19 Best Space Strategy Games on Steam

Master of Orion by Simtex is an all-time hit video game that offers a fantastic amalgamation of Sci-Fi and Turn-based 4X Strategy elements. Master of Orion is the first game in series, and it is available to play on MS-DOS and Apple Macintosh platforms. Released back in 1993, Master of Orion allows the players to dominate the Galaxy by building Democratic and Trade relations with other settlements. Building technology, Conquests, Exploration, and Colonization are the most prominent and necessary elements of the game. So if anybody wants to enjoy the game fully, they must be good at all of the said skills. Master of Orion features ten playable races for characters, and each of them has their own unique skills and abilities. As the game is based on Space Exploration elements, Master of Orion allows the players to explore seven ordinary and six profoundly hostile planets. While on Hostile planets, fight off the enemies if there is an encounter and keep on discovering. Researching for and building new technologies, Trade, and Diplomatic relations are the most prominent features of the game. Furthermore, Master of Orion offers clean 3D graphics, great game mechanics and addictive gameplay to enjoy.

StarMade is another marvel and a super cool addition to the Sandbox genre. This brilliant Action-Adventure, RPG, Indie video game takes you to an amazing space themed game world and allows you to explore the whole universe, create or craft ships, weapons, shields to defy the enemy attacks, go planet to planet, collect resources, engage in epic battles with enemy and survive and save your crew members. Ship customization, encounters with space pirates and ability to build the whole space stations etc. are the coolest parts of this wonderful game. With amazing quests, a huge world to explore, lot of collectibles, Economy driven game-play, great visuals and a lot of other exciting things, StarMade is a great alternative to Starbound.

FTL: Faster than Light, developed by Subset games is a Rouguelike Real-time Strategy (RTS) and Shooting Simulation by Subset Games. The game provides with Permadeath Mechanics and allows you to engage yourself in an amazing space themed environment. According to the story, you control a crew and an FTL (Faster Than Light) capable spaceship (Owned by the Galactic Federation) that is tasked to deliver critical information to an allied fleet of spaceships eight sectors away and is also being chased by a huge rebel spaceship fleet. Your task is to guide your ship safely all the way to your allied fleet and deliver the information by dodging and saving your ship from the rebel ship attacks. “FTL: Faster than Light” lets you defeat your enemies by directly getting into the permadeath styled combats, in a roguelike fashion. The Galactic Federation is on the verger of a drastic and mega devastation after they lost the great war against the Rebels. You must capture and contain the data packets, captured from Rebel ship communication intercept and deliver it to the Federation. The Federation will then use the information to attack and defeat the Rebel Factions and save the world. With a very well-written and quite involving storyline, beautifully created Ultra-HD graphics and a totally very addictive gameplay, FTL: Faster than Light is one amazing Space Exploration and RTS video game to play and enjoy.

Stellaris: Utopia mixes the Strategy, Space Exploration, Sci-fi and Grand Strategy elements developed by Paradox Development Studio and published by Paradox Interactive. The game offers the amazing sci-fi space environment and severs as the downloadable content pack for the original game Stellaris. It is the first major expansion pack and brings new tools, equipment, and weapons for you. In the game, you have to establish your galactic empire and effort to keep your people secure. Create your troops and send them on an epic adventure to battle against enemies and crush them to conquer their land and loot their resources. As you advance through the game, it becomes tough to play. Unlock upgrades using your points and get bonuses to enhance your power. Explore the space environment and immerse yourself in RTS gameplay experience. Stellaris: Utopia includes prominent features such as Advanced Slavery, Ascension Perks, Advanced Government, Habitat Stations, and more. With addictive gameplay, brilliant mechanics, and superb visuals, Stellaris: Utopia is the wonderful game to play and enjoy.

Homeworld is an amazing Real-Time Strategy and Tactics Space Simulation by Relic Entertainment. It originally released back in 1999 and was the first fully 3D RTS ever. With a number of sequels (Homeworld: Cataclysm, Homeworld 2, Homeworld: Remastered), this game is still famous among all the hardcore RTS and Tactics enthusiasts. According to the storyline, Homeworld is set in Outer Space where Gravity is much less and all the ships can travel into Three Dimensional directions filled with a number of different obstacles such as Radiation, Dust Clouds and Asteroids etc. The game allows you to either play in Multiplayer Online mode or you can also play the game as Single player, control the character after selecting the Race (Kushan, Taiidan, Bentusi, Kadeshi, Turanic Raiders and Galactic Council etc.), lead your own fleet of ships, and go hunt down the enemies. Homeworld offers loads of resource types that you can collect, store them on your mothership and use them as per requirements. With a minimalist user interface, amazing space-based environment, epic encounters with the equally equipped enemies and loads of other cool things that Homeworld offers, this game is one of the best RTS games to play and enjoy.

