Solar Expanse - Space Exploration Manager on Steam - User reviews, Price & Information
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Explore the Solar System. Mine and drop asteroids. Colonize and terraform. Lead the space race and compete with other corporations on your way to profit. Watch the expansion of human race over the centuries.
Solar Expanse - Space Exploration Manager is a early access, space and simulation game
developed by SpaceOps
and published by Games Operators.
Released on April 09th 2026 is available only on Windows
in 13 languages: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish - Spain, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Portuguese - Portugal, Turkish and Portuguese - Brazil.
It has received 937 reviews of which 812 were positive and 125 were negative resulting in a rating of 8.2 out of 10. 😎
The game is currently priced at 17.99€ on Steam.
The Steam community has classified Solar Expanse - Space Exploration Manager into these genres:
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System requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- OS: Windows 10 / 11
- Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 1400 / Intel Core i5-7400
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 / AMD Radeon HD 7850
- Storage: 5 GB available space
User reviews & Ratings
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
My overall conclusion about the game and the idea behind it—especially considering its early development stage—is positive for now. You get about 10 hours of solid gameplay, and beyond that there’s already quite a bit of content, though it can become somewhat tedious to access due to the lack of QoL features and the still very rudimentary UI. This game is primarily about logistics, so you will spend your main time planning and optimizing production chains and flights between planets and asteroids to get the materials where they are needed currently. At first its mostly simple A->B missions, but after a few ingame years its starting to get complex with keeping remote stations alive and getting ressources not available on a planet. Given the slow ingame r&d and for some buildings long build times, you will find yourself skipping years just fast forwarding between doing macro and micro adjustments. Of course, I’ll try to update this review over time. (I’ll avoid mentioning things already listed under Known Issues in the patch notes.) Last Edit 30.04 after Hotfix. The game’s biggest strengths so far are: [*]The visuals of the star map and flight routes [*]The core concept: while simplified, it still manages to present a somewhat realistic simulation of humanity’s ambition to populate space—without excessive sci-fi elements or aliens but on with mostly focus on the logistics needed to do so. [*]The first 5–10 hours are already quite enjoyable. Early contracts do a good job explaining the core mechanics, and later they evolve into broader goals with increasingly complex logistics [*]Having achievements already implemented is actually a nice motivation to keep playing even when the game starts to feel a bit exhausting. [*]Performance and stability are already acceptable. There’s definitely room for improvement, but in my playtime so far I haven’t encountered any lag or crashes Things that are present but definitely need more polish: [*] Resource cycle: Items like rations are simply “destroyed,” even though in reality they would be transformed. Rations are produced from carbon and water, but once consumed, those resources disappear entirely—even though humans would realistically excrete them in altered form with less energy content. A possible solution would be for humans to produce reduced amounts of carbon and water. However, this would conflict with the current habitability system and varying ration consumption, which would also need adjustments. Mobile modules seem to run on nothing—they require neither energy nor personnel, which is odd given that there’s a mobile and effectively infinite energy source in the radioisotope generator (which arguably should function more like a battery that slowly depletes). Overall, the system should better reflect the basic principles of thermodynamics—even in an abstract way—to create a more believable resource cycle [*] Flight planning: Early on it’s manageable when you’re only setting up occasional flights and waiting for contracts to complete. But once you’ve transported 1,000 people to Mars and established 1–2 asteroid mining outposts, the lack of QoL and the clunky system become very noticeable. Combined flights involving slingshot maneuvers feel like unnecessary trial and error. Adding waypoints in flight planning would help determine whether such maneuvers actually save time or fuel. In its current state, it’s often easier to just ignore them unless absolutely necessary [*] Trading: Trade with AI factions on other planets is currently completely broken. In the early years I was able to earn hundreds of millions by selling alloys because one AI kept buying them for ~€200,000+ per ton and didn’t even use them. Sometimes the price drops, sometimes it stays the same. If you play it smart and ship resources to Mars for resale instead of people, you barely need any production on Earth [*] Money economy: Money is essentially useless aside from paying upkeeps. It’s far too easy to earn through trading. If you build mostly self-sustaining systems on planets and manage logistics well, you almost never need money [*] Research: