How it plays
Pick a ship, drop into the arena, and you are in a dogfight within seconds. A match is over in minutes, so there is always time for one more.
Flying in under a minute
Jump straight in
Tap PLAY AS GUEST, then PLAY VS BOTS. No account, no sign-up, not even an internet connection. It is a full match against bots that play to win, not a cut-down practice mode.
Pick a ship
All 6 are yours from the start. Each one has a trick the others don’t: an afterburner, a turret, a cloak, mines, a warp home, a railgun. Meet the ships.
Pick a fight
6 modes, from a free-for-all to space soccer to a last-ship-flying Battle Royale. See the modes.
What you actually do
Steer, shoot, and use your ship’s special at the right moment. That is the whole control scheme, and it fits under two thumbs. The depth is in the choices: when to duck behind a rock, when to break off for a pickup, when to burn your special and when to hold it.
Nothing in the game is unbeatable. Turrets, mines and warp beacons can all be shot down, a cloaked ship has to show itself to fire, and every hit points back at whoever fired it, so you always know what got you and what to try next time.
Matches that fit your day
Every lobby has two dials: a kill limit of 5, 10, 15 or 20 (or none), and a clock of 2, 5 or 10 minutes (or none). Whichever runs out first ends the match. Your first match is first to 5 in 2 minutes; after that the lobby opens at first to 15 in 5, and remembers whatever you change it to. Join someone else’s room and you play by the host’s settings.
| Your first match | 2 minutes, or first to 5 |
|---|---|
| After that | 5 minutes, or first to 15 |
| Battle Royale | 2, 5 or 10 minutes, last ship flying |
| If the clock ends level | 45 seconds of sudden death |
Bring your friends
Create a private room, share the invite code, and you are all in the same match, Mac and Windows alike, with iPhone and iPad to follow. Start a team mode with fewer than four pilots and bots fill it to two a side. If you’d rather fight strangers, quick match finds you a room and the server browser shows every open one. Playing online needs a free account; playing against bots never does.
Fair fights
Against bots, the sides are always even. Online, an odd number of pilots means one side has a spare, and if someone leaves and a team falls two behind, a bot takes the seat. You can’t hurt your own side, so dive into the same fight as a teammate without worrying about your aim. Friends and enemies are told apart by hull colour, with colourblind-friendly palettes in settings.
And nobody can buy an edge. There are no upgrades, no stat boosts and no ads. Your ship is exactly as strong as everyone else’s version of it, on your first day and your hundredth.
The StarForge Circuit
Six chassis classes are cleared to fly, and the rulebook is blunt about it: you fly them as they were built. No tuning, no upgrades, nothing bought between rounds. A rookie's Interceptor and a champion's Interceptor are the same ship down to the bolt, and the Circuit means for the difference to be the pilot.
Show off a little
Playing earns you things to wear: engine trails, hull skins, badges, callsigns and kill banners, with the rarest ones looking the part. They change how you look and never how you fly. You also choose your own battle music from 4 tracks: PULSAR DRIFT, NEON SURGE, ION STORM, STARFORGE RUSH.
The StarForge Circuit
Every promoter scores its own broadcast, and pilots have flatly refused to fly to somebody else's choice since the second season, so the feed goes out on four beds and each ship picks the one it wants in the cockpit before the drop.
What it costs
Right now, nothing. StarForge Arena is in Early Access and free to download, with nothing for sale.
At full launch the game stays free on iPhone and iPad, where the Pilot Pass (an extra track of cosmetic rewards) will be an optional purchase. On Steam the game will be a one-time purchase with the pass included. The Pilot Pass can’t be bought yet, and on any platform nothing you can buy will ever make a ship stronger.
Where you can play
On Mac and Windows today, with downloads on the home page. The iPhone and iPad version (iOS 16 or later) is on its way to the App Store, and will play in the same rooms: touch controls that step aside when you plug in a controller, and a game that turns with the phone.
