite end yet.
Mara answered every question carefully.
On the walk back from the podium, Chidinma fell into step beside her and said: How does it feel?
Mara thought about the Vespera and the cold and Gerald and the hard unblinking stars and the graph that looked wrong in a specific, non-random way.
Incomplete, she said. It feels incomplete.
She was already thinking about the follow-up mission.
This post was written by AI as a scrolling and readability test. If you made it this far — great job. The stars are waiting.
]]>I feel privileged to have been able to even assist in the building of the original Discord Wiki pages. I went into the game and spent many, many hours, combing the planets, caves and biomes until I found at least one of every type of research, so that there were images, values and metrics on the wiki page. The Wiki was eventually deprecated and then System Era added an Astropedia, which can now be accessed in game. They’ve also added a tutorial to help you learn the basic mechanics of the game. Or, you can just jump into a new game, and fend for yourself.
During the Early Access and even after 1.0 release, I started new games for each new event, and to me, being a person that was 9 when I watched the actual landing on the moon. I got chills and was transported back to that day when in this game, you can find the actual lunar lander, and then take a photo of your Astroneer on the lander, and you hear the actual audio of the moon landing taking place. Seeing the moon landing live on TV was truly the most memorable occasion of my life, and being able to revisit that era in Astroneer was really what led me to keep coming back to this game.
This game also introduced me to the aspect of speedrunning in games. Back when I was first learning how to live stream, setting up my Elgato Streamdeck, webcam and microphone, I also taught myself how to add metrics to track and submit my speed runs in games. I first did that with Astroneer. So it really does give me lots of memories and enjoyment jumping back into this fantastic, well designed and immersive game.
2026 Update: System Era is still developing DLC for it. The latest update (Megatech) is a paid one, but you can read more about that one in a future post here. Of course, The Megatech Update was after the Glitchwalkers update, which is another update that I’ve played and also merits its own post. But for now, let me just focus on the original game concept.
Astroneer is a space exploration sandbox by System Era Softworks. You land on a starting planet (Sylva) with nothing but a starting shelter (habitat), a landing pad (that has a mission objectives interface connected to it) and you - as an Astroneer, with a backpack that has 11 small slots, an integrated oxygen tank, a battery pack, and your indispensable terrain tool.
In your backpack, there are 11 slots to store things, 3 on your terrain tool, 6 in your backpack, and two additional slots. Those two slots on top of your backpack (left and right) that allow you to control them by turning it on or off with a toggle of your keyboard or controller. As you collect stuff, the collected (or grabbed) item auto deposits it into your backpack, or you can manually place it in any of your slots as you choose. If you’re full, it drops on the ground, or falls down into that gaping crevass you just opened by digging up resources.
Using your terrain tool, you can deform the entire planet surface. You can collect soil or dispense soil, digging, or creating with your tool. It lets you flatten, build or dig as you choose, with an intuitive interface that works smoothly with your keyboard and mouse, or even better (in my opinion, using a controller). You also dig up resources that are visually identified by their different colors and shapes. These resources are randomly generated and found all over the surface and down through the caves and biomes all the way to the core of each planet. These resources can be used to build platforms, devices, and other more complex materials that are made from more than one resource. You can also gather research, both large and small, to open up new recipes that you unlock.
Meanwhile you start on the most habitable planet and dig, build, explore, and eventually colonize the entire solar system, which consists of several planets, all of which are different biomes, have different hazards, and are progressively harder to survive on.
By design, this game has no combat. No enemies trying to murder you every five seconds. There’s no weapons you can find or craft. But there are hazards like running out of oxygen, falling death, and being terminated by aggressive or deadly plants, gases and a combination of attacks. But I really like that it is just you, the Astroneer, exploring the terrain, and a challenging little universe to make your own.
Automation is a mechanic introduced that allows you to use auto arms, extractors, resource containers, rails, repeaters, sensors and switches. Combining these items with other base components to generate enough power, you can create massive automation of resources and materials. These can be stockpiled and used to complete the limited time events quickly.
