I highly highly highly recommend two things to you if you haven’t played this game. 1) Play it. 2) Play it as absolutely blind as humanely possible.

One of my all-time favorite gaming experiences, and all the more precious because you can never have the experience again without suffering severe memory loss. The fun and the journey is in learning and understanding the world, the history, the science, and the mechanics that lead you to finding the ultimate ending. And oh what an ending it is (although there are a few alternates)!

Trust me, just pick it up and play without knowing anything at all about it. Don’t watch videos, don’t look up wikis, don’t read articles and don’t read forums. This game is best enjoyed without even the smallest spoiler. All of the information is in the game that you need and it’s all very very well thought out and executed. You’ll explore and find secrets that lead to more secrets. You’ll sometimes find yourself struggling to solve a problem, to put some pieces together, and then something will click into place and you’ll suddenly understand so much. It’s a great feeling. That’s what this game is about.

If you do need to get help, only look in fan forums or subreddits. People there are fans and understand the value of discovery in this game, so they will only give you some hints to point you in the right direction rather than outright answers, as it should be.

I really like the concept of this game, but in trying to keep up the mystery by not looking up walkthroughs etc I ended up abandoning it. I got maybe 20% of the map filled then not being able to find anything else just made me feel dumb as hell, kinda just gave up on it.

I have the same problem. There’s just a time when I don’t have any idea how to progress. Also its a bit over-hyped for my taste.

I saw a research thing from the creators once that said the thing that is most likely to keep players from finishing the game is failing to find one of the major secret locations in the first like 5-ish hours. They explore and find a bunch of information and places but don’t manage to have a break through quickly enough to have that moment that gets you really hooked. In fact so many players quit with being so close to that moment. And the players that have that moment are many time more likely to end up finishing the entire game.

Unfortunately, sounds like you fell into that camp. Only thing I can recommend, if you are interested, is come back at it with fresh eyes, read through the ship log again (everything listed there is significant in some way, none of it is a waste), poke at what makes your curious, maybe ask for a specific hint of you end up needing, and get that first big “Aha!” moment. See if you’re not hooked then.

And I one of the favorite past times of fans of the game, since we cant have that same discovery experience again, is watching other people play and have those “Aha!” moments too. There are a lot of people that have played this game to completion and I have never once heard any of them be any less that in love with the game by the end. I promise the hype is deserved.

I’ve played again today after about ten months. This is my map:

Spoiler

I’ll have to see if I’m able to progress. Today I’ve tried to

Spoiler

Access the solar station around the sun. It’s a bit frustrating that you have to wait a few minutes every run until the sand gets sucked up so that you can enter the buildings.

It’s not really a spoiler to tell you this but in case you don’t want to know, I will hide it. But there is a way to skip much of the wait when you need to do a thing in a specific time window. You may already know it and have forgotten.

Click if you want to know.

Approach any campfire and you are given the option to sleep. You can sleep for as long, in world, as you like. When you wake up at the start of the loop, you can just sleep for, say, 5 minutes, and then fly to the ash twin. If you overshoot your window, just kill yourself or meditate until the supernova and try again without sleeping as long.