A Behemoth Warship holding orbit above a darkened world

Real-time strategy · Free to play · Closed beta

The galaxy is awake

The worlds agreed to speak to each other again, and for a while it held. Now the fleets are waking up and every system is choosing a side. Claim a homeworld, put a fleet in the sky, and send it out — the crossing does not stop when you close the tab.

Enter the beta See the fleet

The beta is invite-only for now — you will be asked for a password.

Fleets in transit

A sample readout. Somewhere a fleet is always in the air, and it arrives whether anyone is watching or not.

Fleets in transit
MissionRouteProgressArrives in
Attack2:114:82:117:304:12:38
Transport2:114:82:114:1100:41:07
Espionage5:007:25:009:600:03:52

In game

This is the actual screen

No cinematics. The galaxy you command is the galaxy you look at: a hex chart of contested systems, a homeworld you raise by hand, and a research hall that decides what you are allowed to fly.

Galaxy map

The galaxy map: a hex grid of numbered star systems in red, yellow and blue, with a black hole at the centre
Every hex is a system, and every system belongs to someone or is about to. Somewhere on the chart there is a black hole, and someone has already put a colony next to it.

  • System view

    A star system seen close up: the System intel panel listing scouted planets and the deposits found, beside a hex grid carrying a world and a field of wreckage System view
    You arrive knowing nothing. Survey the system and it starts giving things up — what its worlds are made of, what is lying in the ground between them, and who else has been through here.

  • War

    The war panel: an ally who can be reinforced, and a declared war showing what each side has destroyed, with a surrender button War
    Somewhere in the list is an ally already fighting, and a war you can end by raising your hand. Neither of those is a menu — they are both somebody's decision.

  • Ship research

    The ship research tree showing scout frames in rarity-coloured hex frames with rising costs and research times Ship research
    Nothing flies until the hall says it can. Every hull in the galaxy began as research somebody was patient enough to finish.

Economy

Nothing is instant

The ground gives up metal, water and stranger things, and it gives them up slowly. Everything you own is a level you paid for and a wait you sat through — and the queue keeps working long after you have gone to bed.

A homeworld, in order

  1. Metal Mine

    Where every empire starts. Nothing further down this list is affordable without it.

  2. Research Lab

    The hall that decides what your engineers are allowed to imagine.

  3. Shipyard

    Where a doctrine stops being a diagram and becomes a hull with a crew in it.

  4. Orbital Yard

    The heavy slips. The largest hulls in the galaxy cannot be laid down anywhere else.

What comes out of the ground

No two worlds hold the same things, and you only find out by looking.

  • Metal
  • Ferrium
  • Silicon
  • Energy
  • Nutrients
  • Plasma
  • Neotitanium
  • Orichalcum

Fleet

Five ages of war

A ship is a frame with modules bolted onto it, and that pairing is a doctrine you research before you can build it. The catalogue holds thirty-two of them across five tiers — and the tiers are five ages of the galaxy, from the first hulls that crossed between planets to the Titans that outgrew the people who drew them.

Select a doctrine

Zephyr Scout, the frame the Scout Explorer doctrine is built onT1

Role Scout · Frame Zephyr Scout

Scout Explorer

Thin hull, good eyes. It goes first so the rest of the fleet does not have to.

Profile

Hull
Shield
Attack
Defense
Speed
Cargo

Era

The Great Reunification

The first ships to cross between planets, built in the quiet years after the worlds agreed to speak again.

Six of the thirty-two — every age represented, and the last one twice.

Territory

There are walls in the map

Most of a system is nothing at all, and that is what makes the rest matter: a basin of ore, a wreck nobody ever cleared, a well of gravity that will never hold a structure. Empires grow one cell outward from their own border, so the walls decide where the corridors are — and the corridors decide where the war is.

A sector, drawn the way the game draws it. The tiles and the markers are the game's own.

  • You grow from your border

    Every cell you take has to touch one you already hold. Nobody lands a claim on the far side of a system, so a frontier is a real line and moving it is a campaign rather than a purchase.

  • None of it produces in the void

    A mine out on a rock does not pay the rock. Everything you raise on the ground is a bonus on the worlds you already own in that system — never a total counted across an empire, so what you are playing is the shape of your territory, not its size.

  • Taking a cell is a sortie

    Empty or held, ground is taken by a fleet — and a defended cell shoots back with its guns and everything parked on it. Then a clock runs before the cell is yours: nothing flips the moment the shooting stops.