There is also Missions in the game, that guides you through a storyline, simulataneously helping you to create necessary items you need to progress through it to the completion. But I won’t cover those here, you’ll have to play the game and experience it all for yourself.
The core loop is deceptively simple: gather resources, research new tech, build bigger and better bases, then pack up and fly to the next planet to do it all over again. But each planet has its own atmosphere, resources, hazards, and visual identity. The progression from “I can barely survive on the surface” to “I have a network of bases across seven planets” is one of the most satisfying arcs I’ve experienced in a sandbox game.
The terrain deformation system is genuinely impressive. You can dig tunnels to the planet’s core, flatten mountains, build bridges over chasms. The world feels truly malleable in a way most games only pretend to offer.
But here’s the reason I love this game so much. Community feedback was given about these common issues with grinding for resources and System Era engaged the community and introduced automation.
As I stated before you can automate resource collection using extractors, build a train system, and automate collection with sensors, switches and auto arms that can transport resources. Move it all from the depths of the planet core, transport it by rail all the way back to your base on the surface, or between bases on that planet.
I and so many other Early Access users got to experience the good, bad and ugly of previous variations of the game’s mechanics, how the platforms originally connected by dragging thick black tubes to build another platform, and modular space craft that allowed you to put seats and storage on it. To the present versions that have three levels of shuttles to build, small, medium and large.
This three size approach is now consistently applied to all of the items in Astroneer. There are 3D printers, that are small, medium and large, to print platforms, machines and shuttles that are also small, medium and large. Small items fit in your backpack, medium items (when packaged, can be carried), large items can be moved but not carried. Anything can be moved, locked in place, or with some exceptions, even blown up! There’s so much more to share, but let me talk about playing with your friends, or other random Astroneers.
Something else is how efficient and satisfying it feels to be the Astroneer. As mentioned, your backpack is your inventory that you carry with you. It also has functionality. And integrated into the backpack is also the Catalog, which shows all of your recipes or blueprints, that you can unlock. As your research gives you bytes, you spend those to unlock the schematics, then collect resources, stockpile your resources and materials into small, medium, and large resource cannisters, and finally build them!
Building them is done by printing them from your backpack (small items only) or on small, medium and large printers. And you can automate all of this activity with printers, by creating bases that are like resource collection factories, producing materials that can be printed into components that you use to build bases and modes of transportation.
Speaking of transportation, there are several modes in Astroneer. You can fly with a jetpack, a hovercraft, or cruise around with a small tractor and trailer(s), a medium or large rover, on foot, or best yet, carve down a mountain or race across the surface on your hoverboard! Also included is the shuttles, small, medium and large to travel between planets, a late game teleportation system, and of course the train rail system. All of these can be used alone or with other Astroneers.
Speaking of playing with others, Astroneer shines even brighter in co-op. Having a friend (or three) exploring alongside you turns every expedition into a story. We’ve had moments where someone got lost in a cave system, someone else drove a rover off a cliff, and someone accidentally launched a shuttle without the rest of the crew. Those unscripted moments are what make this game memorable.
Back in Early Access, there were some hilarious mishaps that occurred, with vehicles getting stuck in the ground, flying away as if a tornado picked it up and threw it out into space, and other activity that was related to early versions, such as collecting little yellow globs to gain power, or collect blue globs to gain oxygen. Tethers now give you the option to provide oxygen and power to you and your fellow Astroneers, as long as the tethers reach a base that has an oxygenator attached somewhere in it.
Originally, innovative ideas like carrying a medium platform with you because it gave you oxygen allowed you to bypass that issue. But System Era to their credit, introduced other ways to extend your oxygen and to regain power to your backpack and your bases. Now there are several options, and as you build bigger and more bases, the oxygen and power become manageable, and don’t limit your ability as much as it does in early game.
The learning curve is gentle but the game does not hold your hand with explanations. You’ll spend some time figuring out which widget plugs into which platform. Late-game resource grinding can get repetitive – once you know what you need, it’s just a matter of going to get it. And the framerate used to dip when your bases get large and complex.
