The universe was built from rules, not planet-by-planet
In No Man’s Sky, procedural generation means using computer rules to assemble places instead of having artists design every location by hand. The team could create a library of ingredients—such as terrain shapes, environmental conditions, plants, and creatures—and define how those ingredients could combine. The game then used those rules to produce worlds across its star systems.
A planet’s starting value, or seed, helps determine the result. Feed the same seed into the same generation rules and the game can reproduce the same world. That makes it possible to create and revisit places without storing a separately hand-built design for every planet.
A small set of tools creates a huge range
The creative work shifts from drawing individual planets to designing the generator: choosing what can vary, what combinations make sense, and how the pieces fit together. A change to those rules can influence many worlds at once. Artists and designers still shape the ingredients and the system; the algorithm handles the enormous number of combinations.
That approach makes vast scale feasible, but it also changes what “variety” means. Worlds are assembled from patterns and reusable elements, so the challenge is not simply making more planets—it is making the rules produce places that feel distinct enough to invite exploration. The headline number describes the possible scale of the universe, not a promise that every planet is a wholly handcrafted creation.
The tradeoff is scale versus bespoke detail
Hand-designing each world could allow precise control over every ridge, plant, and encounter, but it would sharply limit how many places a small team could make. Procedural generation trades some of that individual control for breadth: the designers craft the system, and the system fills out the map. The result is a universe too large to inspect planet by planet, built from choices the team could make once and let the game recombine.
