X4: Foundations
Your journey to building a vast space empire begins behind the controls of a single ship. Explore, trade, fight, and build as you rise to command fleets, stations, and entire economies in a living, fully simulated universe that reacts to every decision.
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Starminer on Steam
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Design and build a massive interstellar fleet in this simulation sandbox. Strip space of its minerals for profit, but stay alert: your greed attracts the alien. Master deep base-building and deploy warships to protect your empire in immersive real-time space.
Starminer is a sandbox, space sim and economy game
developed and published by CoolAndGoodGames.
Released on May 27th 2026 is available on Windows, Steam Deck and Steam Machine.
It has received 1,827 reviews of which 1,315 were positive and 512 were negative resulting in a rating of 7.0 out of 10. 😐
The game is currently priced at 29.99€ on Steam.
The Steam community has classified Starminer into these genres:
Sandbox
Space Sim
Economy
Space
Sci-fi
Trading
RPG
Exploration
Strategy RPG
Open World
Spaceships
Physics
Flight
Management
PvE
RTS
Aliens
Mining
Base Building
Survival
Here is the detailed breakdown of supported languages for Starminer:
| UI | Subtitle | Audio | |
|---|---|---|---|
| English |
Media & Screenshots
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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 32 bit
- Processor: Intel Core i3-10100 | AMD Ryzen 3 3100 (or similar)
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: Nvidia GTX 1050 | AMD Radeon RX 560 (or similar)
- DirectX: Version 11
- Storage: 7 GB available space
- Sound Card: Windows compatible
Steam Price & Best Deals
User reviews & Ratings
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
//edit after some more hours ingame. I love it! It has the potential to be pretty much my dream game. But currently it feels like my dream game was developed by the most notorious kind of open source developers, that never had any contact with other human beings, have not even the concept of an idea how an UI is supposed to work and want every user to suffer for their sins. You can for example sent resources off to a ship that is pretty far away in the same map. This could be a right-click, move a slider, click go, but no, there have to be at least a dozen clicks involved. The tutorials are beyond saving and should just be put down. Someone made a list of clicks they want the player to do, explains them all at once, then tested them perhaps by doing everything on their list and called it a day, while a new player thinks "WTF are you talking about?" From time to time there are just wild random UI changes, that bring no sense to something that had no sense from the start and seem like someone poking in the dark of the world of human interfaces. Seriously guys, get help from outside. Take my EA money, I give you even more but get some help from someone who has already at least experienced a game interface. The game itself and its mechanics are amazing!
I'm a player of complex, engineer-ish kind of games, from KSP to Satisfactory, Captain of Industry, and others. I also try to be on this kind of games since Early Access, since I enjoy see a game evolve. So for this promising game, I decided to make at least a good playthrough before comment. 99 hours. Here it's my in-depth opinion: First of all, for an Early access that just came out in steam, the state of the game it's pretty good. Some bugs, nothing too game breaking. A bit of a clunky mission line, and a lot of lack of QoL features. As good as it gets for a really early Early Access. About the gameplay, I'd say X-Series meets Kerbal Space Program, mainly. You have elements of both things, to a lesser extend that you'd like (Then again, it's EA, so let's see how it grows). It's KSP-ish in the sense that you build the ships from a small (but good enough) library, where you can unlock better pieces using research (and money). You also have quite a bit of Orbital Operations where you need a decent understanding of 3D movement in microgravity. So, yeah, quite a bit of aligning ports to dock (with some assistance), to park a ship, to drill an asteroid... On the other hand, no orbital trajectories (You are in a relatively small 3D space with lots of asteroids and some stations and things, where you move from point A to point B, pretty much like X-Series Sectors). No Delta-V consideration: thrusters move with electricity that you get from your panels or nuclear sources. No use of propellant, ejection mass or similar. You can move asteroids, but they stop when the acceleration ceases, no moving asteroids following, you know, law of physics. It's very X-Series in the sense of managing your fleet, having different ships, and a (even more) limited automation in order to do all this. Also a lot of sector you move through gates, jumps or other means, and the plot, such as it is, moves through successive mission objectives. Starminer still doesn't have any kind of ship automation, only trade automation (such as it is), so lots more of micromanaging than in X. Due to this, the micromanaging, the game it's pretty slow. For some people might be griding, and I'll get it. But for me it doesn't comes like that. Since you are managing a lot of ships, there is always quite a bit to do. Since there are not a lot of mechanisms for alert and managing, you have to be on top of lots of things. It's slow, but it's not boring, if you play it right. If this evolves a bit in the same way that satisfactory did, and if they make a lot of QoL enhancements, add NPC pilots that can be reasonably ordered around, flesh out a lot the missions, lots of more automation, and then pile on that adding things on the foundation they have, which it's very solid, this might be quite a nice trip, that I intend to take with them. So, if you like games like KSP and X-Series, don't hesitate for a moment. This will fill a lot of hours on your card.
