Imperium / Elysium
Concept
A persistent space world that is dying, and learns from every world before it.
A shared, persistent strategy game about civilizations facing a dying universe. Imperium is the conquest path, Elysium the transcendence path; one world, two lenses. Every civilization starts small and drifts toward one of them by what it does.
Background
Every civilization begins alone on an unknown world. You scout, settle, and find out how close the others are to finding you. The universe is dying in stages: stars dim, the habitable map shrinks and pushes everyone together, and a void spreads from the edges. War and megaprojects spend energy, and spent energy hastens the end.
Nobody knows whether there is an escape, and the game does not decide for you. Endings blend from what civilizations actually did, never from a menu. A warmonger and a scientist can reach the same ending by opposite roads. Brains are never beaten by brute force alone; diplomacy, engineering, and alliances carry real weight.
The universe learns. Each one lives for a season, decays, and ends, and how it ended tunes the next. Relics and last messages from a finished universe surface in later ones. Phone-first and persistent: the world keeps going without you, and a long session carries across devices.
Where it stands
A consolidated design bible, reviewed in full in October 2026, and the season-long shared universe now being built on it: Sol and 159 real stars in three dimensions, a renewable economy and claims, the dying in stages with the void spreading from the rim, six provisional endings, a universe record the next season inherits, and the first half of war: fleets, garrisons, rebellion, and a coalition against any runaway. A season runs end to end, headless in seconds and in the browser.
What's next
Diplomacy: pacts, federation, absorbing a neighbour, trading a star. Then tuning across seeds, the shared world that persists between sessions, and scouting runs built on JETSAM! flight.