Subnautica is a brand new Open World, Adventure and Survival video game set in the underwater world of an alien planet. Subnautica is set in a futuristic Era of the 22nd century, and it offers a futuristic experience. It refers to a period when Humanity started exploring and inhibiting the alien planets. To colonize the planets, various advanced vessels were sent on Exploration Missions. One of the Vessels named as Aurora was also forwarded to an exploration and terraforming mission to an alien water world known as 4546B. The vessel was on its way to a station on the planet when an unknown energy source disabled it. With a hull badly damaged, and all the systems failed, the vessel crash landed into the water and sank to the ocean floor. This is where the player character gets into the play. After getting out of the life pod, the palyer must explore the world, find means of survival (Food, Drinking Water, Oxygen to breath, etc.) in an alien world, defeat all the underwater alien life forms and survive by evolving in the environment. Resource collection has its own importance in the game because without resources there is no survival. Subnautica offers various game modes such as Freedom Mode, Hardcore Mode, Creative Mode as well as unique Crafting abilities, great upgrades, beautiful graphics and addictive gameplay.

X3: Terran Conflict mixes different genres such as Trading, Combat, Exploration, and Space Simulation. It is developed by Egosoft and published by Deep Silver. The game takes place in the massive space environments and lets the player explore the game world from first-person perspective. To get into the game world, the player must create and customize his/her starship with different items. There are different races such as Xenon, Terran, Split and more and the player can select one of them and start his journey to navigate ship around different sectors. The game world comprises thousands of stations and ships and the player can create his colony, gather resources, and trade with NPCs to earn money. He has to fight against rival alien races to protect his colony and defeat them to earn amazing rewards. The Ship can be upgraded by using experience points that the player earned by complete objectives. X3: Terran Conflict includes key features such as New Factions, Largest X Universe, over 100 Spaceship, Management Tools and more. Try it out.

Space Hulk combines the Turn-based Strategy, Tactical, Sci-fi, and Board Game elements developed and published by Full Control Studios. The game takes place in the Warhammer 4K Universe and focuses on legendary battles and heroic actions. It lets you manages a small group of a space marine who effort to restore their honor by mounting an assault. You must lead your team, manipulate the environment, make your strategy and struggle to take down your enemies. Participate in turn-based combat and kill the enemy on your turn. There are a series of levels, and each level requires a completion of individual objectives. The game unlocks further content as you progress through the match. You can use your experience points to upgrade your characters. It takes place in the three-dimension world and comprises twelve challenging missions. Space Hulk offers prominent features such as Warhammer 4K Universe, Fearsome Gene Stealers, 3D Environments, Damnation Campaign, and more. Try it out, and you’ll enjoy it.

X Rebirth is an addictive Space Simulation by Egosoft and offers the similar gameplay like Sins of a Solar Empire. It is an Action-Adventure, Combat, Trading, Sandbox, Sci-fi, and Single-player game. The game takes place in the X-Universe near the future. In the game, the player can assume the role of the protagonist and the game revolves around combat, piracy, trade, and others. The primary goal of the player is to gain wealth and build his own space station and control fleet of starships and expand it. It sets the player on an epic adventure where he must collect items and fight against aliens and other factions with the use of various weapons, and must defeat them to save his space station and earn a lot of money. The game offers the open-ended game world and allows the player immersive himself in action-packed space combat experience. In the game, the player can build his own empire, trade with large factories, and crush his enemies. X Rebirth includes core features such as Trade, Build, Customization, Fight, Upgrades, Unique Weapons System, Economy System, and others. With the exciting gameplay, brilliant mechanics, superb visuals, and smooth controls, X Rebirth is the excellent game to play and enjoy.

Sunrider: Mask of Arcadius is a Turn-based Strategy, Free-to-play, Anime-based and Single-player Simulation with Visual Novel element developed by Love in Space. The gameplay is a mix of Romance and Role-playing elements, and it puts you in the role of the captain. The game takes place on a fictional planet destroyed by an alien faction. The protagonist named Captain Shields and his minted vessel known as the Sunrider, are the last hope of their people. You have to navigate the environment to find your allies around the starts and recover your hometown and restore the peace. It has a variety of levels, and each level offers challenging gameplay. Find and gather a team of pilot, create a relation with them and take part in battles to defeat the evil factions and win amazing rewards. Command your allies in tactical missions and manage resources to survive longer on the battlefield. Sunrider: Mask of Arcadius offers core features such as Travel through the Galaxy, Hi-Tech Graphics, Command your Team, and more. Try it out, and you’ll enjoy it.

