Ultima Online’s designer is back with a new sandbox MMO Stars Reach
Raph Koster, the legendary game designer behind seminal MMOs Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies, is returning to the genre with Stars Reach, a new sci-fi sandbox MMORPG launching this summer. The game marks the first release from Playable Worlds, the studio Koster co-founded in 2018.
Stars Reach emphasizes player agency and emergent gameplay, allowing players to explore a universe, discover planets to settle, and develop those settlements over time. The game features a classless leveling system that avoids locking players into predefined roles, supporting diverse playstyles and character progression paths.
The core gameplay loop combines exploration, resource gathering, and combat to support settlement building. A notable feature enables players to establish governments within their settlements, complete with the ability to levy taxes on inhabitants—a system that mirrors Koster’s philosophy of creating worlds where players can meaningfully shape their environment and social structures. This focus on player-driven economics and governance reflects the sandbox design principles Koster pioneered in earlier works.