Explore
Scan systems, survey warp nodes, push back the fog and find what's out there. The map is not given to you — you take it a jump at a time, and a route home is something you have to have surveyed.
Alpha Shard 1 · next tick in --:-- minutes and seconds
Astral Sovereignty
A slow galaxy for people who'd rather think than click. You rule one empire inside a persistent galaxy, starting with a single homeworld and a fog-of-war map. You don't click faster than anyone else — you give orders, and at a fixed, scheduled moment the galaxy resolves them all at once.
The game is open, and it is an alpha. Both halves of that sentence, every time.
— How this game gets described, without exception
A public galaxy is live. It is listed, joins are enabled, it resolves on its fixed schedule, and anyone can create an account and start playing in a web browser today. The game's own NPC empires play in the same galaxy under the same rules, so a new empire arrives into a galaxy that is already inhabited and moving.
"Alpha" is not a disclaimer bolted on afterwards — it is the honest half of the sentence. Systems are still being added and the rules can change while you are playing; when they do, the change is announced inside the game rather than left to be discovered. There are rough edges, and the population is small. It is not finished, and there is no date when it will be.
What is worth saying plainly is that this is not a test weekend that disappears when the experiment ends. The galaxy is operated as a live service and is meant to keep running. Being an alpha, it can still need a reset — so nothing here promises that a particular empire lasts forever.
How you actually play
Look, decide, wait, resolve, read
The gap between deciding and finding out is the game. It's what makes a bad decision a real one, and what means a player in a different timezone isn't at a disadvantage.
01
Look
Read where you stand
Your colonies, your fleets, the part of the map you have revealed, and the reports from the last tick. Everything you know, and a clear edge where knowing stops.
02
Decide
Issue your orders
Move a fleet, scan a system, settle a world, build a structure, start a ship, load cargo, train troops, launch an invasion. Twenty-nine kinds of order in all.
03
Wait
Orders are intent, not action
They sit until the next tick, and you can keep changing your mind right up until they lock. Nothing you have ordered has happened yet.
04
The galaxy resolves
Everyone's orders, one moment
At the scheduled tick every empire's orders resolve together, under the same rules, in the same instant. Yours, your rivals', and the NPC empires' alike.
05
Read
Find out what happened
Reports tell you the outcome. Some of it will not be what you hoped. Then you decide what's next, and it starts again.
The four loops
Explore, Expand, Develop, Compete
Four loops that feed each other. Knowledge becomes territory, territory becomes industry, industry becomes fleets, and fleets decide who keeps what.
Expand
Find a world your people can survive on, send a colony ship, settle it. Habitability is relative, so the world your rival dismissed may be exactly the one you want.
Develop
Build the extraction, storage, shelter and shipyards that turn a rock into a power base. A hostile world can be made to work; it just costs more to keep alive.
Compete
Position fleets, set your stance toward rivals, defend what's yours, and take what isn't. Holding a system is a decision you keep making, not a box you tick once.
In the game today
Everything below is built and running
Not a pitch deck. These are the systems the galaxy runs on right now, described the way you will meet them.
Worlds that are hostile to you specifically
Every planet and moon is described across six environmental axes — temperature, pressure, atmosphere, gravity, radiation, toxicity. Every species has its own comfort range on each, set by the homeworld it evolved on.
So habitability is relative. There is no universal good planet. A world that would kill one empire's colonists is another empire's paradise, and two players can look at the same rock and reasonably disagree about whether it is worth having.
Settle somewhere hostile and your colonists start dying — unless you build the specific structure that answers that specific problem. One structure fixes one axis and nothing else, so a world that is wrong in three ways needs three answers.
Population that actually lives there
Colony population is simulated every tick, not stored as a number that ticks up. It grows where you have built to support it, dies where you have not sheltered it, and never grows by exactly the same amount twice. Two colonies founded on the same day drift apart. You can also load colonists onto ships and move them, which is how you get a young colony on its feet.
Ground war, not just space battles
Winning the space above a colony does not take it. You train garrisons — infantry, armour, artillery — carry them on troop transports, and land them. An invasion resolves over two ticks: you establish a beachhead, and the fight resolves after. The defender gets a tick to react, which makes invading a commitment rather than a click.
Fleet combat with a stance, not a button
Fleets fight when hostile forces meet. You set each fleet's stance and your empire's standing toward others, order a fleet to hold fire or attempt to disengage, and read the battle report afterwards. Every battle is resolved by the game itself, under identical rules for everyone — there is nothing to out-click.