It’s hard for me to recommend this game, but I’m going to anyway because I do support the idea behind it. What I wanted was pretty simple: take the mining part of EVE Online, cut it out, and turn it into a single-player PvE game. That’s it. That was the dream. What I got was… not that. I was hoping for something closer to EVE mining, where you have specialized mining ships, equipment, upgrades, fitting choices, and progression. Ideally, maybe even expanded with some of the space industry elements from X3 or X4. Instead, the game feels like it is aiming in that direction, but never really gets there. The biggest issues for me: - Captains feel pointless. Literally pointless. I don’t really understand what meaningful role they are supposed to fill. - The whole “station” system instead of having a dedicated working ship (or ships) is just not enjoyable. Stations feel clunky, awkward, and more annoying than fun. - The player perk system becomes game-breaking very quickly. It starts to feel less like progression and more like cheating. - There just isn’t much to do. Yes, it is a mining game, and that part is obvious. But there needs to be a reason to mine. There needs to be a loop, a goal, an economy, an industry system, something. Right now, it feels like you mine just to mine, and then… that’s kind of it. I know people will say, “Yeah, but it’s early access.” Personally, I don’t think early access should excuse the core gameplay loop not being enjoyable yet. Early access can explain missing features, rough edges, bugs, and balance issues. But the basic foundation still needs to be fun. So do I recommend StarMiner? Yes, but with caveats. Do not go into it expecting EVE Online mining in single player. Do not expect X3 or X4-style mining and industry. To me, it feels more like an extremely primitive version of Elite Dangerous mining, kind of, except after you mine there really isn’t much to do with it. I don’t regret buying it. I want games like this to exist, and I hope the developers keep improving it. But I was hyped for something very specific for the past year, and this just isn’t that game right now.
Recommended After 12 hours with Starminer, I can honestly say this is the most exciting space game I've played in years. As a long-time player of both Elite Dangerous and EVE Online, Starminer feels like it takes some of the best ideas from both while still being its own thing. The mining gameplay, drone management, ship operations, and sense of scale immediately clicked with me. The biggest highlight is the Newtonian physics model. I've seen some negative reviews criticizing the controls, but I honestly think many players are expecting an arcade-style flight model. Starminer is doing something different. The ship handles like a vessel in space should. Once it clicks, the controls become incredibly satisfying, and the realism adds a level of immersion that most space games simply don't have. Another feature that completely sold me is the ability to build and modify ships while you're out in space. Being able to adapt your vessel on the fly instead of returning to a station every time is fantastic gameplay and one of the most enjoyable systems I've experienced in a space simulator. The mining drones are equally impressive. Managing a growing mining operation feels rewarding and gives me the same kind of strategic satisfaction that I love in EVE Online, while the actual piloting and spaceflight remind me of the best moments from Elite Dangerous. What really stands out is that Starminer isn't trying to hold your hand. It expects you to learn its systems, and because of that, every new mechanic feels earned. The learning curve is part of the experience, not a flaw. I'm only 10 hours in, but I've already had more memorable moments here than I've had in many AAA games over the last few years. If you enjoy realistic spaceflight, Newtonian physics, mining, drones, ship building, and deep sandbox gameplay, I can highly recommend Starminer. For me, this is easily one of the best space games released in a very long time. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
TL;DR: if you like the build ships and stations flavor of sandbox games like space engineers, this does a good job scratching that itch. It's a slow paced, more on the chill side game of building and managing simple ship logistics. What it isn't for: People without patience, low tolerance to moderate learning curves, or don't like the feel of the "control reversal effect" caused by mismatched perspectives. Essentially, when a ship is upside down it still fires left thrusters when you press that key... but it moves right on your screen because it is upside down. It won't be gentle with you, and it won't spoonfeed. Pass if you don't like paving your own way and stumbling figuring things out as you go. What Starminer IS: A slow paced, chill mining and expansion game. There's a little bit of combat but it's more like a roadbump than it is any significant threat, at least early game anyways. The main threat is you to your own ships as you figure out the game mechanics or don't move around with caution