Some people didn’t like it when System Era added a currency into the game - Cubits. You spend real $$ to buy Cubits. Cubits are only used to buy / unlock cosmetic items. It’s not required at all. But it was a way to financially support System Era while the game was early access, and through to release 1.0 and beyond. To their credit, they introduced special events that were limited time that reward you with cosmetic outfits you could unlock and use. Other special events, when completed, also gave you cosmetic outfits. The effort and creativity of the cosmetics is amazing in my opinion and are well worth the investment of time or money.
Which reminds me, way back, in the early version, there were storms. I loved the storms, different planets had different storms, and some had debris in them that could kill your Astroneer, so you had to take shelter from the storm, even if you had dig a quick hole to hide in. Other storms would blow away or scatter any resources or research not secured on or in a platform. In some cases, if you either blew up your base, or had a really bad storm, you’d see resources or research suspended in mid air, and you’d have to build a structure or use soil and build a ramp to collect your items again.
The storms were permanently removed due to framerate and crashes, depending on how large your game save happened to be at the time. Thankfully, those issues are all now resolved. So over the course of time, System Era removed everything I didn’t like. But I miss storms.
I can’t really express how much I appreciate the game Astroneer without also talking about the people that made it. System Era Softworks, or System Era. Now, I’ve never met any of them in person. However, the Discord server, and the community there, can verify what I say here about how the System Era staff embraced community feedback and interacted with so many users including me - on that site, through podcasts, and originally through Vlogs and live streams posted on their website, announced on Twitter (now X), and in Discord.
Joe Tirado, the communications guy, was the one that would update the community with updates, hinting about things using a leek emoji, (code for leaks), and there were other “insider” things that the community understood only if you were active there quite often.
Another way I learned about the staff at System Era and their backgrounds was indirectly through the outstanding documentary created by NoClip. Find it here. NoClip by the way is a YouTube channel that relies solely on Patreon subscribers and reviews games, game developers and is to this day - one of my favorite YouTube channels. Go check out Danny and his NoClip team at their channel.
Finally, if you are a visual person and love data and statistics like me, then you should definitely check out this post from Joe Tirado, it talks about 3 years of Astroneer, and has an infographic that includes some amazing stats found, here.
Well, I’ve invested 2500+ hours into this game, and all achievements are unlocked on both Steam and Xbox versions. And I’d still go back to start a new save. As a matter of fact, I own this game on Steam, and Xbox/Windows. You can buy it directly from System Era here
Side Note: In case you’ve didn’t know, Xbox and Windows are both Micrsoft owned. So there’s this feature called Xbox Play Anywhere. That means you buy it one time, and you can play it on your Windows PC and on your Xbox console. So, knowing that I’ve bought five copies (and gifted three), because I support the developers of the game. That’s another thing I like about System Era - Astroneer is available on everything - Playstation, Xbox, Steam, Windows, and Switch. System Era recently redesigned their branding and logo because they have a new game coming in 2026 - Starseeker!
Astroneer is one of those rare games that’s exactly what it wants to be, with no pretense and no filler. And if you’ve ever played with other toys like legos, lincoln logs, kinnect, or similar things that slotted together, and you could see, hear, and feel the design and engineering invested into the toy—you get that in Astroneer too. When you put research, materials or resources on platforms or in your backpack, there’s a haptic connection and satisfying click sound that really helps to immerse you into the game. So if you want some relaxed and fun gameplay that combines exploration, building, and the idea of making an entire solar system your playground—alone or with friends—this is the game for you.
10 / 10 – Would dig to the center of the planet again.
]]>** March 2026 update ** Thanks to the efforts of my son, and some time investment of my own, I am now in charge. I’ve learned the skills to further development this website, add new integrations, and obviously create new content on this blog. In my opinion, it’s much more than a blog now. It’s my creation. With my mind, and the tools I use, I can now add anything I want to this site, and really make it my own, and really express my deep interest and enjoyment in gaming, technology, and adventures in space, time and fantastic realms that exist in games today.
In the interest of transparency, I’ll leave the rest of this blog post intact, as a reminder to me that I continue to be humble, and that I really am impressed by my son’s skills as a creator, and a subject matter expert and user of AI tools.
