The heart of StarDrive is its ship design and combat engine. StarDrive takes a module-based approach to ship design, allowing the player to create custom ship designs where the composition and placement of ship modules really matters to the performance of a ship in combat. Organize your ships into fleets with a simple fleet editor, allowing custom formations and rules of engagement. Jump directly into the combat action at any time by commandeering one of your vessels and piloting it yourself with arcade-like control, or just sit back and let your commanders control the battle.

Grand in scope, yet easy to pick up and fun to play, StarDrive hearkens back to the golden age of 4x gaming.  Player-designed races, espionage, diplomacy, custom ship designs, planetary invasions, and  many more classic 4x features will provide players with endless replayability in a massive living universe. Challenge your friends online, or join them in co-operatively creating an empire to test against human opponents.  

Multiplayer in StarDrive will come in two different flavors.  StarDrive will ship with a multiplayer battle arena mode in the DOTA tradition.  In this mode, there will be no researching or designing; instead, players will have to choose how to allocate their starting resources to purchase a fleet comprised of ships which they have previously designed offline.  Killing enemies or achieving objectives will bring you more money which you can use to buy more and better ships.  

Iceberg Interactive CEO Erik Schreuder says: “Space strategy is definitely a genre that is working extremely well for us both digitally and still in retail as well. With StarDrive we are extremely happy to have signed a pure ‘4x’ game that was inspired by and follows in the footsteps of ‘golden oldies’ such as Masters of Orion, with emphasis on ship design and space combat. We realize that there is already a sound buzz ongoing for this game amongst strategy fans and look forward to contribute to its greatness.”

Zero Sum Games CEO Daniel DiCicco says: “Having raised initial capital through Kickstarter with a backer ratio of 235%, we are now very happy to have the backing of an established publisher who has extensive experience with 4x strategy games and a track record of success. We are excited to work with them on making StarDrive achieve its full potential. It goes without saying that all Kickstarter pledges will continue to be honored, and we hope that you will be as excited as we are to see how much further StarDrive will go with this new partnership.”

Key Features:

• Real time gameplay with a seamless zoom from a grand strategic view to a close-up action view
• Control your ships with classic real time strategy commands or jump into the fray by taking direct arcade control of any ship in your empire
• Choose from 8 beautifully rendered alien races or design your own to lead into the stars
• Colonize new planets and build them into specialized centers of trade or industry
• Design custom ships with a module-based ship design system
• Create custom fleet formations and set rules of engagement in the easy to use fleet editor
• Unlock new technologies to improve your military and industrial technology
• Explore a procedurally-generated galaxy and discovery what treasures and terrors are hidden within