The game is about a rocket drawn on a piece of paper slowly flying across the "universe" of a very giant table.
The main goal of the game is to fly "Where No Man Has Gone Before".
During your trip, several things will pass near you, and most of them are clickable.
There are several things you can click on the table, here's a list of the main ones:
This is a star.
An asteroid or a planet looks like this. (click once to get some resources, or twice to add it to the colonies and start harvesting it for resources)
A structure (like a satellite or things like that), looks like this, click once on it to gather some resources.
You start the game with 3 harvesting slots, once you double clicked on any asteroid or planet, this will occupy one of the slots. Once a slot is used, you will be able to build structures on that colony, to free up a slot you can abandon a colony (you will lose any population grown on that colony but you will retain all the other harvested resources)
To see the list of your colonies (as well as the resources that can be harvested), click on this icon:
Colonies has building slots , asteroids have very few slots, while planets can house a lot of buildings (and people).
Slots are available on the market.
Buildable structures are like this, you can see which are the resources produced and used (produced is green, consumed is red) and the initial cost (the money icon with the cost value). You can build a structure that use a certain kind of resource without having that resource, but that building will produce nothing until you will harvest the things it needs.
There are several type of resources: paper , ink , colors and graphite which can be harvested from colonies using buildable structures, or can be scraped clicking on the space things (satellites, junk, etc...) you will encounter.
Colonies can sustain some population too, of course asteroids can house less people than planets, but consider than every person you house will pay a small amount of taxes making you earn some money.
Once you abandon a colony, all the people living there will be no longer under your influence and will not pay taxes anymore.
Of course things goes around money . There are many ways to make some money in the game, you can harvest resources and sell them in the market, you can click on space structures you will find and earn some money, you can populate your colonies so your people will pay taxes, you will also earn a small amount of money while travelling.
The paper universe is full of aliens. And those aliens are attracted by your resources, so, once you see an UFO flying around, do not make it escape or it will stole some of your resources!
Here is a kind of UFO, beware of these guys!
The market is the place where you can buy and sell things. You will find some game things, such as colonies slots (you will start with 3 slots, but you can buy more), more powerfull ships and of course resources (check out the prices of resources, as they change very often).
Your ship has a base speed, which is the speed you will fly while idle watching your rocket.
if you click on your ship, you will "push" it, but your ship has also a max speed which cannot be passed, different ship models has different speeds of course.
After you stop clicking your ship, the speed will gradually decrease to the base one.
Once you leave the page, you will start your "grace time", in which you will continue to progress, but with halved base speed (with no speed bonuses). after the grace time your ship will stop until you visit it again. At the beginning, your grace time is 30 minutes, that can be extended using the market.