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.  

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.

StarDrive is now playable in Beta on Steam. Throughout the Steam Beta stage, StarDrive will be available at a 15% discount (pre-order and play now).

“After years of creating this game we are finally ready and hugely excited to be entering the beta stage on Steam," Zero Sum Games CEO Daniel DiCicco says. "We are hungry for the feedback of the seasoned 4x gamers that have been following development. The game is still evolving and with the help of our fans it will only get better, while at the same time we are confident they will have a blast with StarDrive as it is now!”

“After having been in QA testing for over four months, we have a polished beta build, ready for the masses of fans who have been waiting patiently for this day," Iceberg Interactive CEO Erik Schreuder adds. "StarDrive will challenge experienced 4X players and let them re-live the golden days of grand space strategy games. This is going to to be a very special occasion, when a guy who had a dream finally unveils his masterpiece, having dedicated so much to see it come to fruition.”

StarDrive features include:

• Real-time gameplay with a seamless zoom from a grand strategic view to a close-up action view
• Choose from eight beautifully rendered alien races or design your own; interact, negotiate, and forge allegiances on your way to victory
• Expand your empire and colonize all kinds of planets, terraform and populate them, and build them into specialized centers of trade or industry
• Research and unlock an array of technologies to improve your military and industrial capabilities
• 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
• Create your unique ship designs with the modular ship design system and determine your own fate in battle
• Create custom fleet formations and set rules of engagement in the easy-to-use fleet editor
• Steal technologies, incite rebellions, or rob your enemies blind with a rich agent-based espionage system
• Deploy ground troops from orbit to defeat the enemies’ last planetary defenses in ground combat
• Explore the rich universe that comes alive with random events, remnant elements, hidden treasures, deep space terrors and late-game threats