

Startron
Rogo Darius · September 21, 2025 · Exploration, Space, Automation, Strategy, Text-Based
Startron is free to play — no purchase needed. We track it so you know if that ever changes.
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Startron price
Startron is free to play — there is no purchase price, on Steam or anywhere else we track. We keep watching it, so if it ever stops being free the price history on this page will show when that happened and what it changed to.
About Startron
Startron is an ASCII-based space colony sim where you lead a crew of sentient cats or dogs to mine, build, and automate operations across procedurally generated star systems filled with unique planets and cosmic phenomena. The retro DOS aesthetic and fully customizable worlds let you expand your empire at a human scale, defending your infrastructure while uncovering the mysteries of your own unique cosmos.
Automation
Build, colonise, then harvest the resources of the cosmos on a truly astronomical scale. Defend your infrastructure from other lifeforms - but try not to endanger the locals.Procedurally Generated Cosmos
A sprawling web of interconnected stellar systems awaits you in your own unique cosmos. Binary systems, black holes, wormholes, pulsars & more play host to various hostile and friendly locations!Fully Customisable Worlds
Each planet, moon, asteroid cluster and gas giant can be modified and manipulated to your needs. All formed from strange compounds which you'll use to your advantage.Retro ASCII Graphics
Embrace the 90s DOS aesthetic with charmingly retro graphics, including fully 3D environments - all rendered in ASCII (Codepage 437 to be exact)!Ever-Evolving
Startron is an ongoing effort, with new features being added as and when - and always for free.Startron has been designed to bring you back to a simpler time - when games had grand scope, but weren't necessarily infinite. The cosmos in Startron is large, but not so large a single person couldn't get to most of it. The planetscapes and moonscapes follow a similar philosophy where there's plenty of space to do what you need, but not so much that it feels irrelevant. We hope we've got the balance just right! The art style was chosen for similar reasons, as we found it affords players (and developers alike) more creative control to produce something truly wonderous.Startron — game info
- Platforms
- Windows, Linux / SteamOS
- Player modes
- Single-player
- PC Game Pass
- Not included
What Steam players say
Recent verbatim reviews from Steam — separate from playze.io community reviews below.
I love this game, I just wish everything wasn't hardcore death mode. There's no manual saving, and with the randomness of the game, it's entirely possible to get soft locked while out traveling by some random system on your ship breaking and not being able to repair it. When this happens, you have to start your game over from scratch. Starting over is fine on short play games like roguelikes, but on a long play game where you are building up an empire across many stars, it sucks losing all that progress because your ship breaks down in a system without a station with a parts vendor, or running out of fuel in a system without any way to purchase fuel. Just remember dev, not all of us want to play hardcore mode. A manual save system would be nice.5 found this helpful
Despite only having barely over an hour of play time, and despite this game's version being quite far from 1.0, I wanted to drop a review to help boost the algo. I'm blown away by the ambition of the dev. The game is basically sci-fi Dwarf Fortress but with graphics that includes both 1st person and various zoom levels of 3rd person. Given how active the dev is, I'm torn between wanting to explore the game now vs letting the dev cook up a more complete package first. Even if the dev were to abandon this game today, I'd still recommend any indy game connoisseur to poke around it for a little while due to how novel and intriguing it all is.4 found this helpful
Startron takes me back to the good-ol'-days of the early eighties, with eight year old me playing Super Star Trek on my uncle's Commodore PET 2001, only with colour and surprisingly chill vibes. There's an emphasis on construction and building up your own little production-line bases, at least so far, and I've really been enjoying the whole atmosphere of the game.1 found this helpful
gave it a quick test before work and had to immediately close it, I knew for a fact 10 hours would disappear in the blink of an eye! cant wait to get home and try it later!1 found this helpful
Great game. I really hope it gets expanded further.1 found this helpful
Take away the gimmicky “ASCI” interface and what do you have? An insult to ASCII games of the 70s and 80s, terrible UX, forgetful and inconsistent controls. Yuck.
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