Star Control: Origins is a space action adventure game. You are the Captain of a ship with a mission to protect Earth and explore the galaxy.

From a technical perspective, Star Control is a story engine. We don't generate new quests. Instead, we are looking to populate a deep and rich world with hand-crafted Sci-Fi stories. But we won't be doing it alone. Much of our effort has been to create consumer (i.e. user friendly) apps like Adventure Studio, the City Crafter, and the Ship Designer, so that people can create compelling stories to share.

Of course, our job is to tell the first story: Star Control: Origins itself, starting in 2088. Over the past four years, we've written a lot of stories. And while the main mission might "only" take 20 hours to complete, that is not the end of the story. It's a big galaxy out there. And mind you, this is just our universe. People will be able to travel to completely different universes as well with their own stories and characters. But it is also our hope that fans will want to help flesh out this universe with us over the coming years.

To understand how big our playing field is, let's talk about our setting: Orion's Spur.

This is a recent map of the milky way galaxy provided by NASA. You can see the Sun and Orion's Spur.

Our stories in the Origins universe will focus on a region called the "Mid Spur" which is about the length of "Orion's Spur" in the above diagram.

Below is a zoom-in on the Mid Spur; the orange outline represents the Scryve sector, which is where most of the Origins (1.0) story takes place. This is an immense area (130x130 light years) with thousands of planets, many of which are inhabited with various species.

If you click on the thumbnail above, you can zoom in and see a little blue circled area which is where our Sun is.

Now, in one of our next Preludes, we will start to walk you through how new universes are created, or how existing universes are fleshed out and shared online directly from the game.

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READ THE SERIES

Prelude 1 of 13 - The Living Universe

Prelude 2 of 13 - So Many Planets

Prelude 3 of 13 - Creating Interactive Stories

Prelude 4 of 13 - The Mid Spur (Current)

Prelude 5 of 13 - The Aliens of Star Control

Prelude 6 of 13 - The Ships of Star Control

Prelude 7 of 13 - The Aliens of Star Control Part 2

Prelude 8 or 13 - The User Interface of Star Control

Prelude 9 of 13 - The Lore of Star Control

Prelude 10 of 13 - The Art of Star Control

Prelude 11 of 13: The Environments of Star Control

Prelude 12 of 13: The Critters of Star Control

Prelude 13 of 13: The Modding of Star Control