New No Man's Sky update is so big "the game has had to be reworked" for its features, including "huge" interactive spaceships that are basically buildings with wings

Mere months after No Man's Sky received its Switch 2 update, developer Hello Games has prepared another impressive patch loaded with content: Voyagers.

The Voyagers update brings the space exploration and survival game to version 6.0 – a sign of just how big it truly is. Arriving over nine years after No Man's Sky first launched in 2016 – a shaky release that Hello Games has more than mended with massive updates in the near-decade that has passed since the game dropped – Voyagers boasts the addition of a new type of spaceship: the Corvette.

Described by Hello Games lead Sean Murray as "huge ships with hulls, wings, landing gear, cockpits, engine parts, thrusters and more – arranged to your own unique sci-fi design," these new Corvettes are basically buildings with wings. "These ships have real interiors, med-bays, sleeping quarters, war rooms, radars, and teleporters." You can decorate them alone or with friends for a shared space – think base-building, but the base goes everywhere you do.

It's combat-ready, too, just as a normal spaceship would be. "Adding bigger weapons to your Corvette increases your firepower," as Murray explains. "Add sleeping quarters and a mission radar, and you are ready to welcome a crew of friends on board. Add a mission radar, and you are ready to adventure. A teleporter and you have an away team." In other words, mix and match components to create the Corvette of your dreams – one that's as functional as it is fashionable.

Voyagers sounds like it takes No Man's Sky's sci-fi elements and takes them to the next level – especially when Murray writes you can "pop the hatch and spacewalk or skydive from one ship to the other." As a space exploration stan myself, I've never experienced features like that elsewhere… features that are apparently so difficult to implement, "almost every part of the game has had to be reworked to accommodate" Voyagers.

It's certainly exciting, and what's more, Murray reveals that "much of the technology we're introducing with Voyagers is shared with our next game, Light No Fire" – Hello Games' upcoming title, "which is a truly open world, a shared Earth-sized planet, with real oceans to traverse, needing large boats and crews." The good news just keeps on coming, I suppose, and I, for one, am certainly here to receive it all.

While you're here, have a browse through some of the most exciting new games coming this year and beyond to keep an eye on.