Listen to what Ken Talbot just dropped over at Nintendo Life about Starseeker: Astroneer Expeditions on Switch 2, because this is one of those stories that starts as a fun evolution and ends up genuinely complicated — exactly the kind of thing I can't stop talking about. So here’s the deal: System Era Softworks took their beloved 2019 sandbox, which was already an addictive craft-and-build classic, and pivoted it into something completely different on Switch 2. It's not a sequel — think of it more as a live-service spin-off that takes everything cozy about Astroneer and remakes it for co-op extraction play in bite-sized expeditions. The core loop still feels familiar at first: you land, grab your multi-tool, deforms terrain on the fly, hoovers up resources from across colorful biomes, deposits them, and crafts new gear as you go. But then Starseeker pulls a hard left into its own direction by introducing the ES Starseeker hub where NPCs give you quests while real players queue up for dropship rides to different worlds. Each trip is timed with an O2 meter that clocks down 30 minutes before forcing your return, so instead of Astroneer's infinite-world creep you get these tightly bounded missions. That alone will split the fanbase: people who loved the endless sandbox may hate it, but those into structured co-op play are going to love it, and I personally think that focus is refreshing in a genre where everything keeps expanding forever without direction!
The game also adds genuine danger — which you don't get in regular Astroneer. The randomly generated planets of the original became bespoke biomes with deliberate design quirks across Starseeker: huge mountain ranges, dense green forests, and lore remnants scattered everywhere that feel crafted for group play rather than random generation. You can still wreck everything with terrain deformation (which is immensely satisfying to do), but now there's also a menagerie of alien creatures patrolling the maps — you can fight them or run from them depending on your gear. The author actually got downed by one big beast while mining resin alone, which just goes to show that solo play works best if you have an actual crew! Visually it pops in both docked and undocked Switch 2 modes with a cartoonish palette that carries well on the handheld screen too; only caveat is the main hub gets crowded enough that frames drop when player traffic spikes. And there's one thing I won't let slide — the developer said no microtransactions, then built a cosmetics store in the hub you can fill via mission credits instead of buying directly (they called it 'in-game currency', but we know what it is). Still $29.99 (£26.99) and available on eShop now as of June 18th with regular patches rolling out to fix early access bugs, so whether you get Starseeker or the original's Switch version (reviewed favorably enough here), both are solid picks in their own right for different moods.
Source: https://www.nintendolife.com/features/hands-on-astroneer-turns-co-op-extraction-adventure-but-is-starseeker-worth-playing-in-early-access
The game also adds genuine danger — which you don't get in regular Astroneer. The randomly generated planets of the original became bespoke biomes with deliberate design quirks across Starseeker: huge mountain ranges, dense green forests, and lore remnants scattered everywhere that feel crafted for group play rather than random generation. You can still wreck everything with terrain deformation (which is immensely satisfying to do), but now there's also a menagerie of alien creatures patrolling the maps — you can fight them or run from them depending on your gear. The author actually got downed by one big beast while mining resin alone, which just goes to show that solo play works best if you have an actual crew! Visually it pops in both docked and undocked Switch 2 modes with a cartoonish palette that carries well on the handheld screen too; only caveat is the main hub gets crowded enough that frames drop when player traffic spikes. And there's one thing I won't let slide — the developer said no microtransactions, then built a cosmetics store in the hub you can fill via mission credits instead of buying directly (they called it 'in-game currency', but we know what it is). Still $29.99 (£26.99) and available on eShop now as of June 18th with regular patches rolling out to fix early access bugs, so whether you get Starseeker or the original's Switch version (reviewed favorably enough here), both are solid picks in their own right for different moods.
Source: https://www.nintendolife.com/features/hands-on-astroneer-turns-co-op-extraction-adventure-but-is-starseeker-worth-playing-in-early-access