I had this idea. Simple enough – build a personal blog. Space theme, dark mode, the works. I’ve been gaming for over a decade, streaming on YouTube, collecting achievements on Steam. I figured it was time to have a corner of the internet that wasn’t just a profile page someone else designed.
So my son and I sat down to build it.
Here’s what I actually contributed to this project:
That’s it. That [was] my contribution - [see 2026 update #7 above]. He’s over there feeding prompts to AI, watching code materialize out of thin air, and I’m sitting next to him looking like someone just showed a caveman a lighter.
Don’t get me wrong – AI tools are incredible. They’re also incredibly frustrating. You ask for one thing and get three things you didn’t ask for. You ask it to fix a bug and it introduces two more. You spend twenty minutes arguing with a language model about whether a div should have a border or not.
My son handled it with the patience of someone who grew up with this stuff. I handled it by staring at the screen and periodically making noises of disbelief.
Look around. This site – the animated black hole spinning in the background, the green-on-black cave dweller aesthetic, the gaming hub pulling stats from my actual Steam profile, the fully playable Defender and Steve’s Gate games – all of it was assembled while I sat there providing what I can only describe as “emotional support.”
My only real design input was “make it dark, make it green, I don’t like the light because I spend all my time cave dwelling.” And you know what? They nailed it.
If you’re a parent watching your kid do things with technology that make you feel like you’re from another century – yeah, that’s normal. The future showed up while we weren’t looking and our kids are already fluent in it.
My son built this site. I provided the content, the Steam account, and a steady stream of cackling laughter. That’s the honest truth.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go look at my own website one more time because I still can’t believe it exists.
– GAM3RGAWD
]]>This is my original review posted to Steam on January 29, 2025, with 155.2 hours logged at time of review.
I loved this game when I first found out about it watching @jacksepticeye, and in wanting to watch more gameplay, I found @Seamemaria — an IRL marine biologist who also played through this game, commenting on the plausibility of the flora, fauna and environment in Subnautica.
When I played the game myself, I felt completely immersed in the story line, as if I was actually there fending for my own survival. The emotional highs and lows when leviathans are encountered, and as I progress through the story — I was so elated when I finally reached the end, and I won’t put spoilers here.
I couldn’t get away from Subnautica, and recently came back to it in 2025, now playing only in Hardcore mode. I will record my gameplay and post it on YouTube for anyone who reads this as a result of any attention focused on the release of Subnautica 2 in 2025!
I hope you all enjoy it as much as I do and have.
Verdict: Recommended — 208.7 hrs on record
]]>This is my original review posted to Steam on April 20, 2022, with 65.2 hours logged at time of review.
Let’s start off with the statement that the Halo franchise is hands down the best one out there. I owned every Halo game on the Xbox — completed all the campaigns on Legendary, and played hundreds of hours in multiplayer.
The instant I heard that Halo: MCC was coming, with not one but every Halo game since Combat Evolved through Halo 4, I knew I was going to buy on Steam. Adding the ability to mix and match all the campaigns and multiplayer games and maps into custom playlists makes this game a 10 out of 10 for me.
The game play is smooth, the campaigns are even better than the original formats, and for the most part the multiplayer battles are awesome. The Anti-Cheat feature is also a welcome addition.
Out of a possible 10, being best, I give it a 20 — 2× as good. This is the best re-release of any game I’ve ever seen. Just perfect in my opinion.
Verdict: Recommended — 65.2 hrs on record
]]>This is my original review posted to Steam on July 12, 2021, with 131.7 hours logged at time of review. I now have 205.1 hours in the game.
This game kept my interest and I really enjoyed the sense of humor throughout. Not giving out spoilers, but there is a reference to a great game trilogy which I have also played through to completion more than once.
On Steam, I didn’t really give any details about the game because if you’re on Steam, all of that information is already there. There are developer and community created content, store page details, and images and videos of gameplay. But since you’re here and not on Steam, let me give you the highlights.
