$19.99Space Engineers Ships that break beautifully
Space Engineers is a sandbox about building working ships, stations and planetary bases block by block, then flying, mining and fighting with them. Bring co-op friends to split the welding, mining and piloting, or meet them on large servers for ship battles. Expect glorious structural failures along the way.
Is Space Engineers worth it?
Space Engineers is worth it if…
- you like building machines with co-op friends and testing them until they break
- you want a slow survival loop of mining, refining and expanding a base together
- you enjoy sandbox combat with custom ships, turrets and base defenses
- you like mods, blueprints and tinkering with automation and scripts
Screenshots
Build ships and bases with co-op friends
You and your co-op friends start with a simple lander and work up toward mining rigs, industrial bases and warships. One of you welds armor into place, another runs conveyors and power, a third tests the thrusters. Building uses over 200 functional blocks, from rotors and pistons to turrets and production blocks, with symmetry tools and blueprints for bigger projects. In Survival you assemble everything by hand with welders and grinders, manage resources and power, and respawn when it goes wrong. In Creative you get unlimited resources and instant building, which is handy for testing a terrible idea before committing to it together.
Physics that punishes bad engineering
Everything here has mass, inertia and damage, and the world is fully destructible. Ships break apart block by block, stations crumble, and voxel planets, moons and asteroids can be drilled, carved and reshaped. You can dig tunnels, hollow out an underground base, or shear a wing off an asteroid because someone forgot the gyroscope. Electricity, oxygen and hydrogen keep bases and suits alive, and gravity and atmospheres change how craft handle. It makes design choices matter, and it makes group projects funny.
Survive, mine and explore together
Survival sessions give a co-op crew clear jobs. Someone mines ore with drills, someone refines it, someone keeps reactors, batteries and oxygen running, someone plots GPS markers for the next asteroid. Planets have different gravity and climates, space has procedural asteroids, cargo ships, factions and exploration encounters with ships and stations to find, capture or conquer. You can set privacy settings for a small private outpost or join dedicated servers and community worlds. Scenarios, custom worlds and Workshop starts let the group pick exactly what kind of universe to wake up in.
Fight alongside friends or against them
Weapons and combat blocks support ship-to-ship battles and base defense, with turrets, remote control and AI-controlled threats to deal with. Co-op friends can crew the same vessel, run a mining escort, or hold a planetary fortress while cargo ships and hostile forces pass through. Multiplayer also supports competitive play, so groups can split into rivals and test their warships against each other. Mods, scripts and the programmable block add automation, missions and new systems, and all DLC is cosmetic-only, so everyone on the server builds and fights with the same gameplay tools.
Good to know before you start?
How does co-op actually work?
You can play solo or in multiplayer with co-op or competitive settings, from a small private outpost to huge community and dedicated servers. Friends can build, mine, pilot and fight in the same world, sharing tasks across ships and bases. It suits a regular group with time for long saves rather than a one-night session.
What is the difference between Creative and Survival?
Creative gives unlimited resources, instant building and no death, so it is good for designing ships and bases with friends. Survival requires manual welding and grinding, resource gathering, power management and dealing with death and respawn. Many groups design in Creative, then live with the consequences in Survival.
Is there anything to do besides building?
Yes. You explore planets, moons and asteroids, mine voxel terrain, manage electricity, oxygen and hydrogen, and meet cargo ships, factions and AI threats. Exploration systems add ships and stations to discover, capture and conquer, and the Visual Script Editor plus Workshop mods can add missions and game modes. There is still no fixed campaign to finish.
Will my badly built ship actually fall apart?
Very likely. The volumetric physics model gives blocks mass, storage capacity and structural integrity, and damage is handled block by block. Poor thruster placement, weak joints and enthusiastic drilling all show. The upside is that tunnels, craters, wreckage and split hulls persist, so every failed launch leaves evidence for the group chat.