and care. Ships are fragile and don't take much in a collision to do SIGNIFICANT damage. You are primarily locating, mining, and salvage resources. In turn, you build ships with various abilities as dictated by what you equip them with, and use them to do those tasks. The game describes a "fleet" but this isn't an RTS. YOU are the pilot of the fleet. It's like space engineers in that regard; the ships exist but you still fly them and switch between them to do tasks. So rather than expect *commanding* a fleet, instead you are the only pilot that exists so you are jumping between ships, such as a fighting ship to clear an area, driving in a mining ship and positioning it for mining, hauler ships to grab the goods floating about, and hauling them back to refinery ships, before trucking them off to places to sell. Automation: this isn't factorio. It does a few things to help ease a few of the loops, but don't expect much more than a basic conditional "send resources here when they or I have x". Controls: you don't fly them from a cockpit. This is like being in third person flying a ship in space engineers with a follow cam that can be positioned anywhere around the ship. It is much more like flying remote control aircraft. As such, you MUST spend time learning as there are very, very few games on the market that are like this. You can choose to set it to sim mode (defalt) or you can choose to set it to arcade mode for simplified controls. I considerably rebound my controls to ESDF because the defaults on WASD didn't give me enough keys in range to really fly that well. ESDF: thrust (translate) up down left right. WR: rotate left and right. Q: rotate construction. AZ: thrust forward and back. SHIFT ESDF: pitch up, down, left, right. Note: I did also rebind forward and back to my side mouse buttons as I found that more comfortable than AZ, especially if I needed to use shift. Game supports controllers, don't know about joysticks. The physics are newtonian 6DOF and have no speed limit that I have found, and you can disable the assistance that would stop your ship when you release inputs, and has separate assistance controls for stopping the rotation of the ship when you release the pitch roll yaw controls. Maps are not huge vast swathes of space though so you won't often go fast enough to do flip and burns unless you just want to show off. You can jump between maps and split your fleet, but only one map is actually loaded at a time, so when you go back to the other, its exactly the way you left it.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Starminer is currently priced at 29.99€ on Steam.
No, Starminer is currently not on sale. You can purchase it for 29.99€ on Steam.
Yes, Starminer received 1,315 positive votes out of a total of 1,827 achieving a rating of 6.97.
😐
Starminer was developed and published by CoolAndGoodGames.
Yes, Starminer is playable and fully supported on Windows.
No, Starminer is not playable on MacOS.
No, Starminer is not playable on Linux.
Yes, Starminer is playable on Steam Deck, though it might require a few minor tweaks. Make sure to check the Steam store page and community feedback on ProtonDB for exact compatibility details.
Yes, Starminer is playable on Steam Machine, though it might require a few minor tweaks. Make sure to check the Steam store page and community feedback on ProtonDB for exact compatibility details.
No, Starminer does not support VR.
Starminer is a single-player game.
No, Starminer does not currently offer any DLC.
No, Starminer does not support mods via Steam Workshop.
No, Starminer does not support Steam Remote Play.
Yes, Starminer 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 Starminer.
Data sources
The information presented on this page is sourced from reliable APIs to ensure accuracy and relevance. We utilize the Steam API to gather data on game details, including titles, descriptions, prices, and user reviews. This allows us to provide you with the most up-to-date information directly from the Steam platform.
Additionally, we incorporate data from the SteamSpy API, which offers insights into game sales and player statistics. This helps us present a comprehensive view of each game's popularity and performance within the gaming community.
Last Updates| Steam data | 03 October 2026 21:05 UTC |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 18 October 2026 17:16 UTC |
| Steam price | 22 October 2026 02:34 UTC |
| Steam reviews | 21 October 2026 18:06 UTC |
If you'd like to dive deeper into the details about Starminer, we invite you to check out a few dedicated websites that offer extensive information and insights. These platforms provide valuable data, analysis, and user-generated reports to enhance your understanding of the game and its performance.
- SteamDB - A comprehensive database of everything on Steam about Starminer
- SteamCharts - Analysis of Starminer concurrent players on Steam
- ProtonDB - Crowdsourced reports on Linux and Steam Deck Starminer compatibility
Game modes
Features
Online players
33
Developer
CoolAndGoodGames
Publisher
CoolAndGoodGames
Release
27 May 2026
Platforms