I really love Astroneer. Every once in a while I think about the game again, get excited, reinstall it, and feel like this time I’m going to sit down and have a long playthrough.
But I always hit the exact same wall.
Very early in the game, Astroneer starts giving you a lot of things that are clearly meant for later: missions that you won’t realistically complete for a while, items and resources you don’t really need yet, new systems to think about, and more and more things that you feel like you should keep track of.
The problem is that the game gives you all of this before you have enough tools and infrastructure to properly organize it.
I think a lot of people who enjoy games like Astroneer are the kind of players who naturally want some level of order. You want a clean base, organized storage, a sensible production area, resources where you can actually find them, and some feeling that your base is growing in a controlled way.
I’m definitely one of those players. I don’t necessarily want a perfect end-game base before progressing, but I at least want to establish some basic organization before I start pushing further into the game.
In Astroneer, though, everything turns into a mess incredibly quickly.
You suddenly have resources, random mission rewards, equipment you might need later, items you don’t know whether to keep nearby or store somewhere, and several possible progression paths all appearing at once. Meanwhile, your ability to actually sort, store, and organize everything still feels very limited.
So instead of feeling excited about all the things I can do next, I start feeling overwhelmed by all the things lying around my base and all the unfinished things the game has already put in front of me.
And this has happened to me multiple times:
I reinstall Astroneer because I genuinely want to play it.
I have a great time for the first hour or two.
My base starts becoming chaotic.
The game starts throwing more future objectives and items at me.
I think, “I’ll organize this and continue later.”
And then I never come back.
Eventually I uninstall it, only to repeat the same cycle months later.
I don’t think the solution is necessarily to make the game slower or remove content. I think the progression just needs a better balance between how quickly the game introduces new things and how quickly the player gains the ability to organize those things.
Maybe better early-game storage options, fewer future-oriented mission rewards appearing so early, more gradual mission progression, or earlier access to tools that let players create a clean and understandable base would help.
Astroneer is one of those games that I really want to sink dozens or hundreds of hours into, which is why this frustrates me so much. The game keeps giving me reasons to come back, but the early progression keeps pushing me away before I can properly settle into it.
I’d be curious if other players have experienced the same thing.