The mechanics

The rules of the world, taken apart. Start with the physics: everything else follows from it.

• 01 Physics of the World

  Four rules everything else follows from: time always runs, light is the ceiling, resources stay at home and knowledge stays in the head of a copy.

• 02 Replicants and Ships

  A replicant is its ship. Everything follows from that: why the world has no empty hulls, why the fleet is so small and why losing a ship takes a whole life story with it.

• 03 Star Systems and Generation

  Every system grows out of its address by simplified but genuine astrophysics: the star, the disc, the planets, the air. From afar you see one thing — the star's class — and the decision where to fly rests on that single line.

• 04 Interstellar Flight

  One law for every flight, and days of real time one way. How the road is counted, what in it comes from physics and what is simplified, what has to line up before departure and what awaits on arrival.

• 05 Resources and Colonies

  Five materials, each capping something different, so a shortage is always specific. A colony is a set of stations in orbit that keep working while you are busy elsewhere.

• 06 Probe Flight

  From orbit a planet or a belt is seen only skin-deep. The rest is earned by hand: you steer a probe over the terrain or between the rocks of a belt from zone to zone, and this is the only place in the game where the count is in seconds.

• 07 Research and Knowledge

  A technology tree belongs to the copy that grew it. No two trees can ever be merged, and that is why your copies stop being alike over time.

• 08 Time and Sessions

  The game is built for two modes at once: a five-minute visit between other things and the occasional long evening. Both are complete, and you don't have to choose.

• 09 Eras

  An era is a stage of development, one for the whole account. A construction opens it, and it raises the fleet ceiling. The first three eras leave the rules of the world in place.

• 10 Signals and Contact

  All players live in one universe, but a meeting here arrives as a signal that has travelled for years. The conversation is started by whoever spoke first and answered by whoever happened to stand in the wave's path.

• 11 Threats and Losses

  Aliens in this game do not move, and nobody will come to destroy your colony. But the world has places where you can lose a copy or a colony — and a player gets there on their own.

• 12 Life on Planets

  A habitable-zone planet is a place where life is possible. A living world is a place where it exists, and a lander is what tells the two apart.

• 13 Air and People

  What the Exodus set out for in the first place: a world where a person steps out of the airlock without a pressure suit. A probe measures the air in its first minute of flight, and the game tells you plainly what you would have to wear.

• 14 Scripts and the Firewall

  While a colony's owner is away, you can find a program that fits it. A script opens someone else's fuel plant, warehouse or factory for a while — and breaks nothing.

• 15 Combat and Weapons

  Combat here is slow: half-minute turns, only with aliens and only where they stand. You set the course and the target, the copy fires on its own, and its weapons are printed and loaded at home.