You are stranded with a spaceship, a full tank of fuel, and 100 bullets. You must use the resources that you have to learn more about the world and its inhabitants. As you venture further, you will encounter different missions, from helping fellow space travelers gather fuel to exploring the depths of infested mines. In Space Game, you lose everything upon death; as you play, you will learn various techniques for gathering money to regain progress faster. Some of those techniques include progressing by shooting asteroids to gain coins, looting shops, and completing missions. Coins can be used to purchase more bullets and fuel so that you can continue exploring and gathering more coins.

You will run into multiple factions throughout your journey, the biggest two being the Pirates and the Federation. Your actions will affect your relationships with these factions as you play, so make sure not to make too many enemies.

 Your reputation status is visible as you play so you can learn what affects it or not.

In Space Game the world is procedurally generated and infinitely large, and as you explore you will find singular broken ships which can be destroyed for extra loot. If you explore enough you can find more than just one ship but a whole wreckage site. That wreckage site tells a story of what is happening in the world and what has come before you. If you are lucky enough that wreckage site can spawn with an NPC that you can talk to who will tell that story.

As you progress further into the game you will collect more and more items called Collectibles which can be seen in your inventory and inspected to be read about. Similarly to the wreckage sites these descriptions will tell you more about the world you are in, and maybe even give you hints towards what the items are used for.

Combat in Space Game is mostly straight forward where shotting is in the direction that you are facing, and to be more precise with the direction that you shoot in, swapping between two directions as you shoot will go between. There is a melee option but it is not lethal, letting you stun the enemy for a short amount of time stopping them from moving or shooting if sprinted into. The enemy have different navigation patterns ranging from directly following you, to circling you like a shark.