While I understand limiting research labs to one per location to prevent unrealistic speed, the current system still feels off. It’s tedious to maintain research stations across many celestial bodies just for small percentage boosts, and even with 8+ stations research remains slow. It also doesn’t make sense that a research station on Earth provides the same benefit as one on an asteroid when researching fusion power. Additional structures that boost research—like AI data centers, particle accelerators, or quantum computers—would make sense. Even after the minor rebalances the r&d is rather slow. [*] Exploration: Using a rover often feels unnecessary because orbital satellites can reveal almost everything on a planet (albeit more slowly) beside exact sizes. Even portable mining equipment can determine deposit sizes quickly enough. With 3–4 observation satellites, you can usually scan the entire solar system. After 10–20 years you’ll also reach the maximum number of asteroids, and shortly after that you’ll have found all the useful ones Things that exist but barely function: [*] AI simulation: The AI is far too slow (by 2080, NASA has only about 100 people on Mars, China just 1, while I’ve transported 1,000 myself at a relaxed pace while experimenting on the side). The AI sometimes doesn’t consume resources (e.g., populations don’t use rations), and there’s almost no interaction beyond trading. One idea would be licensing systems for resources based on who first reaches a celestial body or asteroid [*] Cyclic routes: Likely still bugged— while they fixed that they suddenly stop, now you cannot plan some missions because the button is greyed out without an explanation. For example while planning a cyclic transfer from the surface to orbit. [*] UI (more examples): The UI is too large and not scalable. No pinning or collapsing side panels means constant opening and closing of windows. There are almost no filters or full-text search options. Selecting flight planning constantly zooms in on origin and destination planets, making it hard to see the flight path preview until you manually zoom out again. Flight route overview is poor—this should probably be a separate window rather than a cramped sidebar. There are almost no “back” buttons, forcing you to reopen windows repeatedly. Overviews are lacking (e.g., object search shows minerals, but hovering only displays descriptions, not actual deposits). Overall, the UI is not friendly for people prone to carpal tunnel syndrome Things that are missing: [*]A lot of QoL features (understandable given the early development stage) [*]Hotkeys (e.g., for zooming out) [*]Keybinding overview and customization options [*]Various graphics and UI settings
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This game is a ton of fun. There is some confusion about what the game is and is not, and admittedly part of that may stem from the Devs not really knowing which direction they want to go quite yet. For now, here's the situation. WHAT THE GAME IS: You are running a space trucking company. Your job is to take resources currently made on Earth, and transform them into ships to take people to other planets...where mining and manufacturing resources is cheaper, and easier to send into orbit. This helps you expand to other places. Earth is too costly and too difficult to get materials into orbit, meaning you will go bankrupt quickly if you do not depart the planet. WHAT THE GAME IS NOT: It is not, chiefly, an exploration game. You WILL be exploring, and you WILL be sending probes to various places to check its habitability. But the goal is to find habitable places and focus your limited resources there rather than to boldly go wherever you desire. It is also not a tycoon game. You WILL be selling items to other companies, but that's for survival and not to "win." (Side note: Do not start a game without rival companies, you'll need someone to sell to or you'll be broke within a decade. Don't ask how I know.) IS IT FUN: Yes. Absolutely. It takes forever to build up resources and go places, but when you do, the sense of accomplishment is fabulous. You sit down with the goal of getting Metals to the moon, and seven hours later you're landing ships on Mars and trying to figure out how to get Carbon there so you can grow food for your colonists and you realize you haven't fed yourself all day. There are several bugs that plague the game now, which is not unusual for early access. Devs have been exceptionally active on the forums and in addressing them. They are accepting of feedback which will surely help iron out the long-term direction of the game, but even right now, it's a ton of fun at a low price. Pick it up and meet me on Titan.
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I played Terra Invicta and wished for more of a space colony/Terraforming angle. This is that game. The game is slow, its in the title... A "Space Exploration Manager" but its rewarding to have long time plans enacted. Pros: Grounded scifi that is all very plausible. It dose not take too long IRL for the game to progress. In about 11 hours IRL I advanced about 100 in game years. The visuals are clean. Cons: The UI is kind of ass right now... its clunky to plan missions (which is what you do MOST of the time) Many techs are yet to be implemented due to early access. Buy now to support the Dev or check back after some updates. I look forward to seeing this game develop and evolve as its a kind of game Ive been waiting years to play.
