Games like Tribal Wars, set in space

Old Light is a PBBG, a persistent browser-based game, where star systems do the job villages do in Tribal Wars. You start with one and grow by taking the ones around you, until your borders run into somebody else's. Taking a system means grinding its loyalty down to zero, which will sound familiar. It isn't an exact match though, and the differences are worth knowing before you start.

Why space games rarely feel like Tribal Wars#

Plenty of games are set in space. Very few of them treat the map the way Tribal Wars does, and the map is where most of that game lives.

In OGame you hold planets, and a planet is a slot on a coordinate list. Holding one has no effect on the space around it, and two of your planets can sit at opposite ends of the universe without that costing you anything beyond travel time.

Tribal Wars works the other way around. Your villages sit on a map next to other people's villages, so the ones you can reach are the ones you can take, and where your holdings cluster decides what you can defend. Geography is doing most of the work there, and it rarely turns up in a space game.

The village is the star system#

Old Light puts that structure on a galaxy of hexes.

Most of that's close enough to feel familiar within an hour. The loyalty row is where the two games line up most exactly.

Conquest works almost the same way#

Tribal Wars is built on loyalty. A village you want has a loyalty value, your nobles knock it down on arrival, and when it hits zero the village changes hands. The escorts and the timing exist to get nobles onto a target alive.

Old Light runs that loop with a vanguard. A rival's star has a loyalty value that caps at 100 and regenerates by 1 an hour. The vanguard flies in under combat escort, the escort fights whatever is parked there, and if enough of it survives the vanguard rolls 20 to 35 damage against loyalty. Lose more than 60% of your combat ships and the vanguard dies with them, just as a noble dies with a failed attack. Drive loyalty to zero and the system flips, which takes three to five successful runs, more if you leave gaps long enough for it to climb back. Fall short and you get a report with the new number on it, and so does the defender, so both of you know how close that was.

That produces the part you remember from Tribal Wars: the defender gets to watch it coming, run by run. If you spent years timing noble trains, most of that instinct still applies.

Sniping, dodging and fakes in Old Light#

All three survive the move. A hostile fleet inbound to one of your systems shows you its origin and its arrival time but not what it is carrying, so a feint costs the defender a real decision. A recall turns a fleet around mid-flight, which is how you pull a stack out from under an attack that is about to land.

The clock is just coarser. Trips run in minutes and hours, so timing is about reading what someone is doing and getting a fleet somewhere before it matters, not about landing on an exact tick. Tribes have no equivalent yet, though you can message any human player in your galaxy and coordinate that way. Premium Points don't exist here at all, which is a longer subject.

Astro Empires, Neptune's Pride and OGame#

Three other games get part of the way there.

Astro Empires is the real predecessor, a long-running browser space game with a persistent universe and empires that grow over weeks. It also shows its age, and its map is closer to OGame than to Tribal Wars in how position works. There is a longer look at Astro Empires.

Neptune's Pride has the territorial map and some of the best diplomacy in the genre, but it runs as a game rather than as a world. A match starts and ends, and whatever you built ends with it. If a fixed round is what you want, it is excellent at that.

OGame and its descendants, covered at length in games like OGame and Travian, have the economy and the fleets and the shared universe, and none of the territory. You get the building and the combat, and nothing that makes a position on the map worth holding.

How they compare#

Common questions#

Is there a Tribal Wars in space?#

Old Light is the nearest thing running. One shared map, and a system changes hands once you've ground its loyalty to zero, which is the job nobles do in Tribal Wars. The setting is a galaxy of hexes instead of medieval villages, and the timing plays you know still work, on a coarser clock.

Which browser game lets you conquer star systems?#

Old Light does, with a vanguard flown in under combat escort. Unowned stars resist with hostility and rival stars resist with loyalty, and either way you are knocking a number down over several runs rather than taking the system in one attack. The capturing guide has the exact figures.

Is Old Light better than Tribal Wars?#

No, and it is not trying to be. Tribal Wars has twenty years of depth and a population Old Light will not match for a long time. Old Light has a young map where the good positions aren't taken yet, and nothing anyone can buy to get ahead of you.

Is Old Light more like OGame or Tribal Wars?#

The economy and the fleets are the OGame half: systems you build up over real hours, and ships that take time to cross the map. The territory is the Tribal Wars half, where what you can take is what you can reach, and holding a cluster is what lets you defend it.

What does it cost?#

Nothing. Old Light is free to play in a browser with no download, and there is nothing for sale that makes an empire stronger. If you want your first few days mapped out, the beginner's guide covers the opening build order and your second system.