Starseeker: Astroneer Expeditions is System Era’s follow-up to the beloved cozy space exploration and survival game, but it’s decidedly not an attempt at ‘Astroneer 2‘. While Starseeker shares Astroneer‘s universe and continues its story, System Era is taking the opportunity to explore entirely different genre themes, blending nonviolent live service extraction shooter gameplay with the friendly, social aspects that made Astroneer such a wholesome and community-driven experience.
Game Rant sat down with System Era co-founder and Starseeker creative director Adam Bromell, who placed significant emphasis on the studio’s mission to deliver a game that fosters a friendly environment for players, without the often cynical and predatory practices typically leveraged by live-service games. With no microtransactions to speak of and plans to minimize FOMO from missed seasonal events, Starseeker aims to provide players with an ever-evolving title that doesn’t leave players behind, either. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Why Starseeker Isn’t Astroneer 2
Game Rant: What was your inspiration behind Starseeker? What led you to go in this direction for a new title?
That’s one of my favorite topics. It actually starts before Astroneer. I wanted to make games, as a company, that foster a sense of hope for the future and the ambition I got from watching Star Trek. The original series, Voyager, and The Next Generation. I’m not joking, I watched Season 6, Episode 9 of Voyager last night. I’m doing my third run-through right now. Starseeker even borrows its naming motif from Star Trek: the “ESS Starseeker” is the name of our space station in the game.
This game is our biggest swing at being on-the-nose about paying that forward and being the game that shows what it means to be on the same team, work together, and foster camaraderie through the accomplishments of my friends and me. I jump between calling it “hopeful science fiction” and “optimistic futurism.”
Game Rant: What did you want to bring over from Astroneer, and what were you okay leaving behind?
Thank you for asking—that tells me you know Starseeker is not Astroneer 2. It’s not another base-building survival game, but we couldn’t do an Astroneer-universe game without some sort of terrain interaction.
This being an action-oriented, controller-first game, interacting with terrain is mapped right onto your primary action. When we did creature designs or hazards, we kept that in mind: terrain interaction isn’t just about punching holes through walls or digging to the core, it’s a high-energy tool that can mess things up—including things that might be threatening me as a player.
Also: planets. Our voxel tech is back. Starseeker isn’t set on flat worlds; it’s a planetary system with its own much larger planets to explore. You’ve seen in the gameplay—oceans, water, creatures, and weather systems. You’re still an explorer on a planet; it’s just a different genre experience.
Game Rant: Can you talk about the core gameplay loop? What does a typical session look like?
Plan, pack, go—it’s an expedition. You and your friends (or solo) log in to a bustling space station. We’re targeting 80–100 people online at the station. You sign up for objectives: some story-oriented, some side-quest style, and some tied to our “sticker book.”
The sticker book literally tracks anything you do: running, jumping, sliding, scanning “carrotlings”; throwing them across a field—everything has an associated sticker that levels up as you do it.
Based on your objectives, you visit your stash on the Promenade (think Deep Space Nine), print items to put into your limited inventory backpack, and pick your loadout like nozzles, mods, and items you can apply in the world. Then you head to the dropships, meet friends, everyone gets into their customizable dropship, and you depart.
Planets are big. Your squad (up to four) drops, and there can be other friendly squads on the planet at the same time—everyone’s on the same team. Once you’re down there, it’s a planetary sandbox. We’re not prescriptive about how you beat objectives. In the PAX demo, we say, “take this sensor array to 200 meters,” but in the main game, we often just say, “get as high as you can.” Players find new ways to go higher and use the terrain tool to tower up, build bridges, etc.
Along the way, you collect resources like compound, resin, all the Astroneer staples. Back on the station, you meet NPCs, print new things, progress story missions and relationships, level stickers to unlock new things, or just be a silly goose and see what you can do down there.
Game Rant: People often describe Astroneer as a very chill and borderline cozy game. Do you lean into that with Starseeker? Are you trying not to stress players out?
I think we’re there. In its bones, there’s a bit of extraction game, a Zelda-style world sandbox, and a little Helldivers in there, but what we did for base-building survival with Astroneer, we’re trying to do for those genres: make it approachable and accessible.
It’s technically a live-service game. We want continuous support so we can sustain ourselves and our players, but we want to do it in a way that doesn’t stress players out. I play a lot of live-service games, and I think about: can we be the kind where it doesn’t matter if you give us two hours a month, a week, or a day? Play how you want. It’s a sandbox—we give you agency from the very first UX beats.
