Games Like STARPHAGE: Galactic Plague Simulator

STARPHAGE takes the outbreak strategy of Plague-like games beyond planet earth and into an entire galaxy. Begin with one colonized star, shape a galactic pathogen through evolution, and turn isolated stellar outbreaks into a galactic extinction event before the galaxy can mount a response.

<i>In an age where life claims the stars, two forces compete for the galaxy.</i>

INTELLIGENCE - born of cooperation, sharpened by wit, and driven by hope. Every threat to intelligence can be understood and controlled.

STARPHAGE - born of hunger, unstoppable through self-replication, and preying on energy and matter indiscriminately. It burns through each system uncaring of what resides.

Intelligence often misunderstands the strength of what does not reason. Starphage seeks no enlightenment or favor.

The galaxy hopes, with cures, quarantines, and sterilizations, there is salvation.

<i>Yet only extinction is inevitable.</i>

Every region of the galaxy presents a different environment that resists the phage's spread. Stellar age, radiation, and technological capacity determine how readily infection moves from star to star and which adaptations can carry it farther.

Earn evolution points as the phage infects and kills stars, with additional points surfacing in outbreaks across the galaxy. Spend them on transmission, symptoms, and resistance to exploit interstellar traffic, survive hostile stars, and harden the phage's genome until cure efforts are all but stalled.

Ships carry the phage between spaceports, and wormholes provide FTL travel spanning the entire galaxy. Regions that share a border pass infection directly. Every galaxy is unique for each playthrough, so ports, lanes, wormholes, regions, and borders are never arranged the same way.

Once the pathogen is discovered, the race for a cure begins. Regions that prioritize the work start sending ships to others already researching, compounding progress across the galaxy. Intercept the ships, evolve resistance, and spread faster than the research. If the cure completes first, the galaxy is made immune and the phage dies with it.

As more stars become infected, a harder response is demanded. The galaxy escalates their response as the outbreak grows: spaceports and wormholes shut down, traffic reroutes around infected regions, and borders seal off. When containment is no longer enough, galaxy-wide response events begin like firebreaks: a region burning its own healthy stars to cut the infection off. Each playthrough comes with their own unique escalating responses requiring the phage to adapt to each new galaxy.

The endgame is a race between how fast infected stars die and how close the cure is to completion. Reach the far corners of the galaxy before the ports close, then evolve the lethality to kill every star you hold while there is still time. The galaxy will do anything in their power to survive, but ensure it is too late.

Every playthrough unfolds on a uniquely generated galaxy. Regions shift in size, shape, and local conditions; a galaxy can be clustered in one run, or sprawled across empty space in the next. Port networks emerge as sprawling webs or tight bottlenecks, wormholes open shortcuts between distant arms, the border layout demands the infection spread to change with the map, and the intelligence of the galaxy will respond in unique escalatory ways.

Core Features

✔ Plague Simulation Strategy at Galactic Scale

✔ Sci-fi inspired lore for pathogen evolution

✔ Procedurally Generated Galaxies

✔ Transmission, Symptom, Ability, and Liminal Evolution Paths

✔ High Replayability Across Pathogens and Galaxies

✔ Distinct Playable Galactic Pathogens

✔ Generative Regions With Stellar Age, Radiation, and Technology Attributes

✔ Nuanced reactive Galactic Cure and Containment Response

✔ Unique Galactic Escalation Responses per Playthrough Specific to the Galaxy

✔ Four Evolution Trees and 90+ Upgrades, Including an Unique Tree Per Pathogen

✔ Persistent Phage Progression between Playthroughs

✔ Deterministic, Seed-Based Simulation

✔ Distinct Galactic Visuals That Shift With Infection and Death

The Team

Starphage is made by two brothers, both from programming and art backgrounds, with a shared obsession with strategy games. With decades of experience between the two brothers across graphics programming, art, UX/UI design, and game development, Starphage is the culmination of many dimensions of passion and skills to deliver a game we sought for years.

Acknowledgements

This game would not exist without the games and sci-fi that inspired it.

With a sci-fi context, Starphage provides a unique opportunity to modernize this genre of strategy simulation and introduce new ideas and expand replay-ability.