While on the planets or on board the space stations, you can buy and sell commodities, refuel, or repair and upgrade your ship. But there's more to do than that. There are many residents who have their own stories to be explored. You can talk to them, do quests for them, or give them gifts - all of which will progress (or perhaps regress) your relationships with the characters. You might even make a special friend - or maybe even one in every port. It's up to you.

Each settlement has unique activities to undertake and unique stories and locations to discover, giving you an opportunity to have further adventures: old ruins, bandit camps, abandoned mines. You need to learn about these locations through talking to residents, doing quests or exploring the zones outside the space ports.

Once you first take to space you will be met with a star chart with the core settled worlds. Each one has its own economy and risk level. Warp between systems and traverse the sometimes-dangerous path to the systems space port - which can be either planetside or on a space station if the planet is a less hospitable one. But prepare to defend yourself against pirates, especially in the riskier but more lucrative systems. On the other hand, if you engage in piracy yourself, the local police ships will be only happy to put an end to your illegal activities. Additionally, most systems also have an asteroid belt that needs to be successfully navigated through (never tell me the odds), and can provide some additional income from mining for rare commodities.

Your ship is your home. You can upgrade some of the systems to get better combat performance, or speed, but it is your only ship. You wouldn't trade it for all the coffee on Ryser. However, you have your living quarters on board, which you can customise to suit your style. Collect various decorations and artefacts, or a new bed. Make your home the comfiest place for you.

The outer regions of each system are worth exploring too, but it is a gamble. You might find valuable resources to mine, or an old wreckage of a cruiser to explore, or a strange but beautiful space oddity that can be scanned for research data to be sold, but be careful, because you could just easily find yourself ambushed by pirates.

The player character is completely customisable:  facial features, hair, skin colour, clothing, name and pronoun. Their custom portrait appears during dialogue sequences in the game, and the in-game character also displays the changes.

There are two types of people you will meet in the game. Some of them are custom hand designed characters with unique stories to explore. As you get to know them better, and become friends, you will learn more about their stories and help them achieve their goals. You can track your relationship level as it grows.

There are hundreds of other characters to meet though. Using the same character customisation system you used to create your character, these people are also provided with their own unique appearance and name. You can also talk to them, learn about secrets within the world, and become friends with each of them if you choose to. You can track your relationship level with hundreds of characters, each one with their own personal preferences. Some like honest law-abiding travellers, while others like people who aren’t afraid to walk their own shady path. Some like the taste of exotic fruits, while others collect artworks from distant world. You need to uncover what each one of them likes if you are going to win them over.