That means avoiding FOMO. We literally had a meeting about the “Disney Vault.” I’d love to be on Season 5 and bring the Season 3 planets “out of the vault” so players can come back and complete those stickers. If you missed it, maybe it returns.
On monetization: We won’t have premium currency, just supporter packs—purely cosmetic. There’s no pay-to-win and no new items gated behind money. Supporter packs are a way to peacock on the station, and that’s it.
Also, I don’t want to grind my team into a pulp. I don’t want to balloon from 60 people to 600. I want us to sustain players’ interest and respect their time and money ethically—and let our folks work sane hours. That’s part of why Devolver was interested and acquired System Era; we’re aligned there.
Game Rant: Do you anticipate any cross-pollination between Astroneer and Starseeker?
Definitely. Starseeker continues the story from Astroneer. It’s the same universe in a way that will unravel over time. Starseeker isn’t there to alienate Astroneer fans; it’s there to cast a wider net: “if you want that feeling differently with more agency, come here.”
We’re crafting ways so Astroneer players understand Starseeker, and Starseeker players understand Astroneer. We’ve got a Message of the Day in Astroneer, and we’re thinking of more compelling in-game references both ways, plus transmedia.
Game Rant: Were there lessons learned from Astroneer that you applied to Starseeker?
I don’t want to do Early Access that early again. I have no problem doing EA—but Astroneer was pre-alpha. The train was going 200 km/h and we were laying track in front of it. It forced us to be radically transparent—“if this is too early for you, don’t buy it”—and that was great. But next time, we want the vision and product clearly there, then bring the community in to help make it the best it can be. We’ve got around 100,000 people on our Discord already engaging.
Game Rant: Were there gaps in the genre you wanted to fill?
From the extraction side: Helldivers is one of my favorite games because it’s cooperative and gets rid of that min-max competitive mindset (you can still min-max, but it’s not the point).
I loved DMZ in Call of Duty—an approachable extraction mode—and then the big co-op zombie one. There’s a desire for this. I wanted more games like that that make me feel a certain way, and then I realized Astroneer makes me feel that way.
A big pitch for Starseeker was to build a social space and engage our audience as a collective—peanut butter and chocolate—while being honest that this is not Astroneer 2. That’s why we called it Starseeker first, not “Astroneer: Starseeker.” It’s a unique experience in the Astroneer universe.
Game Rant: Were there any features or ideas you tried that turned out to be disasters?
We toyed with guns, but our way. Not blasting creatures into gibs, but messing with terrain. One prototype was an orb you shoot that bores a tunnel. It was cool as hell, but easy mode. It removed skill and immersion. We inverted it and ended up with the terrain tool you see in the demo: you “shoot” terrain into the world. It feels more like a Nerf-y tool—you build bridges, protect yourself, and help the player carrying the sensor array across gaps.
We also went deep on physics. Early on, another engineer and I explored “how simulated is too simulated?” Throwing is in the game—I love throwing things—but we tried materials behaving differently (plastic vs wood vs stone vs metal vs a fictional “exo-composite”), with varying velocities and bounces. It was boring. We learned: be binary where it helps—heavy/light, hollow/solid, short-throw/long-throw. We even explored geothermal heat and ignition, down to material densities, and realized simplicity stacked together is where the good complexity comes from.
Game Rant: Is any DNA from earlier in your career showing up in Starseeker?
Actually, the inverse. One of my last AAA projects was a canceled Ubisoft game; my level was a New York subway station after a terrorist attack. Every morning, I rode the subway, studying where people would run, what gets left behind, and which way blood goes. I didn’t want to work on games like that anymore. I’d worked on shooters my whole career; that was the tipping point. I was having kids and I didn’t want them playing games like that.
Astroneer was the inverse mental-health-wise for me and my teams: joyful, bright, colorful, silly. Process-wise, we also learned we absolutely do need producers, and now we have a wonderful production team. It’s a big part of our DNA.
Game Rant: Are there any subtle details players might not realize you worked pretty hard on?
In Astroneer, yes. My best friend and co-founder, Paul—who went in 50/50 with me at the start—passed away. 2001: A Space Odyssey was one of his favorite films. I made the original suit, and later I made the Wanderer suit as an homage to 2001. It has a little camera—Paul was a photographer. I’m 6’5″; Paul was 6’6″, so it’s also the tallest suit in the game.
