Solar 2

Solar 2 is an open-world sandbox set in an infinite abstract universe with a simple twist: in most games, stars are background and planets are settings. Here, you ARE those objects. You start as a small piece of debris and grow into asteroids, planets, stars, black holes and larger structures by colliding with other objects in the universe. A god-like figure offers bizarre and varied tasks you can choose to follow, or you can ignore the directives entirely and just see how big you can get.

The gameplay supports both constructive and destructive approaches. Play constructively: grow your solar system, nurture life on your planets, defend them against threats, engage in huge space battles against rival systems. Play destructively: crash into other objects and cause chaos, use orbiting planets like wrecking balls, steal planets out of other systems' orbits and absorb them into your own. The non-linear missions feed into a sandbox where there are essentially no boundaries — you can drift forever in ambient space if that's what you want.

The presentation is deliberately minimalist and abstract, with the dynamic universe changing and evolving as you do. The full of weird eccentric humor and stuff register runs throughout the writing, and an extensive custom soundtrack gives the various phases of your cosmic existence their own ambient identities. The game holds a small but devoted reputation as one of the more genuinely original sandbox concepts of its era.