Space Pirates and Zombies (SPAZ) is a cool Action-Adventure, Indie, RPG, Strategy and a Top-Down Space Combat and Shooter video game that allows you to explore an amazingly huge randomly generated galaxy and fight against the hostile Factions, Zombies and other enemies. Use your best skills to destroy alien ships, installations and facilities. Being in charge of a whole fleet of futuristic and most advanced space ships, and commanding the whole army is one of the best aspects of this super thrilling video game. Enemies include, aliens (Different races), humans and zombies that have infested almost every corner of the galaxy and they have mastered the art of evolving by creating a multi-tiered ecosystem that supports them with their plan of conquering the galaxy. With a lot of ships to fly in and build, pilot etc., a great physics based combat structure, a lot of different enemies, great visuals and an addictive game-play, Space Pirates and Zombies SPAZ is a wonderful game to play and enjoy.

Astro Lords or Astro Lords: Oort Cloud takes you to an amazing Universe Exploration and Combat journey and allows you to engage yourself into epic enemy encounters, trade and management simulation. This brilliant 3D MMO offers real-time battles and combats against the enemies, tons of space exploration and adventures and lets you be in charge of your own Asteroid. Your task is to simply defend your asteroid against the enemy attacks, collect resources to build structures on your asteroid, create various types of spaceships to explore the universe, build a huge base and militarize your every move against the enemies to stay always ahead of their plans. With a brilliantly designed core game-play, MMORTS aesthetics, PvP and PvE combats, and the ability to capture and conquer other Asteroids floating around the Oort Cloud nebula, defeating the enemies in epic encounters, game’s own economy system, unique trading capabilities and a unique Combat system, Astro Lords lets you enjoy experience of a life time. Astro Lords offers wonderful visuals, an immersive game-play and a lot of fantastic things to discover and enjoy beyond limits.

Eve Online, developed by CCP Games is a fantastic MMORPG video game set in a Persistent World. With a Sci-Fi background and theme, the game lets you be a pilot who can fly a customizable spaceship in a galaxy that is home to almost 7800 star systems in which the stars are connected by portals named as Stargates. You can also choose any of the given professions and be a manufacturer, Miner, Trader, Explorer or a Warrior and take part in both PvP and PvE combat events. With responsibilities like Exploration, Resource Collecting, Building, Leading Massive Armies etc. this game tasks you to be an ultimate conqueror and a savior to the entire galaxy. Eve online was released back in 2006 but because of worldwide fame and a huge user base, this game is still rocking on the internet. With all the fantastic Visuals, engaging and quite addictive gameplay, Eve Online is a brilliant Space Exploration video game to play and enjoy.

Star Conflict or also known as Star Conflict: Dogs of War is a an immense Action and Thrill-packed MMO, Exploration video game that sets you up into the character of a pilot and allows you to be part of massive leagues and engage yourself into epic interplanetary Skirmishes against the equally equipped and tactically advanced enemies. This epic space simulation allows you to go against the enemies in an amazing new fashion and engage yourself into PvP battles and PvE missions, go on some amazing quests in order to hunt down your enemies, choose best ever and advanced ships, explore a number of different places, earn experience points and collect upgrades by simply eliminating your enemies, produce massive battle ships and be a commander of whole fleets. Star Conflict offers an amazing battle oriented environment where you as the commander can choose your own path, survive as long as possible in the outer space and enjoy some of the best and longest campaigns ever. With a super engaging game-play, enhanced and state of the art graphics and amazing story-line Star Conflict is a great game to play.

RymdResa is a non-violent Rogue-like Space Exploration video game by Morgondag. The game features a procedurally generated world in which it allows the players to explore various planets, collect epic loots and enjoy the game. RymdResa offers Survival and RPG elements as well and lets the players decide what type of Spaceship they want to use. Once the ship is selected, RymdResa lets the players customize it by the utilization of all available options, start exploring and survive in a retro-styled universe. The core objective of the game is to find a new Home after the destruction of your former home by an asteroid. To find the new home, you must get out in the open space and follow the coordinates to many random locations. The game features a procedurally generated game world, random loot, loads of cool customization options, three different chapters with entirely different stories and gameplay, beautiful art style and original background music. It offers beautiful graphics, addictive gameplay, and loads of things to discover. Do try it out for an amazing Space Exploration experience.

