Hello Games' next project isn't a No Man's Sky sequel, but it's just as ambitious
And it's not holding up No Man's Sky updates.
No Man's Sky got its latest major expansion today in the form of Outlaws, but that's by no means the last: Hello Games has repeatedly promised ongoing additions to the procgen space adventure. In an interview with IGN, founder Sean Murray promised that work on No Man's Sky won't slow, despite Hello Games' next project being a big one.
How big? Probably on par with No Man's Sky. "For a while now we've been working on something pretty ambitious in the background," Murray said. "It's a small team but we like it that way."
Murray goes on to say that the scope of the project is probably bigger than you'd expect a small studio to cope with. "Similar to No Man's Sky, it's the kind of project that even if we had a thousand people working on it, it'd still seem impossible," he said. He also said that the new project's development won't interfere with ongoing work on No Man's Sky.
It's pretty unlikely we'll hear more about Hello Games' next project for a while. Sean Murray has learned that quietly working on a project without blowing expectations sky high is probably the best way to avoid the kind of backlash No Man's Sky received at launch. But it's fun to speculate about what a new game with the scope of No Man's Sky would look like. I can't even begin to imagine.
Hello Games has released a game since No Man's Sky. It was The Last Campfire, which was developed by just two people, almost as a palate cleanser. Murray referred to it as Hello Games' version of a Pixar Short back in 2020. "It's a way to foster creativity and new voices in the studio," he said.
While we wait, there's sure to be more No Man's Sky stuff to sink our teeth into. The new Outlaws expansion adds pirating missions, contraband smuggling, pirate spaceports, and heaps more. Oh, and capes.