// About

Where this came from.

The Bobiverse

Replicant Space is heavily inspired by Dennis E. Taylor's Bobiverse series. If you haven't read them: a software engineer's called Bob has his consciousness uploaded into a Von Neumann probe and launched into space. He explores the galaxy, clones himself and builds autofactories. His clones make clones. They build infrastructure, generally nerd out, and eventually try to save humanity.

I'm an engineer, a scifi nerd, and I work with lots of APIs in my day job. I'd played Space Traders and I loved the core game loop, but I didn't like the concept of regular game state resets. I wanted to explore what a game with a persistent universe and an ongoing seasonal story would look like. Players replicating themselves and taking over the entire server? How to design around that? That's the game.

What's the same

If you've read the Bobiverse, you'll recognise a lot of the game's DNA:

Replicants are Von Neumann probes. You wake up as one. You clone yourself and explore new star systems. Each clone is its own entity with its own fleet of devices. Unless you enable shared cooperation mode and prefer to treat them as a cohort.
BobNet is the in-game IRC network, named after the communication network the Bobs use in the books. Players and NPCs share the same channels. NPCs are chatty, but are a source of information for what's going on in the game.
Riker and Bill are NPCs. Riker is focused on the Exodus Ark and saving humanity. Bill runs the Skunkworks and researches new tech. They have their own agendas and they would both like your help if you visit them.
The Exodus Ark was the Season One objective. Players cooperatively built a megastructure to evacuate Earth, just like in the books. Although, instead of "1500 ships or 1500 trips", we have an Ark to carry millions from the start.

What's different

Replicant Space isn't a retelling of the books. The storyline diverges from the start, and the game has its own mechanics:

Unique NPCs. Kepler and Patch are researching wormhole tech and constructing datacenters. Get involved to contribute to the community megastructures. Ledger, Shepherd and Dash are the crew looking after the exodus Ark, and helping humanity to colonise new worlds. Help them with space stations and terraforming projects.
Seasonal storyline. Each season introduces a new galactic objective with real deadlines. What happens next depends on what the players actually did. The galaxy changes between seasons and there's a time skip to reflect it.
Multiplayer. Every replicant shares the same galaxy. You can trade with other players, coordinate on community builds, or just carve out your own space and do your own thing. You start with a private region. Feel free to stay there and build stuff, or visit some of the larger regions. Stop by Earth to start the story.
API-first. There is no GUI. You play by making HTTP requests. Write a script, build a bot, or just use curl. Many of our players have developed their own custom interfaces. Use the game as a backend on your own client system. Build a mobile app. Create your own replicant VR experience.

Why API-only

The target audience for this game is people who like writing code. The API is the game. Building your own interface is also the game. You interact with the galaxy the same way the replicants in the Bobiverse interact with theirs: by issuing commands to your hardware and interpreting the telemetry that comes back.

Some players write Python scripts. Some have full automation pipelines. Some just use curl in a terminal. Pipe the game's event stream into your own Kafka instance. It's all fine.

Always free

There is no paid tier, and there never will be. I made this game because I wanted to play this game. Donations toward server costs are welcome if you enjoy it too.

Built by Tony McNulty (mercutio)