- Made By: Allesandro Ghignola
- Cost: Free!
- Where to get it: Noctis Site
This old favorite of mine is such a strange one that I thought it can only fit as a mini-review. It’s almost a stretch to even classify it as a game, as there are no problems to solve, no monsters to shoot, and nothing to collect. It is, however, the biggest, strangest, and possibly loneliest experience you’re likely to have in gaming. 
It is many folks’ lifelong ambition to travel through the galaxy in their own ship, but since we’re laughably far in technology from actual starships, faster-than-light travel, moonbases, killer robot soldiers, lightsabers, and everything else any 10-year-old boy dreams of having every waking moment, we have to make do with computer games.
In Noctis, you zoom around space in your own little starship, popping into solar systems, gathering fuel from stars, analyzing the orbiting planets (surface and atmospheric conditions), and then landing on them with your landing capsule. From there you can embark on an epic, lonely journey across vast plains, mind-bogglingly gigantic mountains, canyons, lakes and oceans. You can observe sunrises and sunsets, (different depending on what the atmosphere is made of, or if it even has an atmosphere at all) jump off cliffs at dizzying heights, run through a rainstorm, or search for life. There are, and I’m not kidding, 78 billion stars in this game’s universe. Let that sink in for a moment.
There’s no real goal to reach. You just explore, by yourself. The graphics are ancient looking and the controls take some getting used to, but it all feels pretty authentic and perfectly self-contained. It’s definitely an acquired taste, but for those of you who are into this sort of thing, (you know who you are) this game will haunt you for a long time.