Kerbal Space Program or also known as KSP is a Single-player Space Flight, Building and Construction and Simulation video game by Squad. The game is built using the updated Unity Engine and offers playability on Multiple Platforms including Linux, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Wii. The game allows the players to control a whole Space Mission Program named as Kerbal Space Program, Have a Crew of Humanoid Aliens known as Kerbals and enjoy Exploring the Space. Game’s Complex and realistic Orbital Physics helps players learn about the Hohmann Transfer Orbits (Start from a Lower Orbit and end up in a Higher Orbit) maneuvers and enjoy piloting the ship. According to the gameplay and game story, the game tasks the players to head a Nascent Space Program, Control the Kerbals (Intelligent Humanoid Aliens from an Earth-like planet Kerbin) and enjoy learning to maneuver into Space. Kerbal Space Program gameplay is divided into two main parts such as Construction and Flight, and it allows the players to construct various types of Rockets, Aircraft, Rovers, etc. Once the ships are created, the players can simply launch them into Space from in-game launch Pad, explore the Space and complete various objectives of the game. The game offers various types of mission such as Reaching to a Certain Height, Escape the Atmosphere, Reach Stable Orbit, Capture Asteroids, Create Space Stations, Visit different Planets and collect information about them, etc. With all the Space Exploration fun, Unique game Physics and mechanics, and interesting gameplay, Kerbal Space Program is a fun Space Simulation to enjoy.

Universe Sandbox is an Action, Education, Physics-based, Space, Adventure and Single-player Simulation developed and published by Giant Army. The game takes on a massive space environment where you can build, and destroy anything that you imagine. It focuses on real-time gravity, collision, climate, space exploration, and material interaction. Your ultimate task is to navigate the environment, interact with objects and NPCs and reveal the secrets behind the scenes. There are tons of stars, planets, and galaxies are available to manipulate. In the game, you can encounter various alien species and can combat against them to score the points. Unlock other items using your points and dominate the galaxy. Learn about space, planets, black hole, and the atmosphere of space, etc. in this game and show off your skills and abilities by creating different things like planet, stars, etc. Universe Sandbox includes core features such as Simple Introduction, Fun-filled Activities, Physical Quantities in units (seconds, meters, and kilograms, etc.), 3D Mode, Two Collision modes (Combine and Bounce), and more. Try it out, and you’ll love it.

Universe Sandbox 2 is an Education, Interactive Space and Gravity Simulation developed by Dan Dixon and available to play on Microsoft Windows platform. The game takes place in the massive space environment full of galaxies, planets, moons and asteroids. By playing the game, the players can see the gravity’s effects on different objects in the massive universe and can run scale simulations of the solar system, while interacting and controlling time, gravity, other objects like moon, black holes, planets and more. The game comprises many realistic and fictional simulations. It is the sequel to Universe Sandbox and introduces new features such as atmosphere, randomly generated textures on gas giants, realistic collision system, Chart mode, visualization of black holes, and more. It has two different collision modes such as combine and bounce. Using the game, players can create their own universe by placing multiple planets, moons and asteroids. Universe Sandbox 2 offers core features such as Multiple Color Modes, Control (Speed, Gravity and Time), Two Collision Modes, Particle Grid, Ring Systems, and more. Check out the game and have fun.

Space Grunts is the mixture of Strategy, Turn-based, Role-playing and Rogue-like genres and brings a fabulous gameplay for those players, who love playing Rogue-like games with Sci-fi elements. The game features Pixel Graphics and supports Single-player mode developed and published by Orangepixel. It takes place in the procedurally generated dungeon and introduces the futuristic environment takes place in 2476. According to the story, the space federation of the Earth has been constructing moon bases around the galaxy. One of those moon space has sent a signal. The Space-federation sent to a group called Space Grunt to investigate and solve the problem. You are a part of the space team, and your primary goal is to locate the way into the base and figure out what has happened. Go deep into the moon-base and find the core problem while facing terrifying monsters, aliens and space pirates. During the gameplay, you will discover a collection of consumables all around the moon-base from destructive toys to weapon enhancers, armors, system hack, and explosives. Use the weapons wisely to progress deeper into the base and collect enough points and loot to become the master. Space Grunts is the incredible game with prominent features to play and enjoy.