$800 million and 13 years later, here's how you can play one of the world's most expensive PC games for free

Star Citizen is a sprawling and intricate space MMO that's been in development since 2012, when initial crowdfunding goals were met.

Over the course of its 13 years of development, developer Cloud Imperium Games has soaked up more than $800 million worth of dough from its supporters.

The crazy part? It's still not finished.

That hasn't stopped the game from amassing millions of players, with countless thousands of players jumping in daily. I don't blame you if you're intrigued, and I have some good news.

Star Citizen is currently hosting its annual Invictus Launch Week, which offers free access to the game. It runs until May 27, so you still have a good chunk of time to give the game a try.

Whereas you'd normally have to buy a supporter account, you can now create one for free and receive access to content that's normally walled off behind a premium account.

There's a new selection of ships and content each day, all available to try out for free. And if you love the game, access packs are also all discounted until May 27.

Is now a good time to give Star Citizen a try?

I haven't played Star Citizen myself, but I know a few people who enjoy the vast multiplayer world where you can essentially do whatever you want ... in space ... from the comfort of your gaming chair.

You can be a miner, hitting up asteroids for ore. You can do some interstellar trucking, hauling cargo across the galaxy. You can hunt down bounties, fight in wars in the name of money, or go completely against the law.

You have a ship, you have a body, and you have a gun. It plays out from a first-person perspective, and the game world is filled with real players. Where you go is basically up to you. There is a lot of content available in Star Citizen despite its unfinished state.

So, is it a good time to give it a try? After 12 years of development and countless delays, I don't think there's necessarily a bad time to give the game a shot.

There's more content now than ever before, and there's a healthy player base jumping into the game all the time. The fact that you currently don't have to buy the game to try it out makes it even better.

What do I need in my PC to run Star Citizen?

Star Citizen, despite its appealing presentation, doesn't require outlandish PC hardware to run.

For minimum requirements, the developer lists at least a quad-core CPU from Intel's Sandy Bridge or AMD's Bulldozer generations. The game is notoriously hard on the CPU, so even these listed chips might not cut it anymore.

For the minimum GPU, it recommends something with at least 4GB of VRAM and DirectX11 compatibility.

Recommend specs crank things up to an eight-core CPU from Intel's Sandy Bridge or AMD's Ryzen lineups. A GPU with DirectX12 compatibility and at least 8GB of VRAM is recommended.

The game takes up at least 150GB of space, and having a speedy SSD will come in handy. I wouldn't recommend trying to play this game off a hard-disk drive.

RAM is also a going concern. While 16GB is the lowest recommended amount, you can run into issues. Having 32GB or more will make the game run a lot smoother.

Free access to Star Citizen this week means you can download the game and test it out on your PC with no money spent. Yes, it'll run fine of gaming laptops that meet the game's requirements.

If it doesn't run properly but you find that you absolutely must keep playing, I recommend checking out our guides to the best gaming laptops and the best pre-built gaming desktop PCs.