Elite Dangerous, developed by Frontier Developments is a space sandbox game and the fourth installment in the Elite video game series. It can also be considered a bit of a reboot for the series, since the third game came out all the way back in 1995. The game sticks to the simple premise of all the games in the series: you are a spaceship pilot in an open-world galaxy, with almost nothing to your name sans the spaceship and a very small amount of money. Now go explore, trade, fight, earn money, and rise through the ranks of pilots to reach the coveted rank of “Elite”. And while the premise is indeed very basic – essentially it’s just a sandbox with a rank system to serve as motivation – Elite Dangerous builds upon it masterfully, leveraging modern technology to create a massively multiplayer world that is a 1:1 scale replica of the Milky Way galaxy, with hundreds of thousands of star systems crafted according to the actual scientific knowledge of these systems, and the rest – procedurally generated, also in a realistic, science-based manner. In this vast universe, the players can trade, mine asteroids for materials, engage in piracy, explore anomalies, operate space stations, and that’s not even all.
The game is currently available for Windows, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4, though Frontier has recently made an announcement stating that the console versions will no longer receive content updates. A Mac version was also available at one point, but was completely discontinued since. It is still possible to play Elite Dangerous on Mac, however, with the help of the guide below.
