Stellaris is a strategy game where you play a space-faring empire seeking to expand your territory. It offers complete customisation of your civilisation, with different sets of ethics and morals to choose from that change how you play, from limiting your interaction with robots to being unable to restrict their use and more. This freedom to choose how you play extends to the expansion of your dynasty, where you can befriend or enslave competing civilisations. It's a unique game that puts you and your choices at the forefront, to offer countless winning strategies.

You can pick a starting species, or create your own from scratch. You pick positive and negative traits for your species to possess, that affect everything from fighting to diplomacy. You then choose the ethics and guiding principles that govern your new empire. Each principle grants you certain enhancements, but also restricts how you play. A spiritualist empire, for example, can't use robots. You can also pick the origin of your empire, be it a fractured people's desperate escape from a dying world or a powerful dynasty built on slaves.

Play starts on a single world with a few resources and ships, but soon expands into the galaxy. Your final goals is dependent on your principles and ethics, be it peaceful coexistence with neighbouring systems, total domination or a small but wealthy colony bursting with resources.

As you progress, you fight other worlds in real-time combat, where the focus is on the bigger picture rather than individual ships. Each opponent requires a different strategy, or possible a diplomatic solution. Finding ways to share power and resources with the other planets and civilisations is a great benefit. But don't forget to look after your current worlds, assigning governors, collecting tributes and more.

It's an incredibly deep and complex game, where the power is in your hands to forge a story of your own making; be it one of total domination or simple living.