Ten games set in space
Starships, planets and whole galaxies, for the anniversary of the Moon landing in July
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Mass Effect 2 2010
Commander Shepard recruits a team in the 22nd century Milky Way for a suicide mission against the Collectors, and learns each member's past aboard the Normandy. The choices made with that squad carry through to the end.
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Super Mario Galaxy 2007
Mario goes into space, where each small planet has its own gravity and running round one can leave him upside down. Rosalina's Comet Observatory leads to 42 galaxies, all of them built around that gravity.
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Outer Wilds 2019
A small solar system ends every 22 minutes when its sun goes supernova, and then the loop starts again. There are no upgrades to keep, only what you learned, which the ship's computer carries from one loop to the next.
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StarCraft 1998
Terran, Zerg and Protoss fight over the Koprulu Sector in the 25th century, each race playing differently and none with an innate advantage. It is widely credited with raising the bar for real time strategy.
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Star Fox 64 1997
When the exiled scientist Andross attacks the Lylat system, Fox McCloud and his mercenary Star Fox team are called in to defend Corneria. It was the first Nintendo 64 game to use the Rumble Pak.
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FTL: Faster Than Light 2012
Your ship carries critical information to an allied fleet across eight sectors generated anew each time, with a rebel fleet closing in behind it the whole way.
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Kerbal Space Program 2015
A space flight simulation in which you build rockets, planes and rovers from parts and send the Kerbals out across planets loosely modelled on our Solar System.
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Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares 1996
Thirteen races, or one you design yourself, compete to rule the galaxy in Simtex's turn based space strategy, won by conquest, by an election among the races or by an assault on the Antaran homeworld.
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Star Control II 1992
You return in a Precursor starship to an Earth enslaved by the Ur-Quan and set out to raise an alliance among 25 alien races. Developers of Fallout, Mass Effect and Stellaris have cited it as an influence.
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Homeworld 1999
The Kushan build a mothership to carry 600,000 people from the desert planet Kharak to their ancestral world, Hiigara, and find Kharak destroyed on the maiden voyage.