What the ground can be

  • Mineral belt

    The only ore there is

  • Debris field

    Wall you can clear

  • Gravity well

    Permanent wall

  • Nebula

    Cover

  • Science anomaly

    One to a system, at most

How ground works

War

It starts before anyone declares it

There is no paperwork between you and a neighbour's world — you send the fleet, and that IS the declaration. What follows is a ladder, and every rung is something somebody chose to do: strike, declare, rally. Each one is harder to climb back down than the last.

  1. Strike

    Hostility

    Nobody declares anything. You raid a world and you are at odds with its owner — the attack IS the declaration, recorded the moment the fleet launches rather than when it lands, so the victim watching it come already knows what it means. It is a state BETWEEN two players, never a right the aggressor earns: the raider is as exposed as the raided.

    How it ends Lapses on its own, once neither of you has touched the other for a while. Every new blow pushes the clock back.

  2. Declare

    Conflict

    A war two players actually chose. Its point is the thing raiding cannot give you: opening a front without having to bomb a world first. Sides rather than a pair — which is what lets alliances arrive later without any of this being rewritten.

    How it ends Not by silence. A declared war ends because somebody surrendered or somebody lost — and a surrender is refused until the war has lasted a minimum, so quitting is never instant.

  3. Rally

    War

    A conflict an alliance has joined, and the moment it stops being a private quarrel. There are no invitations: a leader comes to the aid of a side where they already have an ally, which is why a warband is temporary — nothing outlives the war, there is no coalition to maintain.

    How it ends The same two ways, decided on the SIDE's total rather than any one duel. Three against one cannot be settled by whichever pair crosses the line first.

Hostility falls away on its own. A declared war does not — that is the whole difference between a raid and a campaign.

How a war is fought

Command

Someone has to give the order

Fifty commanders, across five rarities. You put one at the head of a fleet and one in charge of a world, and what they are good at quietly becomes what you are good at. The legendaries do not only sharpen their own fleet — they carry the whole warband with them.

Rarity

  • Common
  • Uncommon
  • Rare
  • Epic
  • Legendary
  • Portrait of Kytra Solheim

    Legendary

    Kytra Solheim

    Assault · War Cry

  • Portrait of Amiral Sora Vex

    Epic

    Amiral Sora Vex

    Assault · Alpha Salvo

  • Portrait of Ada « Ghost » Lin

    Rare

    Ada « Ghost » Lin

    Scout · Phase Veil

  • Portrait of Aegis-Prime

    Legendary

    Aegis-Prime

    Bastion · Rampart

  • Portrait of Kael Draven

    Epic

    Kael Draven

    Assault · Barrage

  • Portrait of Marek Thorne

    Rare

    Marek Thorne

    Bastion · Rampart

  • Portrait of The Void Marshal

    Legendary

    The Void Marshal

    Hunter · Warband

  • Portrait of Warden Kaia Rho

    Epic

    Warden Kaia Rho

    Bastion · Rampart

  • Portrait of Titanov

    Legendary

    Titanov

    Industrial · Overproduction

  • Portrait of Sable Vanté

    Epic

    Sable Vanté

    Scout · Manoeuvre

  • Portrait of Oracle Sen

    Legendary

    Oracle Sen

    Scholar · Eureka

  • Portrait of Vera Nova

    Legendary

    Vera Nova

    Bastion · Rampart

Twelve of the fifty. The frame tells you how rare they are.

Worlds

Every world is worth something different

Some worlds will feed a population for a century. Some pay in things that should not exist. Some are bare rock nobody will ever come for, which is its own kind of value. You do not know which is which until you have looked.

  • Lush world render

    Lush

    Water, weather, and room to grow into.

  • Ocean world render

    Ocean

    Almost no land, and every metre of it argued over.

  • Arid world render

    Arid

    Dust and thin air. Shallow ground, easy digging.

  • Frozen world render

    Frozen

    Locked solid. Everything here is harder than it ought to be.

  • Magma world render

    Magma

    Still cooling, still moving. It pays in things you find nowhere else.

  • Barren world render

    Barren

    Bare rock. Cheap to hold, and no one is coming to take it from you.

  • Blue giant world render

    Blue giant

    No surface to stand on. You take what you need from orbit.

Seven of the types you will survey.

Dispatches

What changed, and why

All dispatches

Deploy

Your homeworld is waiting

Galactic Reigns is in closed beta: the door asks for a password, and the way in is an invite. If you have one, the galaxy is already running — pick a name, take a planet, and start deciding what it looks like.

Enter the beta

Free to play, in the browser. No client to download — and if you want it on a home screen, it installs from the tab you are already in.