Endless Sky

About

Endless Sky is a sandbox-style 2D space trading and combat game similar to Elite, Escape Velocity, and Star Control. Players start as the captain of a small ship and can either follow a roughly 8-to-16-hour main story line with many additional minor missions, or freely trade, carry passengers, bounty hunt, mine asteroids, or explore on their own. It's cross-platform (Windows, Linux, macOS), built with CMake, and has been developed for over a decade by hundreds of volunteer contributors, with three major updates released each year.

Getting started

Official releases are available as direct downloads from GitHub, on Steam, on GOG, and via Flathub. Minimum requirements are modest: about 750 MB of RAM, OpenGL 2.0 or better (OpenGL 2 devices need custom shaders; OpenGL 3.0 is recommended), and roughly 400 MB of storage; it runs on Linux, macOS 10.15+, and Windows XP or later. The game's content can also be extended with plugins, built using the same system as the base game's own content.

History

Endless Sky has been developed for more than ten years by hundreds of volunteer contributors, with three major content updates released each year.

Media

Licensing & legal

• The source code is GPL v3; the artwork is a mix of public domain and various Creative Commons-style permissive licenses, tracked per file in the repository's copyright file.