Games like Starminer

The Squirrel's verdictSpace Haven suits players who want the ship-construction half of Starminer without mining or flight: you design a vessel tile by tile, then keep its crew alive through food shortages, power failures, and hull damage mid-run. Reviews describe a loop that pulls hours away without warning, though the UI draws consistent complaints from players coming off RimWorld. No co-op; median playtime is 47.1 hours.

Not for you if you came for flight controls and combat rather than top-down crew logistics and ship-system upkeep.

The Squirrel's verdictStardeus centers on a RimWorld-style colonist loop: named crew members with individual needs, research trees gating basic life-support items, fire spreading through ship materials, and wiring grids to manage. Travel is warp-based rather than flown. Players who wanted Starminer's resource chain but with human colonists instead of drones will find more depth here; players who wanted exploration will not. No co-op; median playtime is 53.8 hours.

Not for you if you want flight controls, combat, or open exploration rather than colonist micromanagement and research-gated progression.

The Squirrel's verdictBoth center on carving up asteroids and feeding the output into automated production chains rather than pure combat. Astro Colony drops flight and fighting entirely, pushing further into factory-style automation with wiring and conveyor logic, and adds co-op. Good fit if you wanted Starminer's mining loop without the combat tutorial.

Not for you if you want ship combat or flight mechanics, or find tedious tech-gating (basic items locked behind unrelated late-tree unlocks) a dealbreaker.

The Squirrel's verdictSingle-ship survival is the entire identity of Ostranauts: inventory management, hull integrity, and life support fill the space that Starminer gives to base-building and combat tutorials. No RTS layer, no drones, no mining-as-afterthought. Solo only, priced at $19.99, with a median of 59.2 hours played — though reviews repeatedly describe the game as jank-filled and broken in ways that require tolerance to push through.

Not for you if you need systems to work reliably — reviewers across years of play describe persistent bugs and broken mechanics as central to the experience.

The Squirrel's verdictSpace Trash Scavenger shares Starminer's asteroid-field setting and resource-to-processing loop, but strips out flight combat and RTS-style base sprawl to focus entirely on collection: tractor beams pull debris into ships for automated processing via conveyor belts. Good fit for players who wanted mining to be the whole game instead of a tutorial afterthought. No combat, no co-op.

Not for you if you want combat, co-op, or fast progression — reviews call the mid-late game a repetitive grind, and facts confirm no co-op support.

The Squirrel's verdictThe Last Starship is built around constructing and flying your own ship through combat encounters, with a tech tree replacing any mining requirement entirely. Reviewers compare it to Cosmoteer and Stardeus rather than mining-focused games. It suits players who want Starminer's building-and-combat half with no ore-hauling attached. No co-op; median playtime is 29.2 hours; priced at $19.99.

Not for you if you want a complete endgame — reviewers describe the tech tree and late content as sparse, with quests ending at a 'WIP, to be continued' marker.

The Squirrel's verdictStarminer players wanted mining and building with real depth; Final Upgrade gives you a logistics puzzle instead of open sandbox drift, with an actual economic system to optimize against rather than infinite-resource busywork. No combat, no flight, no drones. Median playtime sits at 34.6 hours, so it doesn't overstay.

Not for you if you came to Starminer for flight and combat rather than building, since Final Upgrade drops both entirely.