Deep in space, I panned my ship around looking for somewhere to go. Hundreds of subtle markers show that I've got hundreds of choices for my destination. I pick a planet and activate my Limnal Drive, zooming through space, everything a purple blur until, all of a sudden, the planet is in front of me. I slow upon entering it's atmosphere, my ship burning up a little. After a dangerous entry, I land my ship on flat terrain. It is a bright day, the sun looming over me and this desolate landscape. I exit my ship and watch the sunset, as night falls and I'm plunged into darkness, the only light the hundreds of stars in the sky. Rodina is something special.

That experience was a first for me in gaming and will stick with me for some time. Before I was looking for a destination I was on a meteor. I finished my business there, opened the airlock to my ship, walked along the corridors to the cockpit, took control and left the surface. This is all completely seamless, not a hint of a loading time. The idea of freely exploring space and the planets/meteors therein is one a gamer has desired for a long time; the explosion of interest and anticipation for No Man's Sky shows as much.

Rodina is a first person space exploration game where if you see something you can go there, and almost always land on it. You are given objectives that mainly result in upgrading your ship but the rest is up to you. You start on a meteor, your ship's engine is cooked. In this brief tutorial stage you move towards the marker and find the item required to repair your ship and allow you to take off. The second objective destination lies on a different meteorite. The item you collect here displays subtle markers for every meteorite and planet. This is where you realise the scope of this game. It is enormous. There are a huge number of markers in every direction and where you go is entirely up to you.

There are a number of varied gameplay mechanics throughout Rodina. You can explore planets and meteors on foot, fly around them in your ship, explore your ship's interior, redesign and re-build your ship (though this only makes interior changes), fight ships deep in space and put out fires. While none of these have a huge amount of depth to them, the seamless transitions between them all makes them highly enjoyable and engrossing. At the moment the only real reason to land somewhere is to find information – marked with crosses on the screen. Occasionally you'll find something that will upgrade your ship, and enable you to travel to another planet previously unavailable (due to cold climate or toxic cloud for instance) along with barrels and chest sometimes containing ammo. There is data too giving lengthy texts about various things (as a note you should always try to scroll down with these. There is no scroll bar but most carry on past the screen).

Controlling your ship is highly satisfying. Pressing Y will boost up and clicking left analogue stick boosts down. You have different flying modes, swapped by holding left trigger and moving up and down. The slowest is docking and used for take off and landing. Next is combat speed, the fastest where you can still fire your weapons. Cruising is next and initially your fastest, this is used when flying to a destination. Early on in the game you get access to a fourth: the Limnal Drive. This is like warp speed. Activating it causes a surge of purple to surround your ship as you travel incredibly fast across the solar system. Unfortunately, after about ten seconds this really hits the frame rate until you stop and the game takes a few seconds to recover, taking you a little out of the immersion. This is incredibly helpful for travelling to distant objectives. You get a real sense of just how big this space is when you travel to a planet at this speed and it still takes a little while.

Entering a planet's atmosphere is quite a challenge. If you move too fast at an angle your ship will begin taking damage, sometimes catching fire or breaking completely. It takes some practice to enter smoothly but it is a real spectacle when you do. The stars disappear, there is a sky and a day/night cycle. The four planets are also enormous. When you approach one all it's markers appear making it look highly populated with activity but as soon as you get close to the surface you'll realise they are considerably spread out. I don't mind the searching though, it is great fun and relaxing to fly just over the planet's ground.

The visual design is impressive as well. There are so many different types of areas in the game and the quality is consistent in all. Watching your ship raging with fire under the yellow sun after a crash landing is a real sight, as it just flying through space. While enjoyable, I found the soundtrack to be a little overbearing at times. It is occasionally too loud and can trigger different pieces in quick succession, like it's unsure of what exactly you are doing.

My one big complaint so far is that space feels a little predictable and sterile. You do not encounter any other humans/animals and the planets are barren. There are no structures or signs of life, other than the data and ammo you collect. It would be nice to share this journey with someone. Even having someone on board your ship would be nice. Space is a big place and a lonely experience when there is no one around to share this with. The progression in the game did surprise me. At the start I thought the game was populated solely by meteors and was quite stunned when planets were first revealed to me. The predictability comes with encountering two enemy ships every time you approach a meteor and picking up visually identical data one you land.

Despite that, Rodina is also beautiful in it's desolation. It's a relaxing experience (when you're not crashing, on fire, being shot at) and simply flying around, landing on planets, watching the differing day/night cycles on each planet. Time flies by when you play it as you're engrossed in your seemingly never ending journey. It's up to you to make your own experience.

Though it is in early access, Rodina feels like finished game. Apart from the frame trouble when warping and occasional slowdown when loading in the surface of a planet it runs smoothly. This is hugely impressive given the scope of the game. It is so much fun to play and explore everything around you. Though I wish the journey wasn't such a lonely one it is a game I am going to be spending a lot more time with.