A galaxy that's already inhabited
NPC empires are not scenery and not obstacles — they are empires. They hold colonies, expand, build, run supply routes, defend themselves and fight each other, using exactly the same orders and rules a player uses. They get no special privileges: an NPC colony obeys the same climate and the same costs. Some settle, some explore, some raid, some just drift, and they can form factions and go to war.
Ships you design
Beyond the stock hulls, you can design your own ships from hulls and modules, validate a design, and build it in your shipyards. A fleet that suits your doctrine rather than someone else's default.
Automation, so having a job isn't a disadvantage
Colony managers take a build priority and keep a colony developing without you. Order queues let you plan ahead, then reorder or edit while the tick is still open. Convoys, patrols and standing routes re-issue themselves each tick, including across multiple warp jumps. And if you are away a long time, Caretaker keeps your empire developing rather than letting it rot — then hands it straight back when you return.
Alliances and power rankings
Empires can form alliances: found one, invite players, request to join, accept, leave. Every empire's standing is scored and ranked, so a galaxy has a visible pecking order and you can see where you sit rather than guessing. Both of these are reached through Discord today rather than from the main game screen.
Help when something goes wrong
You can raise a support ticket from inside the game and get an answer, and the game can show a notice at sign-in when there is something you need to know. There is someone actually behind this game, and that is the point of saying so.
Ways in
Three ways to give your orders
The browser is the game. The other two exist because a tick-based game should meet you where you are.
In a web browser
The real client and the one being actively built. Empire overview, colonies, fleets, a galaxy map, the ship designer, orders, reports and settings — on a phone or at a desk, with nothing to install.
From Discord
Link your account and you can check galaxies, join one, submit and cancel orders, review what is pending and get your turn sheet — a whole tick's worth of orders from a phone with nothing installed. A genuine convenience, not the headline way to play.
By email
Turn reports can be delivered as email, in a large-print format with a complete plain-text version. It is a supported way to play, not an afterthought.
Before you start
Practical things worth knowing
- There is no password
- You enter your email and get a short code. Nothing to choose, forget or reset — the game never stores a password in the first place.
- Names have rules
- Player and empire names are up to 20 characters: letters, numbers and spaces only. No symbols, no double spaces.
- Your account is global, your empire is not
- One account plays many galaxies. Each galaxy gets its own empire, its own colonies and fleets, and they never mix.
- Nothing carries between galaxies
- No shared wealth, no shared fleet, no account-wide power. Every galaxy starts you at the beginning.
- Ticks are scheduled, and the cadence varies
- Every galaxy has its own tick rate. The countdown on this page is for Alpha Shard 1 specifically, not for the game as a whole.
- Joining isn't instant
- Your empire is created on the next tick, not the moment you ask. The galaxy has to come round to you.
- The browser is the platform
- A phone app is planned but does not exist, and work on it starts after the browser version is finished.
Planned, not shipped
What's in design
Described as planned because that is what they are. No dates, no promises, and no ordering implied by the list.
Species & startsPlanned
- Race builder — design your own species at empire creation: traits, tolerances, the lot
- Race-driven homeworlds — your species determines your starting world, so a heat-adapted race starts somewhere hot
Rule & unrestPlanned
- Governments & policies — pick a government for its bonuses; switching costs you, and the penalty fades so you are never locked in
- Colony happiness & rebellion — conquered colonies can revolt unless garrisoned, giving troops a job after the shooting stops
- Movable capital — move your seat of power on a long cooldown, and if it falls the next best colony takes over
Fleets & crewsPlanned
- Fleet officers — one per fleet, with skills that improve it. They gain experience, and they can die with it
- Ship service records & crews — ships remember what they have been through, and veteran crews can move to a newer hull
- Warp probes — scout the far side of a jump before committing a fleet to it
Economy & spacePlanned
- Credit economy & merchants — a currency you cannot farm, plus merchants who buy limited volumes. Tradeable between players
- Orbital structures — defence platforms, solar arrays and other things built in space rather than on the ground
- Expanded rankings — leaderboards beyond size: exploration, battles and more, each its own board
Alpha Shard 1
The galaxy is open and already has history
Sign in with an email and a short code — there is no password to choose or forget — and your empire arrives on the next tick. Then tell me what is wrong with it: bug reports and complaints are far more useful to me than praise, and the Discord is where they turn into fixes.
Next tick on Alpha Shard 1 in --:-- minutes and seconds.