“This study attempts to realistically describe an arbitrary number of solar systems, as if observed by travelling from one star to another and simply recording what was discovered.”
Xalaria was created in 1998 by the Australian mathematician and composer Julian Cochran, who also wrote D-Zone, the classic shareware game of 1992. It represents our universe as it really is, not a fantasy setting: the stars, the worlds that form around them, and the life those worlds could support.
Each solar system follows from its star. Star classes, from rare blue giants to common red dwarfs, occur in the proportions observed in our own galaxy. A star's class sets its size and temperature, and so the extent of its planetary disc, the orbits and sizes of its planets and moons, and their materials. Each world's surface temperature combines the starlight it receives at its distance, heat from the planet a moon orbits, and heat rising from its own core.
Julian Cochran worked with leading astrobiologists to project the forms of life that could realistically evolve under each world's particular conditions: carbon and silicon life on solid worlds, gaseous and electrical life in the atmospheres of giants, life in oceans and beneath the surface where the temperature allows. Every world moves on its Kepler orbit in real time.
Counted, not imagined.
Every player travels the same universe at the same moment: the same stars, the same civilisations, the same stations, and each other. These figures come from running the game's own generator across all of it.
Trade, fight, mine, or simply listen.
There is no single path. Every action changes how the stations, alliances and civilisations of the universe regard you.
Trade
Buy and sell 27 commodities, from aluminium to iridium, quantum neurocells and cryogenics machinery. Prices drift with every trade you make.
Fight
Twenty weapons, from the humble Laser to Focal Death, whose fifteen-second charge warns every craft nearby that something terrible is coming.
Mine
Survey worlds for metal deposits. Tunnel deeper and the Nature Preservation alliance will notice; fill your mines and they will thank you.
Explore
Land on planets, search for traces of life no one has recorded, and keep a journal of everything you discover.
Culture
Visit cultural centres. Attend concerts, take museum tours, join celebrations, and offer gifts to the civilisations you meet.
Quests
Seven kinds of commission, from delivering messages and fuel to exploring distant worlds and settling old scores.
Twenty-five craft to fly, in four families.
Explorers carry the most cargo, fighters the most energy and shielding, industrial craft the most weapon ports. Destroyers come late, when you have planets earning for you.
Prices in gc, the galactic credit. Every craft can be upgraded further in energy, shields, fuel, solar charging and recharge speed.
From a 50 gc laser to Focal Death.
Damage per shot against energy per shot and price. Blasts strike every vessel in range; shields buy you time; mining tools pay for themselves if you choose your deposits well.
Four allegiances, and the independent.
Stations and communities belong to alliances. Your standing with each rises and falls with what you do, and the doors that open follow.
The merchants of the universe. They make no enemies and reward those who keep the commodities moving.
Guardians of fragile worlds and endangered species. They pay for mines filled in and harm undone.
An empire of peace, freedom and prosperity, and the most aggressive of the four. Sworn enemies of the rebels.
Few in number and hard to find. Their quests are the most dangerous, and their weapons the most cost-effective.
An empire has for centuries tormented the civilisations of your home star. Despite ridicule by your colleagues, a strange force inspires you to look towards the abyss.