The Bobiverse series eventually features some aliens. I don’t think that’s a spoiler at all… But they aren’t space-faring, so I dunno if that counts for what you’re looking for.

I guess you could hope to find someone here that could help you with that, but it occurs to me that you’re working with people who definitely understand it. Perhaps you could ask them for some guidance?

It does say it was cross-posted (to 3 places) at the top on the web.

I can understand being underwhelmed if you went into it thinking it was going to be Fallout in space. But I went in knowing it was a space western RPG, and I quite enjoyed it. I’ve been thinking about replaying it, and it was just in the Humble Bundle this month, so that’ll probably happen soon. (I played it on PC Game Pass the first time, I think.)

I feel like I have read quite a few books that I felt that way about, but it’s always hard to bring them to mind when someone asks. That said, the first few that popped into my head:

• Cradle (series)
• Wool (series)
• The Martian (Audio book is especially well narrated!)
• Murderbot Diaries (series)
• The Bobiverse (series)