The 10 Best Games Where You Play as an Astronaut, Ranked

Highlights

• Become an astronaut in video games like Adrift, Lifeless Planet, Deliver Us The Moon for thrilling adventures in outer space.
• Experience the challenges of exploration, survival, and puzzle-solving as an astronaut through games like The Turing Test and No Man's Sky.
• From terrifying encounters with cryptids in Lethal Company to the social deduction game Among Us, astronaut-themed games offer diverse experiences.

Positioned as perhaps one of the most popular dream jobs of children today, astronauts are admired for braving strenuous training and conditioning for the honor of going to space. While franchises like Star Trek and Star Wars have shown fantastical scenarios of humankind going where no human has gone before, and even long ago in a galaxy far, far away, reality eventually reflects being an astronaut as both a marvelous and risky profession. In this regard, the world of video games also attempted to create space-set stories featuring astronauts that depict the difficulties of managing life support in outer space interspersed with other mechanics.

Thankfully, some of the best video games where players become astronauts deal with more than just the perils of exploring unknown worlds while donning rather bulky suits. Certain games set in space have players become astronauts dependent on their gear while they try to solve mysteries, survive for days, and even try to outrun a threat.

10 Adrift

Survive and Solve The Mystery Of Your Accident

When players begin Adrift, their character wakes up in front of the wreckage of their space station. With no memory pertaining to the cause of the incident, players are tasked to explore the wreckage, find audio logs, as well as other items that could help them piece together the context of their space base’s destruction. This is where Adrift shifts to its exploration and puzzle-solving components, where challenges allow players to progress through the game’s maps and even unlock new areas.

Set mostly in outer space, players can enjoy Adrift allowing them to float around the space station to find new staging grounds for their exploration. However, the game does offer limited oxygen and distance to players, forcing them to gather oxygen tanks during their trips. Despite the mixed reviews and the rather short story mode, Adrift remains tied to its astronaut themes with its visuals and gameplay elements.

9 Lifeless Planet

Uncover What Happened To A Now-Desolate Planet

While already a decade old in 2024, Lifeless Planet showcases the potential of an astronaut-themed game to provide a compelling story for players. The game begins when players volunteer to take a trip to a planet filled with life, transforming their character into an astronaut who, after a horrific crash, discovers that the aforementioned planet is a barren wasteland with only a Soviet facility in the distance. Players are tasked with unlocking what happened to the facility and the mystery behind the lush planet’s sudden transformation into a wasteland.

Players must contend with constantly depleting resources, such as oxygen and jetpack fuel, as they solve puzzles and navigate platforming challenges throughout the planet. While gameplay issues plague the game, its “clunky” nature could prove useful to improve its astronaut sim quality, and its hidden story can also become a worthwhile investment in the long term.

8 Deliver Us The Moon

Bring A Colony Back To Life

Despite Deliver Us The Moon focusing on being an adventure game, its main setting, that of an abandoned space colony on the Moon, can make the title borderline sci-fi horror. Set in a future where Earth has become dependent on a new helium isotope endemic to the Moon, players are maintenance specialists sent to the colony after it suddenly shuts down. As players discover the colony’s sudden abandonment, they need to not just reactivate the colony’s functions but also discover its hidden mysteries.

Much of the gameplay in Deliver Us The Moon focuses on performing puzzles and challenges associated with reactivating functionalities in the Moon colony. However, the dangerous nature of some puzzles can result in the character suffering accidents, resulting in instant death. Just exploring the outside of the space station gives players only two minutes of breathable air, demanding a degree of precision in navigating the space colony in missions. While Deliver Us The Moon suffers from some graphics woes and a relatively short story, its atmospheric vibe can show the potential of a sci-fi game’s versatility.

7 The Turing Test

Solve Puzzles And Protect Your Crew

Given its naming after the machine-focused intelligence test, one might be surprised to find The Turing Test is a space-themed game. Set on Jupiter’s moon Europa, the game begins when the Technical Operations Machine wakes up protagonist Ava Turing from her slumber. The character’s main mission is to aid the rest of the International Space Agency’s crew as dangers on their moon base threaten to kill the human crew inside. Unfortunately for Ava and the players, the base has reconfigured much of its machinery and tech, forcing Ava to solve puzzles to “recalibrate” them to their desired output.

At its core, much of the gameplay in The Turing Test relies on light exploration and puzzle-solving, making the game quite a relaxing (and equally foreboding) experience. However, as players experience tougher tasks, the game’s plot also thickens - eventually revealing the true nature of the title and the fates of the crew on the base.

6 Starfield

Where Artifacts Can Decide The Fate Of The Galaxy

Despite the middling reception of Starfield due to the perceived "blandness" of its world, the space-set Bethesda title remains packed with lore that establishes its futuristic setting as an interesting take on alternate history. Set around the 2200s, players take on the role of space miners dealing with the aftermath of the Colony War between the United Colonies and the Freestar Collective. This was around the time humanity started to use the Grav Drive to achieve faster-than-light travel and settle in other star systems just as Earth slowly became uninhabitable due to an unstable magnetosphere.

