Starclaim · 2026
The Starclaim story
Starclaim was a browser game about claiming stars in a shared galaxy. It ran for four months and closed on the 17th of October 2026. Here’s what happened, and what I learned.Jump to the throne winners
In numbers
- Players who signed up
- 1,120
- Still playing at the peak, week of the 22nd of June
- 470
- Days from first commit to closing
- 126
- Commits
- 1,037
- Database migrations
- 335
- Empires on the First Age's final board
- 194
- Sieges fought in the First Age
- 6,344
- Star systems held when the First Age ended
- 36M+
The rise and fall
Players week by week. Nearly everyone arrived in the first three weeks, and most of them had left by mid-July. The Age of Aurora brought 93 new players and a second, smaller wave, which faded the same way.
Every week, as a table
| Week of | Still playing | New | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| 8 Jun | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 15 Jun | 62 | 137 | 137 |
| 22 Jun | 470 | 484 | 621 |
| 29 Jun | 347 | 304 | 925 |
| 6 Jul | 83 | 27 | 952 |
| 13 Jul | 50 | 8 | 960 |
| 20 Jul | 31 | 2 | 962 |
| 27 Jul | 28 | 3 | 965 |
| 3 Aug | 22 | 1 | 966 |
| 10 Aug | 20 | 1 | 967 |
| 17 Aug | 110 | 93 | 1,060 |
| 24 Aug | 59 | 40 | 1,100 |
| 31 Aug | 31 | 8 | 1,108 |
| 7 Sep | 27 | 7 | 1,115 |
| 14 Sep | 18 | 1 | 1,116 |
| 21 Sep | 18 | 3 | 1,119 |
| 28 Sep * | 11 | 1 | 1,120 |
“Still playing” counts players who had signed up and came back at least once after the week began. Starclaim never kept a session log, so this is the best estimate I have, and it runs slightly high. The last week (*) was still in progress when the numbers were taken on the 1st of October. Pirate accounts are excluded.
June 2026
First light
The first commit
A shared galaxy, generated from a fixed seed, where you claim a star and name it. Empty space is never stored; only claimed systems ever reach the database.
Playable
Google sign-in, a phone layout and saved progress landed on the same day. Three days in, people could play it.
Alliances
Empires could band together. It was the first of many systems I added in the first few weeks.
The game outgrows its timer
The game loop kept timing out as a scheduled job, so I moved it to a server that runs all the time. By then it was growing around 600 empires every tick.
Ads go in
Ten days after the first commit, I added banner ads. They were my first try at paying for the servers.
Production launch
Starclaim went public. Each player's browser now handled its own expansion, so the server no longer had to do it for everyone.
July – early August 2026
The First Age
Players vote on the war
Before building the war rework, I posted the plan as a page players could read section by section, vote on and comment on.
Rebuilding the war
I tore down the old war system and refunded every fleet in full, to make room for fronts, ship classes, buildings and the Command Console.
Another economy rework
Income stopped coming from every system you owned and started coming from Stardust Collectors you built. It took several more rounds of balancing that week to settle.
Glorbo opens for business
The Dark Matter Trader arrived, followed a day later by the Solarite store: crest frames, daily rewards and streaks.
The Beta label
I put a small Beta label on every screen, with a note saying the game was being built by one person while people played it.
The territory overhaul
Claimed space was outgrowing the database, so I spent two weeks rewriting how territory is stored. One query alone had been using 45% of the database's CPU. Afterwards it took under a millisecond.
August 2026
The crossing
The ads come out
I took out every ad and started redesigning the game around fewer, clearer ideas for a Second Age.
The First Age is chronicled
Before the reset, I saved the whole First Age as a permanent record: 194 empires still holding ground, 6,344 sieges, and more than 36 million star systems held at the end.
Counting what I had built
I went through the First Age interface and counted 1,452 separate buttons and controls. Each one had to be kept, moved or removed before the new Age could open.
The Age of Aurora
The Second Age opened. Territory started fresh, while accounts, Solarite and purchases carried over. The black hole at the centre of each galaxy got its accretion disc, with the light bending around it.
Easier to start
Guests could found an empire without signing up, and the Primer walked new players through the basics.
New pirates
Pirates became real empires that surge and recede, instead of fixed zones on the map.
September – October 2026
Keeping the lights on
Supported by the people who play
I closed the cosmetic store and replaced it with a Server Supporter pack. It gave you a badge and your name in the credits, and nothing that affected the game. The goal was to cover the monthly hosting bill.
The closing date
I announced the shutdown in the game and put a notice on every screen for anyone who missed the post.
The last thrones
Aurora never reached its crossing, so the game never crowned anyone. Players asked, and I named the six throne holders from the scores at the original cutoff on the 30th of September.
Starclaim went offline
The servers stopped at 18:00 UTC.
The Thrones of Aurora
Aurora had six thrones, and each one went to the empire that led the Age in one way. The Age was due to end on the 30th of September at 18:00 UTC. These are the empires that held each throne at that moment, shown with the commander their throne was guarding.
Greatest Canvas
Systems held
Moontide
525,769
The Undertow · Water
Most Sovereign
Whole galaxies held
Space Elsa
216
The Rime · Ice
Frontiers Taken
Systems taken from rivals
Triss
167,151
The Pyre · Fire
Ground Reclaimed
Pirate ground taken
MrBird's Galactic Empire
11,968
The Ashfall · Ash
Greatest Hoard
Stardust held at once
Fatpire
313,745,645
The Kindler · Light
Deepest Reserve
Dark Matter held at once
Space Elsa
120,785
The Umbra · Dark
Scores are from the last record before the cutoff, taken at 16:23 UTC that day. The Greatest Hoard was too close to call, with two empires within half a percent of each other, so I gave it to the one who was still playing. The game closed before it could hand out the commanders, so the record here is the prize.
What I learned
01
Start small
Ship the smallest game that can be fun, then add to it only when players are asking for more of the same thing.
Alliances, sieges, messaging, profiles, war, ships, buildings, species, a trader and a store all arrived inside six weeks. By the crossing the interface had 1,452 controls and the database had been migrated over 200 times. Every system I added was one more thing to balance, explain and keep running.
02
Make sure the core loop is fun
Before anything else gets built, the thing a player does every minute has to be worth doing on its own.
I reworked the economy more than once and rebuilt the war from scratch in the first month. When I redesigned the game for the Second Age, most of the work was cutting. It came down to three actions: paint, siege and remember. That's closer to where it should have started.
03
Understand player impact early
Measure how people actually play from day one, and know what a change will cost the people already playing before you make it.
Big reworks refunded fleets and the crossing reset everyone's territory. When I went to measure how many players came back, there was no session log to measure it from, so the best I could get was a range. Testing the Second Age at its real length showed the whole universe would be claimed in about two weeks of a three-month Age.
04
Build a real revenue plan
Passion is great, but a game needs financial support to survive. Decide how it pays for itself before launch, not after.
I went from ads, to a cosmetic store, to asking players to cover a $75 a month hosting bill. Each change came after the costs were already running.
Not the end of the idea
Starclaim closing isn’t the end of the idea. I fully expect to come back to it with more experience and a better foundation. It won’t be a revival, but a stronger version built the right way.
Thank you to everyone who claimed a star, fought a siege, filed a bug report, voted on a rework or supported the servers. You’re the reason it was worth building.