Each player takes over the leadership of an alien race, which he can design from a set of features and technology advantages at the beginning of the game. In separate workspaces, players have to plan their moves and enter them on the laptop, into the browser frontend of Starbreed – always keeping the game goal in mind: Becoming chairman of the ‘Intergalactic Council’ and thus win the game.
This is followed by many phases of strategic planning, weighing and testing in the face of partly non-transparent rules as well as changing impact factors and algorithms. Every Starbreed game is different.
In order not to be left out, one must cultivate diplomacy. This is aggravated by the spatial separation of the players, who can exchange messages in the chat, but can only visit each other on their home worlds (their personal workspaces) in order to negotiate and plan together once they had real contact in space before.
Every 10 rounds, elections are held and the game ends when a majority of the ‘Intergalactic Council’ agreed upon its chairperson. How to achieve this goal is up to the players and their strategy.