While the start of the story will task Starfield players with locating mysterious Artifacts, they will soon be involved in the deeper machinations surrounding the United Colonies and its origins. In true Bethesda fashion, Starfield players not only have the option to create their own ships and explore worlds but also build relationships with other factions, deciding their fate and the course of the story through their decisions. While not as fantastical as the Elder Scrolls or whimsical as the Fallout franchise, Starfield is an interesting alternate take on the astronaut concept, especially on a futuristic Earth where space suits have merged with the game's somewhat Western-inspired aesthetic.

5 Astroneer

Discover And Build Your Own Planet

Compared to other games with astronauts that often give players rather complicated mechanics, Astroneer is a vibrant game with an open-ended approach to its exploration-heavy story. Players simply take on the role of astronauts from an unknown planet trying to survive on the planet Sylvia after landing on it. Soon, players eventually have to discover and explore events surrounding neighboring planets and moons, all the while giving players free rein on how they want to progress the plot while enjoying gameplay.

Much of Astroneer is spent just making the present planet an ideal place to live in for the player and their friends. Players can terraform the planet to accommodate their base-building, while they can travel on foot or even via rover to reach various parts of the planet. As with other space titles, Oxygen is a limited resource that constantly needs to be replenished, giving a layer of scarcity and urgency in the player’s gameplay that focuses more on survival “to continue fun” instead of survival only for the story's sake.

4 No Man’s Sky

An Infinite Number of Space-Exploration Possibilities

Despite its initial mediocre reception, No Man’s Sky has begun to evolve into a full-fledged sci-fi survival game boasting both vibrant graphics and a rather expansive take on exploration. Set in entire universes procedurally-generated with potentially as many as 18 quintillion planets, No Man’s Sky players take the role of space explorers as they try just to survive in outer space. While the game does have a compelling story mode involving finding a way to the center of the galaxy, the game’s engaging multi-layered mechanics come ahead as players discover planet after planet.

Unlike other space exploration titles, the only important thing in No Man’s Sky is for characters to survive as long as possible. As long as players can upgrade their Exosuit and Multitool and have enough resources, they can freely stay in their ship to travel or even create entire bases on planets they want to settle on. The added dependence on the Exosuit, depleting resources, and the thrill of meeting and engaging with new species can make the astronaut sim aspect of No Man’s Sky more believable compared to other space-set titles.

3 Lethal Company

Horror-Comedy Gold In Space

While not necessarily a space exploration game, Lethal Company successfully makes the transition from a mere sci-fi horror game into horror comedy gold. Players enjoying Lethal Company gameplay take the role of ill-fated employees of The Company sent to planets to retrieve scrap materials while avoiding various cryptids that chase them throughout the game’s series of maps. Not only do players manage gadgets in the game’s claustrophobic but complex space structures, they risk certain death once they interact with the randomized cryptids or even fail to meet a certain quota.

Regardless if players try to take the game seriously or try to make it a hilarious horror experience, Lethal Company presents the extreme risks of space travel to explorers. The suits in Lethal Company alone are extremely fragile, and the limited battery of gadgets in the game also force players to be economical with their resource spending. The cryptids always walking about the levels in preset paths and specific attitudes make them horrifying to deal with, even if the game shares an overall simplistic appearance.

2 Among Us

Find The Imposter Before They Find You

Perhaps one of the quintessential astronaut games with a recognizable costume, Among Us has become quite a social phenomenon despite its simple graphics and straightforward gameplay. Comparable to the likes of party games Werewolf or even Mafia, gameplay in Among Us also relies on social deduction when it comes to figuring out the Impostor before they eliminate a significant number of the team’s Crewmates.

However, the difficulty of Among Us comes with its astronaut mechanics, where Crewmates are assigned missions to complete across the game map related to spacefaring activities. On top of requiring basic interactions, mini-games are associated with Crewmate tasks, distracting them just enough for Impostors to kill them. When other Crewmates find the body, it’s up to the remaining teammates to “sus out” who they think is the Impostor, requiring bluffing or even defending on the part of others when put on the hot seat.

1 Kerbal Space Program

Real-Life Concepts Wrapped In A Cute Setting

Despite the funny-looking sprites of Kerbals running about inside spaceships and space stations, most of the gameplay in Kerbal Space Program is based on real-life concepts and science. Set on the Earth-like planet of Kerbin, the players have to manage Kerbals in their spaceport as they work their way towards accomplishing the game's various objectives, such as reaching a certain altitude or stable orbit, escaping the atmosphere, or even making contact with other astronauts outside the planet.

It's in how players achieve this goal where Kerbal Space Station gameplay shines, as players need to make real-life and physics-accurate vehicles like aircraft, rockets, rovers, and even spaceships from various components. Players have to ensure their Kerbals not only make it to their destination but also survive in the process, especially when players also get to control the Kerbals by the time they have to accomplish more specific tasks.