There’s an Easter egg with audio and images that say, “Paul, we miss you.” It’s special to me, and I’m glad it’s there forever.
Game Rant: How does the community guide Starseeker’s development?
More indirectly than directly. We love ideas—handwritten crayon letters from six-year-olds are my favorites—and we screenshot them all. On Discord and Reddit, when we see people highly engaged and asking for something we’re already building, it tells us we’re going in the right direction.
Events like PAX give us invaluable data: when a bug pops during the demo, we log it immediately and fix it. Also, sometimes I have to be careful—once I joked that what’s inside an Astroneer suit is “pudding,” and the community ran with it. Now “pudding” is a colloquial in-universe term for the white printing medium.
Game Rant: What are your impressions of seeing players experience the game at PAX?
It’s been surprising in the best ways. People expected Astroneer 2. We’re taking a big risk with Starseeker and being very deliberate. Our booth has had capped lines from 9 to 6 with tons of positivity. I’ve seen groups high-five with 38 seconds left on the clock and kids playing with parents. Those little moments are what we’re building for.
Honestly, PAX might be even more for the team. Everyone staffing the booth is a developer—producers, writers, concept artists, designers. Many of us have been on this since 2020 (most since 2023). Seeing players connect with your work is energizing and emotional.
Game Rant: Have you seen any surprising player behavior during the demos?
The demo normally points you to a specific mountain for the sensor array, but one team basically said, “forget that mountain,” and engineered a route with terrain bridges. They finished with 38 seconds left. Watching that ingenuity without back-seating them—that’s the unknown you hope clicks. Our success rate in the demo feels over 90%.
The Core Ideas Behind Starseeker: Astroneer Expeditions
Game Rant: What are your overall design pillars for Starseeker?
World’s full of life: I want players to be able to stand still and see the sandbox’s systems playing out and learn from the world playing with itself.
Rich social interactions: Even playing solo, you feel the presence of other Astroneers around you—like Lawrence of Arabia, where your story sits inside something larger than yourself.
Multi-scale progression: Your individual progression (player level, skills, stickers) serves the broader narrative progression because you’re an Astroneer on the team pushing the story forward, unlocking the next world.
Engaging core mechanics: Action-game first, controller-first. Beyond Astroneer’s run/jump/slide, you can climb (think Breath of the Wild), glide, ride, and slide. Yes, you can catch a ride by latching onto larger creatures.
Tone, texture, and fantasy: Comedy, absurdity, humor. You’re part of the Frontier Force crewing the Starseeker. Think what Lower Decks is to Star Trek: still hopeful and Trek-like, but hilarious. We’re E10+—no edgy stuff—but our NPCs are funny, the intro video is funny, and even objectives can have comedic payoffs. Ragdoll creature physics add physical comedy, too.
Game Rant: How do you see updates and expansions shaping the game?
Story and context are the obvious vectors, but I’m also into “gimmick seasons.” Maybe a vehicle season or a whole ocean planet season. Our new planet tech lets us do any shape, like a giant teapot planet or ringworlds with interior surfaces. Season 1 is about onboarding without alienating Astroneer fans; over time, we’ll get ambitious with what “playing Starseeker” means.
Game Rant: Is there anything I didn’t ask that you wish I had?
Just that Starseeker serves a bigger goal: being a company that sustains itself ethically and shows—through play—what it means to work together, be considerate, and celebrate others’ accomplishments. Astroneer is the best franchise for that: come be yourself; we won’t dictate how you feel. Starseeker is us doing that as deliberately as possible—the way Star Trek did for me growing up.
Game Rant: Do you have any last thoughts or shout-outs you’d like to share?
The fans have been imaginative and supportive from the earliest, roughest builds. People still bring badges from years ago, and that means the world to me.
Also, my family—my wife and kids are partners in this, following me through a career I largely do from a basement in Toronto with a Seattle-based company. We’ve got employees who’ve been with us for over eight years. I don’t take any of it for granted—as a founder, father, or husband. That’s the guiding light.
When I retire, I hope the legacy at System Era is that we cared about that human side while making games.
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- Released
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2026
- Developer(s)
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System Era Softworks
- Multiplayer
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Online Co-Op
- Number of Players
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Single-player
