Celestial Routes is a space exploration game in which players take on the role of galactic citizens, tasked with paying taxes and collaborate with the colonial and the galactic government authorities. And survive as an individual. To do that, navigating through various galaxies, discovering new planets, and interacting with alien environments is unavoidable. The game is designed to provide a sense of economical and physical survival, as well as wonder and adventure. And, collaboration may not be the only choice that player makes. The other choice might be going on rebel against the authorities.
The environment is a star ayatem, where player starts inside their apartment flat under expropriation at a space station. There may be a number of planets, moons, other planets, debris areas, and conflict areas depending on the system properties. Economy, security level, and celestial body types of the system are defined per star system basis.
Missions are the core part of the game. There are several types of missions: making deliveries, recovering a lost package, capturing a creature, destroying a creature nest, destroying outlaws presence, stealing data, preventing an asteroid attack. When completed, some of these missions may trigger additional missions which initiates small storylines when engaged.
These missions can only be listen and accepted on a base computer present inside a player base. A basic base building is provided to the player during the voice directed initiation period of the game in building deed form placed in inventory. Then, player constructs this deed on a planet of their choice. Player bases are subject to government taxes and lost when these taxes are not paid on due date. Tax rates may change from planet to planet.
Space flight is one of the core activities in the game. Distances may be vast and careful fuel planing is needed in order not to get stuck in deep space. Players can call help in such a situation which provides an expensive fuel purchase service that may put the player in debt. A minus sign before in-game credits amount shows the total debt of the player. Suggested way of travelling huge distances is using warp gate services. There facilities can be found outside space stations but not all of them have those, and the service fee is hight. These and similar opportunities makes earning in-game credits an important aspect of the game.
The game provides combat in both third person and ship modes. For third person mode, several weapons are designed to give the experience of different combat styles. These weapons can be looted on the coarpses or can be purchased at the base compurters inside player bases.
Expansion of the base is possible through the purchased base parts also which can be found at the base computers. However, every expansion part adds an amount to the overall tax amount of the main base building. It may be easy to expand but hard to maintain in some occasions.
Another useful service at the base compuetr is marketplace services. Here, it is possible to earn in-game credits by buying some amount of the goods listed here, and selling them on space stations or in the surface facilities found on planet surfaces. Some of these goods are mined elements which can also be mined on an asteroid.
Base computers also provide items for purchase which are used to modify ships and weapons providing fuel efficiency, increased fuel capacity, speed modification, extra damage, and more.
Improving flight capabilities is the key part for the exploration. Players are provided different spaceship models which demonstrate various capabilities on flight range, max speed, fuel efficiency, fuel capacity, damage rate, manoeuvrability, and warp range, the last of which is an important stat for completing interstellar time based missions. These purchasable ships can be found at exhibition areas inside space stations.
As a summary, the main task is to survive under these heavy tax and fine economy. Player can choose between gaining influence on the government to receive tax incentives, or completely go rebel agains the government which may add some disadvantages to the gameplay on some systems and provide advantages on others. In either case, earning credits is the most important part of the game.