No Man’s Sky is on iPhone now. It came out on iPhone and iPad on 28 October. You can download it and play the start for free, and a one-time $19.99 purchase unlocks the rest. Would I play No Man’s Sky on my phone? I wouldn’t personally, but I guarantee you all of my audience would.
Key takeaways
- No Man’s Sky is out on iPhone and iPad, free to try, with a $19.99 unlock for the full game.
- It needs iOS 26, and Hello Games says it runs on iPhones as far back as the iPhone 11.
- The Forsaken update came out the same day on every platform, with spooky traders, delivery missions and seamless warping.
Which iPhones can play No Man’s Sky?
No Man’s Sky needs iOS 26 or later, and Hello Games says it runs on devices as far back as the iPhone 11. On iPad, it’s the 3rd-generation iPad Air or newer. The App Store lists it at 3.8 GB, and it comes with every update from the last ten years.
Hello Games says the interface was built for touch from the ground up, and the iOS version is tuned for battery life and heat so you can play long sessions on a phone. In the announcement video, Sean Murray said it supports touch, controllers and even mouse and keyboard.
How much is No Man’s Sky on iPhone?
No Man’s Sky is free to download, and you can play the beginning of the game for free. If you want to keep going, a one-time purchase of $19.99 unlocks the full game on the App Store. That’s the US price when I checked on 29 October, a day after launch. On that same check, it was number one in the App Store’s Adventure chart.
Would I play No Man’s Sky on my phone?
Me, no. My audience is a different story. When I streamed No Man’s Sky, one of the things people kept asking me was whether they could play it on their phone. Now they can.
Phones are just different to what they were before, right? That is a lot of people’s main gaming device at this point. So the size of the game doesn’t matter, because they’re going to be spending that time on it in the first place. Do I think it’s going to get a lot of players? I hope so.
What happened at No Man’s Sky’s launch?
No Man’s Sky got a rough kicking at launch, and it had to basically rebuild itself. It came out in August 2016 on PS4 and PC, and the reviews were dragged down by features players expected that weren’t there, multiplayer most of all. Steam user reviews started at Overwhelmingly Negative, and Hello Games went quiet for months before announcing the Foundation update that November.
Free updates have kept coming ever since, adding multiplayer, base building, vehicles, cross-platform play and VR. By the game’s fifth anniversary, its Steam reviews had climbed to Mostly Positive, and they reached Very Positive eight years in.
I never played it at launch. I only played it recently, maybe two years ago, and when I did, it was fun enough. I think I just had too many other crafting games going on to put enough time into it to make it worthwhile. If survival crafting is your thing too, I’ve written about whether 7 Days to Die is worth it solo.
What’s in the No Man’s Sky Forsaken update?
The Forsaken update, version 7.10, came out the same day as the iPhone version, on every platform (Hello Games). Forsaken traders now turn up at deep-space outposts. You find haunting mementos in derelict freighters, deep-space hulks, infested outposts and dig sites, and swap them for spooky corvette parts: new cockpits, habitation modules and biomechanical hull pieces. Hang around the mementos too long and hostile boundary horrors come for you.
The same traders sell a living Larva Cannon multi-tool if you bring them preserved grubs. Collect enough mementos and you also get a Larva Tank helmet, a parasitic larva in a tank of water where your head should be, plus the Mind Harvester title.
It’s not all Halloween stuff. If you’ve got a corvette, you can now take package delivery missions from deep-space outposts, and Hello Games calls it becoming a long-distance space trucker. Seamless warping lets you target a nearby star and fly straight to it without opening the Galaxy Map. There’s also a radial menu for multi-tool modes, a minimal HUD setting, Holo-Arena creature battles at deep-space outposts, and orbital bases you can now upload for other players to visit.
Phone, Steam Deck or PC for No Man’s Sky?
For a game like this, it’s always going to be PC for me. I’m 38 years old, and I’m not suddenly going to learn how to do all of this with touch controls on a phone.
Handhelds are already the hard part for Hello Games. One of its engine programmers said updates take two to three times more engineering time to work properly on Switch and Steam Deck, which games.gg covered in April. Now there’s a phone version to keep up as well. If you want to carry a save between devices, Hello Games’ cross-save page lists PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch and Mac, and it didn’t mention iPhone when I checked on 29 October.
FAQ
Is No Man’s Sky free on iPhone?
You can download it for free and play the beginning of the game. The full game is a one-time $19.99 unlock on the US App Store.
Which iPhones can run No Man’s Sky?
It needs iOS 26 or later, and Hello Games says it runs on iPhones as far back as the iPhone 11. On iPad, it’s the 3rd-generation iPad Air or newer.
Does the iPhone version get the Forsaken update?
Yes. Forsaken, update 7.10, came out on 28 October on every platform, iPhone and iPad included.
