Yes, it’s time to brace yourself once more, No Man’s Sky fans: Sean Murray is delving into his big bag of emojis, indicating – with reliable certainty – the exploratory space sim’s highly anticipated 10th anniversary update will be with us very soon. And there’s hope among the playerbase that Cosmos, as the update was previously confirmed to be called, might be a big ‘un.

Murray has, of course, made pre-update emoji-posting a bit of a tradition by this point. It all started back in 2020 when he took to social media with an egg emoji, teasing the release of No Man’s Sky’s Living Ship update. As Murray explained in a recent interview with Eurogamer, he was reluctant to use social media too much at the time, preferring to let Hello Games’ work speak for itself. But the team was insistent. “And I was like, what’s the minimum we can say and get away with it?,” he recalled, “And someone was like, one letter. And then someone else said an emoji, and I was like, ‘Fine, I’ll do an emoji, and then that’s all I’m doing on social media!'” And the rest, as they say, is history.

From that egg hatched a multitude of subsequent emojis. We’ve had a bulging bicep for No Man’s Sky’s Endurance update, a streaky rasher for its Beacon update, a door for Breach, and a hi-vis vest for Remnant. And that’s just for starters. Which brings us to the present – and a brand-new emoji suggesting Cosmos’ release is looming. Earlier today, Murray brushed off his emoji stash and posted a single gleaming cocktail glass – a bit of a wink to No Man’s Sky fans who started jokingly insisting that, actually, everyone expecting a mega space-themed update from Cosmos was just pronouncing it wrong.

Historically, Murray’s emojis have arrived when No Man’s Sky’s next update is just a few days or so away from release, with the space sim’s most recent updates tending to launch early afternoon on a Wednesday. So assuming the pattern holds and Murray isn’t just letting the world know his weekend will include a posh drink in a fancy glass, what might Cosmos bring? Well, that’s the million space-dollar question. The hope, of course, is that it’s a big one, and the reason some of the community believes it could be is two-fold: first, because it’s the update marking No Man’s Sky’s 10th birthday and, secondly, because – well – things don’t get much bigger than the cosmos.

Hopes on the No Man’s Sky subreddit have ranged from a complete galaxy overhaul to planets with multiple biomes – something Hello Games’ upcoming single planet sim Light No Fire will have. And the furious fan speculation has folded in pretty much everything else you can think of: more stuff to see out among the stars, more options for galactic traversal. Some, however, are eager for an overhaul to the game’s technical underpinnings to allow for more vibrant in-game communities: proper multiplayer synchronisation, for instance, and a more persistent universe (you can read about the No Man’s Sky players building utopia at the end of the universe elsewhere on Eurogamer). Or as one wag put it on Reddit when the Cosmos name was originally revealed, “They’re finally adding space to No Man’s Sky, I can’t believe it!”.

Whatever Cosmos ends up being, Murray’s furious emoji-ing continues – a follow-up tweet from Hello Games’ social media account features not one but three cocktail glasses – suggesting we really don’t have long to wait. And if it just ends up being a drinks update? Well, even space-folk need to hydrate.