Games Like Starjaunt

You start with a shuttle.

Not a warship. Not a legend. A shuttle, a modest hold, and enough fuel to reach somewhere that isn't here. What happens after that is genuinely up to you. Starjaunt is an open galaxy of forty-four star systems, nine factions with their own grudges and their own ships, and a war that keeps moving whether or not you're involved in it. You can spend the whole game hauling grain and never fire a shot. You can spend it taking systems by force. Most people do something in between and find out what that makes them. [hr][/hr]

Pick a life, or don't

Nine factions, and none of them are simply right

Each faction's mission arc unlocks its own hulls, one ship at a time, behind its own missions — fifty-four ships and forty-three weapon and outfit systems across the roster. Fly Federation long enough and you'll be trusted with a carrier. Fly for the Order and you'll be trusted with something stranger.

The war moves without you

Systems aren't decorations with a flag painted on. Control is a live number, and player missions push it. Take enough of a frontier system for the Rebels and it turns green on the star map — and then the markets restock from Rebel suppliers, Rebel patrols replace Federation ones, prices shift, standings follow, and the contracts on offer change with them. Contested systems spawn both sides at once and let them fight it out in front of you. Nothing about that is scripted. It falls out of one number per system, and it means the galaxy you're flying through in hour forty is not the one you started in.

Nobody out here flies on rails

The pilots you fight weren't handed a patrol route and a state machine. They were trained — a neural network taught to fly by reinforcement learning, in simulation systems built for the purpose, until pirates learned to hunt traders and patrols learned to protect them. What comes out the other side is pilots with personalities. Some are reckless and some won't commit. Some break off a fight they're losing and some absolutely will not. They misjudge, they overextend, and now and then they do something you wouldn't have thought of. You end up reading them the way you'd read a person, because in the only sense that matters at knife-fight range, that's what the training produced.

Land, and step out

Docking isn't a menu. Set down and you walk the world on foot — desert outposts under prefab domes, forested colonies with lakes and lumber, company towns, garrisons, free ports. Find the fuel depot. Argue with the mechanic. Sell your haul at the warehouse and learn at the bar what's worth carrying next.

You don't have to fly alone

There are three ways to stop, and they cost you different things. Make friends. Twelve companions can be earned across the storylines — a cashiered Federation ace who flies angry, a homesteader who doesn't forget a kindness, a smuggler paying off a debt in escort hours. They fly their own ships, talk to you in combat, walk beside you when you land, and each has their own mission arc. Hire guns. Every bar has a wingman desk. Pay the fee and a veteran, a rookie or a mercenary flies your wing until they die or you let them go. When a hire dies you're out the money. When a friend dies you're out a friend — and there's a ledger for the ones who don't come back. Earn a fleet. Fly long enough for a faction and its command stops offering you contracts and starts offering you berths. Federation carrier certification, signed off by an officer who's watched you work. A converted capital hull the Alliance names you the first captain of. A deck on a Free Fleet carrier, handed over by a pirate king who decides you've earned it. Nobody sells you a fleet. You're given one, by people who had to be convinced.

And past the last charted jump

Something built the ruins at Tau Ceti and seeded the exotic matter at the fringe. It is gone, but not entirely. Out beyond Sanctum, through a jump that isn't stable, the Rift holds something dormant that answers when the relics are disturbed. It doesn't trade. It doesn't bargain. It doesn't hate you. It responds — and when it starts responding, the Federation's quarrel with the Rebels stops looking like the important story. How that ends is the one choice the game really asks you for. Seal it. Wake it. Or take it apart and use it. [hr][/hr]

At a glance

Keyboard only at launch.