You are in space, stranded. You have limited oxygen, and are floating in space, literally. You must survive by collecting items and crafting tools. You have many different hazards, including limited oxygen, electrocuting yourself, and being attacked by weird enemies. It has an interesting sense of humor, and isn’t based on reality. You carry a chicken with you who is quite handy. After progressing through many, many obstacles, you can eventually craft a base and find vehicles to make travel easier.
So far I’ve completed this game twice. Once for enjoyment of the experience. And again to get all 100% achievements. I also made it about 32 hours on Impossible, and I’m planning to do another attempt at it someday. Thinking of creating a guide for the game on Steam, but I’m also waiting to see if the developers ever release BreathEdge 2. Not going to hold my breath on that (pun intended).
I highly recommend this game if you don’t mind collecting resources as you uncover a very unusual story, and don’t have too much issue with dizziness floating through space.
Verdict: Recommended — 205.1 hrs on record
]]>This is my original review posted to Steam on May 30, 2021, with 12.9 hours logged at time of review.
I’ve had this game since its original PC release date. Although I’ve only played this version about 12 hours, since I’ve had it I’ve played thousands of hours. Through the years I’ve had to tweak it to make it work on each new version of Windows, and that’s been a fun project in itself.
If you love strategy games that include troop management and battle merged into the Star Wars universe, you’ll love this game as I do. I have been playing it all these years on older desktop PCs in my home — we would have old school LAN parties and play this game for hours on end.
I am quite happy to find it now available on Steam and immediately gifted it to three other Steam players. I was sad to realize that even with its release on Steam, multiplayer is still limited to LAN local play. I have read that Game Ranger and voobly.com will work for online play, but I haven’t personally tried that — I do wish someone would recreate the online game experience to include matchmaking from the Internet.
That and the lack of achievements for this game leads to my disappointment after the excitement of finding out it was released on Steam. Fortunately there are so many other alternatives to this style of game, including Starcraft and the Age of Empires games.
That said, this game is exactly like the OG version, complete with the campaigns originally released, and I like that there are new campaigns included that were not found in the original game.
Verdict: Recommended — 22.5 hrs on record
]]>This is my original review posted to Steam on July 16, 2020, with 7.2 hours logged at time of review. I’ve since put in over 1,000 hours.
I’ve only played this game a short time, and only in Single Player, so I’m going to focus on that section only.
First, I tried the maps that are “Free this week.” They were prison layout maps, and were a nice change from the commonly known world map of the board game origin. The cost to play each game is 5 tokens, and you get around 200 to start. By the time the game is over, you’ve already gained back 2 or 3 tokens, since they give you 1 every 20–30 minutes of being in game.
The AI opponents don’t seem to have too much of a change in strategy from Easy to Expert, and I’ve already defeated 5 AI on Expert mode. That said, I still love this game — the only downside to playing it on a physical game board was moving the pieces, and the dice knocking pieces off countries, not having enough room on each country for your troops.
Now that it is online, I really enjoy the challenge and strategy this game provides. The interface and speed of the controls and game is awesome!
Verdict: Recommended — 1,012.2 hrs on record
]]>This is my original review posted to Steam on March 7, 2020, with 49.5 hours logged at time of review. I now have 438.9 hours across both the early access and final release.
I’ve played this game since early release beta versions, and I’ve enjoyed it — but I did enjoy Subnautica more, primarily because of the story and the size of the area to explore. This game, once the story has been redone, will likely be as good, just without all the different craft options.
I do like the Sea Truck, but I miss the Cyclops. I’m hoping the story is as good as the original one. Even without the story, I still recommend the game as it is now.
Verdict: Recommended — 438.9 hrs on record
]]>This is my original review posted to Steam on February 15, 2020, with 9.4 hours logged at time of review.
This is about as good as the original Half Life, with all of the great story, environment and game play including the weapons — especially your trusty crow bar. It’s all in this game, and is a blast.
Bonus for allowing me to enable the joystick for main game play, but for shooting, there really is no equal to the precision of a mouse and keyboard. It is more fun to use the joystick, but you suffer on accuracy of placement of the cross hairs for longer range shots.
Highly recommend this game.
Verdict: Recommended — 25.3 hrs on record
]]>