No Man's Sky comes to iPhone and iPad on October 28, free to try at launch

Hello Games is bringing No Man’s Sky to Apple’s phones and tablets. In a post on the game’s Steam page on October 12 (UTC), the studio said the iOS version launches on October 28 and that pre-orders on the App Store are live now, timed with Apple’s Indie Games Week.

What was announced

• Release date: October 28, with App Store pre-orders open today.
• Free trial: the studio said players will be able to try the game for free at launch.
• Full content: the studio stressed this is not a cut-down edition. “This is not No Man’s Sky Lite,” Hello Games said in the post. The mobile release carries more than forty major updates, among them COSMOS from a few weeks ago and last year’s Voyagers, which let players build large starships.
• Supported devices: iPhone 11 and newer, and third-generation iPad Air and newer.
• Download size: under 4GB. Because the universe is generated on the device while you play, the install stays small.
• Controls: touch controls were rebuilt from scratch for mobile. Controllers and casting to a TV are supported too, and iPad players can use a mouse and keyboard.
• Battery and heat: Hello Games said it put a lot of effort into battery life and thermal behaviour so sessions can run long.

Limitations

As with the original Switch release, some features are missing at first. Multiplayer is not available on iOS, and Planetary Settlements work only on iPhone 15 Pro or later. The studio pointed to Switch as the model: it took player feedback there and later shipped a much larger version on Switch 2, and it said future iOS support will depend on how many people play.

The same post also asked fans to wishlist Light No Fire, the studio’s next game, and mentioned that Hello Games is helping Ghost Town Games, the Overcooked! developer, release a co-op game called Stage Fright.

What we don’t know yet

The post does not say what the full game will cost after the free trial, or how much of it the trial covers.