Press kit

Single-player economic strategy game for Windows and macOS: run a drinks corporation in a sector of 26 star systems and out-trade up to seven AI corporations. Explore, build stations, mine metal and ice, research 25 technologies, run media campaigns, sign sponsors, train your management, visit the café on every world and follow the Galaxy News Network. Win by holding the market at a year-end. Playable in 13 languages. Free demo.

Fact sheet

About the game

You did something ridiculously petty. The fine is unpayable. So now you run a corporation — across 26 star systems, against up to seven rivals.

You run StarCorp, makers of Gulst. Every week each inhabited world picks its drink on taste, kick, health, price and how hard the brand has been pushed — and every week your rivals get a little better at it. Hold 45 % of the market at a year-end — more if you face fewer rivals — and your licence becomes a charter: StarCorp is yours, and so is your freedom. Run out of credit and you are out.

Explore. Scan star systems, survey planets and moons, and find out where the customers live, where the metal lies and where the ice is.

Build. Found stations, fill them with factories, labs and marketing modules, line up the next builds and keep your robot fleet running.

Trade. Mine metal, melt ice, and buy and sell on a live marketplace where every trade moves the price.

Win. Research better recipes, send sales agents, run campaigns, sign sponsors — and take the market from up to seven AI rivals.

The story

It is 2246, and you did something ridiculously petty. Reserved a whole orbital lounge with one towel for eleven days. Returned a library holo-book 214 years late. Parked a cargo hauler across three docking bays. The fine is absurd, and you will never pay it.

So THE CHAIR — a tiny, ancient ant judge on an enormous throne, with a gavel the size of a toothpick — offers the alternative: Corporate Service. You may choose. (You may not.) Her clerk Vael translates the clicks.

You get Licence N: StarCorp, an empty government shell company, dropped into a closed market run by up to seven established corporations. Grow it until it counts as one of them and the licence becomes a charter: the company is yours. Meanwhile the news, the café and your rivals quote your record at every turn.

Features

• 26 star systems, and you know one. The sector starts dark. Send scans to chart systems and survey their worlds; every system you chart lights up its own corner of the map with the sky of its star, from red-dwarf rust to blue-giant glow. Then decide where to plant your flag: a habitable world full of thirsty customers, an asteroid belt full of metal, or a frozen moon full of water.
• From the whole sector down to one world. Scroll in on a star system and watch its planets turn around their sun, each with its people, its deposits and who sells there. Scroll once more and one world fills the screen, all of it on one page with nothing below the fold: every figure your Trade Office can see, down to each rival's exact weekly sales and price, what its people want, and whose agents are working the crowd.
• Robots don't sleep. They do break.. Each station is a puzzle of modules — factory, lab, marketing, trade office, training and discovery center. Staff them with robots that run on power and water, overclock them when demand spikes, and pay for it in wear. A station builds one thing at a time, so line up the rest in its build queue.
• Metal builds. Water brews.. Buy what you need on the marketplace or dig it up yourself. A mine on a good deposit pays for itself in a couple of years; upgrade one on a poor deposit and you will never see that money again. Rivals trade on the same market — when everyone builds, metal gets expensive.
• From cane sugar to quantum sweetener. Taste, Kick and Health: every world weighs them differently, and the bar rises as the sector improves. Research 25 technologies — new ingredients, packaging and bottling lines — and decide which customers you are making Gulst for. Neglect what a world wants and it drinks somebody else's can.
• Train the people who run it. Your first station is your headquarters. Consult your heads of finance, logistics, marketing and research whenever you like — and invest in their training. Trained management makes every department cheaper, smarter and safer, and gives sharper advice. Your executive assistant tells you what matters most the moment you walk in. Your rivals train their people too.

Latest release: 0.9.4.5 "Off the Spreadsheet"

• One house style for every bar, level and figure: slanted bars that shine while something is under way, levels as slanted cells, market shares as one segmented bar, and one meaning per colour (teal is you, amber is look at this, green good, red bad).
• Product & price: your can on a pedestal in a new hall, one radar for what a market wants against what you deliver, and last week in five figures and one signal (turned away, running out, or in balance).
• Marketplace: mined against used per material on one scale, with a warning before you run out, and this week's trades against the weekly limit.
• The Orion Spur recalibrated with real astrophysics: hot worlds close to the star and frozen ones far out, names that follow the orbit (your HQ is now Nadir I), stars of different sizes, deposits that fit the world, and worlds drawn at their size, gas giants the biggest.
• Extractors cost more or less depending on the world: volcanic worlds are rich in metal but dear to mine, ice worlds are cheap.
• Saves without a limit: no fixed slots, saves grouped per game and sorted by newest, name, date in game or cash, three rotating autosaves, and Continue picks your newest game.
• Ore Dice in 3D, seven new music stings for breakthroughs, rivals going down and the four endings, and the music waits until a film has finished.
• A game saved before this update continues on the recalibrated map, with an apology notice.

Every version's notes

Screenshots

From the game, English, 1920 × 1080. Click for the full size.

Logos and art

• The logo, transparent background, 1400 × 445
• The logo, transparent background, 480 × 153
• The emblem (the app icon's star), vector
• The app icon, 1024 × 1024
• Key art: the site's hero image, 1920 × 1080
• Share image for links, 1200 × 630
• In-game art: a newly charted system
• In-game art: a station is founded
• In-game art: a mine is complete
• In-game art: the research hall
• In-game art: the HQ office

In the zip the logos are transparent PNG files as well.

Developer

VDIW Game Studios is the game label of Van den Ing Webmarketing, a one-person company in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands (KvK 30262078). Starcorp Tycoon is its first game: a modern take on the classic corporate tycoon, set in the year 2246.

An economic strategy game by Mark van den Ing, built with Claude (Anthropic). Illustrations made with ChatGPT, music with Suno, voices with ElevenLabs, sound effects partly from the Sonniss GDC Game Audio Bundle.

Using this material

Everything in this press kit may be used freely in articles, reviews, videos, streams and other coverage of Starcorp Tycoon. Please leave the logo and the screenshots unaltered (cropping and resizing are fine). For other use, ask first.

Contact

Press questions, review keys and interviews: support@starcorptycoon.com. Answers in English or Dutch.