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Quite fun space game so far. Played the demo and decided to buy the full game. Pros: - Very fun. Setting up infrastructure around the solar system has very real consequences in the game and getting proper flows of materials is very important. - I think the game experience is done fairly well too for near-future Sci-Fi. Orbital transfers, nuclear spaceships, slowly building out colonies. The solar system visuals add a lot here as well. - The game very heavily rewards forward thinking & planning. Getting around beyond Luna takes months or even years, so you have to be careful. Perhaps bringing a radioisotope generator to Mars rather than relying on solar is a good idea? Research takes a while and while a lot of techs don't do a whole lot, the ones that do can open up entire new possibilities. - The Contracts system is basically the tutorial. So even though there's a decent amount going on, it basically gives you a guide to progressing to the next step. And honestly it's the right way to do a tutorial. You hop right into playing the game instead of reading some guide or getting overly hand-held. It does feel a little punishing to neglect the contracts given that they give you so much money, but even being rather aggressive in my second playthrough I didn't run out of money (though came close). Cons: - More QOL features are absolutely necessary. It takes like 12-15 clicks to send a spaceship anywhere. The first few times it's really great, but the 200th time it's getting really grating whenever I need to send 200 tons of metal, 20 tons of rare earths, and a few other choice items to Luna. Pro-tip: Send your materials up to Earth Orbit with your 800 ton capacity launchers and then use spaceships to move stuff around. Because otherwise you're limited to 100-150 ton transfers at a time. There are also things where I need X materials for Y building but I have to go back and check every time and I can't have it pulled up on a different menu. Combined with 15 clicks to launch one craft and it gets pretty bad. There are repeated missions but they don't seem to allow you to define specifically what amounts to carry of each item and also drag-and-drop resources to start a route but again it's like 10 clicks. - There are two music tracks in the game (one for the main menu and one for the game itself). And it gets a little repetitive after a while especially since it's like a 2 maybe 2.5 minute loop? Not a huge deal though. - Game is obviously incomplete. People say "it's basically a demo" but I think people expect a lot from demos. I played the demo first and it ends after you get humans on Mars. There appears to be a decent amount of content, but it's obviously unfinished. Not really unexpected, but do expect things to be unfinished. - There is a lack of polish. Typos, additional commas where they needn't be, so on so forth. Additional tooltips in certain places would be nice (or more info). UI navigation can be sometimes a little difficult (especially on the location screen when you have a lot going on, like on Earth). - AI doesn't appear too great. They were well behind my cadence when I first tried the demo and just offered to buy like 10 tons of rare metals on Mars for like 2 million dollars. There also doesn't seem to be much interaction with the AI other than said trading and also resource consumption of the same deposits. Additional ways that the AIs would be relevant would be nice, because for the moment they're kinda set-dressing. There are a lot of nitpicky issues I have with this so far, but because of how much I've enjoyed it I give it a positive rating. Probably a 7.5/10. Great concept, decent enough execution. I'd recommend anyone thinking of buying it to play the demo, and if they have fun, go ahead and buy it.
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So far, this game proves to be a lot of fun. Colonized Luna so far, Mars is next. Getting the For All Mankind vibes
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Frequently Asked Questions
Solar Expanse - Space Exploration Manager is currently priced at 17.99€ on Steam.
Solar Expanse - Space Exploration Manager is currently not on sale. You can purchase it for 17.99€ on Steam.
Solar Expanse - Space Exploration Manager received 812 positive votes out of a total of 937 achieving a rating of 8.20.
😎
Solar Expanse - Space Exploration Manager was developed by SpaceOps and published by Games Operators.
Solar Expanse - Space Exploration Manager is playable and fully supported on Windows.
Solar Expanse - Space Exploration Manager is not playable on MacOS.
Solar Expanse - Space Exploration Manager is not playable on Linux.
Solar Expanse - Space Exploration Manager is a single-player game.
Solar Expanse - Space Exploration Manager does not currently offer any DLC.
Solar Expanse - Space Exploration Manager does not support mods via Steam Workshop.
Solar Expanse - Space Exploration Manager does not support Steam Remote Play.
Solar Expanse - Space Exploration Manager is enabled for Steam Family Sharing. This means you can share the game with authorized users from your Steam Library, allowing them to play it on their own accounts. For more details on how the feature works, you can read the original Steam Family Sharing announcement or visit the Steam Family Sharing user guide and FAQ page.
You can find solutions or submit a support ticket by visiting the Steam Support page for Solar Expanse - Space Exploration Manager.
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Last Updates| Steam data | 21 May 2026 00:24 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 25 May 2026 01:36 |
| Steam price | 29 May 2026 20:48 |
| Steam reviews | 28 May 2026 06:07 |
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- ProtonDB - Crowdsourced reports on Linux and Steam Deck Solar Expanse - Space Exploration Manager compatibility
Game modes
Features
Online players
263
Developer
SpaceOps
Publisher
Games Operators
Release
09 Apr 2026
Platforms