Play Reach for the Stars - The Conquest of the Galaxy Online

Game Overview

Man, Reach for the Stars does not hold your hand. You boot it up, and suddenly you're staring at this grid of star systems, a tiny fleet, and about a hundred ways to screw up your empire before turn five. I remember my first game—sent all my colony ships to the closest planets, ran out of resources by mid-game, and got steamrolled by some alien faction with better tech. Lesson learned.

The ship designer alone is ridiculous in the best way. You can slap engines on a floating brick with lasers if you want, but good luck surviving when the AI shows up with properly balanced fleets. And speaking of the AI, it’s sneaky. One minute you’re trading peacefully, the next they’re blockading your homeworld because you didn’t notice they’d been stockpiling warships.

Yeah, the graphics are pure MS-DOS chunky pixels, but there’s something weirdly satisfying about watching your little empire slowly paint the map your color. Just don’t expect mercy—this game came out in the '80s, back when strategy games assumed you’d read the manual twice before daring to hit ‘New Game.’

Each game uses different controls, most DOS games use the keyboard arrows. Some will use the mouse , "Alt" ,"Enter" and "Space bar".