Sean Murray Says No Man’s Sky Isn’t Finished ‘By a Long Shot’

No Man’s Sky creator Sean Murray says his galaxy-spanning sandbox isn’t close to being finished, despite receiving its 19th major update today.

Speaking to IGN, Murray said the team at Hello Games is continuously coming up with new features they’d like added to No Man’s Sky, and each new update inspires more and more ideas.

He said, for “as many updates as we’ve done since launch and as many bucket list items we’ve checked off, our list of things we’re excited about never seems to get any shorter. The team are always coming up with new things that they want to do with the game: new content and features and areas for improvement.

“I’m amazed that the energy levels are as high now as they’ve ever been. We tend not to talk about what’s on that list publicly but suffice to say we’re not done yet by a long shot.”

Murray explained its roadmap and development schedule as similar to a painting that never quite seems complete:

“I like to think that No Man’s Sky is such a large game that we have to paint in broad brush strokes,” he said, “and then each update comes along and fills in some finer detail but also paints more new broad strokes.

“That’s certainly the case here. If you look at our patch notes [for the Sentinel Update], you’ll see an absolute ton of refinements, but also huge new features too.”

That list of updates that Hello Games has planned for No Man’s Sky is being worked on alongside a new game from the studio that, in September 2021, Murray said was “very early” in development. The only morsel of information revealed is that it’s a “huge, ambitious, game like No Man’s Sky”, though not a sequel.

This will likely be the case for a while, as Murray also said “we’ve learned our lesson” on talking about their games too early after No Man’s Sky open (and controversial) pre-release.

The new Sentinel Update completely overhauled the game’s combat by adding new weapons, updating old ones, and bringing a hoard of new enemies to use them on.

While the update is available on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC today, Nintendo players can enjoy the update alongside the rest of No Man’s Sky when it comes to Switch this summer.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale.