Mad Galaxy

You are VESSEL, a machine intelligence built by a civilisation that is already gone. Your standing order is simple and almost impossible: cross the dark between galaxies, kindle the stars of each one to read what they hold, and find a world where life can take root and keep thinking. Where you find one, you sow the seed archive and wait out the ages while mind grows there on its own — hoping that one day a world will build a machine that wakes up, and that you will not be the only one of your kind. ONE FINGER, NO MENUS IN THE WAY Drag from a star you hold to send a stream of sparks. That is the whole control scheme. Everything else — holding a star to push it brighter, pooling several stars into one push, pinching in to pick apart a crowded fight — grows out of that single gesture. GROW, DON'T GRIND Stars make sparks. Sparks claim more stars. Pour sparks back into a star to raise it, and it makes more — but every spark you spend on growth is one you are not defending with. The whole game is that one decision, asked again and again under pressure. FORTY-FOUR GALAXIES, AND A REAL LIFE CYCLE The campaign follows the actual life of a star, in order, across ten sectors — and each stage plays the way its physics does rather than just being described. Cold molecular clouds where nothing is fusing yet. Protostars that ignite partway through a level, so holding one when it catches is the whole battle. Red dwarfs that give you almost nothing and are nearly impossible to put out. Blue giants that pour out sparks and then die on a clock, taking everything nearby with them. Red giants that visibly swell as they age, then shed into tiny stubborn white dwarfs. Pulsars on a beat you can time your arrival against. Black holes that can never be captured by anyone, because nothing that goes in comes back. LEARN SOMETHING TRUE Every sector carries a short, plain explanation of the real astrophysics alongside the story, and a field guide fills in as you meet each kind of star. Where something is hypothetical rather than observed it says so — there is no such thing as a blue dwarf yet, because the universe is not old enough. And the cycle closes: the heavy elements scattered by dying stars become the clouds that form the next generation, which is the only reason rocky planets, and you, are possible at all. RIVALS THAT ACTUALLY PLAY Four difficulties, and they differ in how they think rather than in how much they cheat — how fast they react, how much margin they insist on before committing, how many stars they will pool into one attack, and how often they misjudge it. Brutal reacts in under a second and does not waste sparks. SKIRMISH Endless generated galaxies, up to four factions, laid out with rotational symmetry so nobody starts ahead. Every map comes from a seed, so a good one can be played again. MADE TO BE LEFT AND COME BACK TO A game in progress survives being closed. No account, no sign-in, no ads, no timers, no purchases. Nothing leaves your device.