Galaxy is what I like to call a "Space Role Playing Game". The player controls a starship with which he can travel the universe, trade commodities, buy upgrades, and fight battles. Unlike a regular role playing game, you don't improve by gaining levels, instead you improve by upgrading your ship and your holdings (which may include other ships, starbases, planets, etc). In order to accomplish this, you must make money - and there are many different methods for doing so. The easiest, and most obvious method is, of course, trading. You can travel between starbases or planets carrying commodities and selling to the highest bidder. Alternatively, for the more sinister among us, it is possible to become a pirate, preying upon the weak, boarding their ships and taking them, or else blowing them to bits and salvaging the scrap. The altruistic spacefarer would likely prefer to become a bounty hunter, tracking down those pirates who have a price on their heads and bringing them to justice. Owning a starbase will certainly bring in some revenue, and if you control a planet, you can tax its civilian population.

Now, if this were all that Galaxy had to offer it would be little more than a redundant clone of many other "Space Role Playing Games". Unlike those games, however, Galaxy is open ended. By that I mean that there is no fixed storyline to the game. There is definitely a history to the game, which will dictate how many of the races interact, but the final outcome is uncertain. There is no real way to "win" since you could keep playing indefinitely. Each of the ten different races have their own distinct AI and will do their best to survive and prosper based upon their ideals. Some races are aggressive, others are passive, some are traders, some are expansionists. Undoubtedly, as time goes on, some of these races will be wiped out as others rise to dominance, and the player can assist either side, if he chooses, or ignore the situation completely. Wars will rage on, regardless of the player's actions, treaties will be formed and broken, trade pacts come and go, the universe will have a life of its own. It is, in fact, quite akin to a simulation game... SimGalaxy? But the player controls and affects the simulation as one person among many in the galaxy, not from some omniscient point of view.

Interesting? Yes. Complicated? Very. Hard to program? Just ask Lucky!