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A story-rich idle game about reigniting a dead sun, told by an AI who remembers being human.
Press Kit
A story-rich idle game about grief, patience, and second chances.
Press Kit
A story-rich idle game about grief, patience, and second chances.
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A story-rich idle game about reigniting a dead sun, told by an AI who remembers being human.
Reignite a dead sun. Rebuild its worlds. Your only companion is P.O.R.T.I.A., a caretaker AI who has been alone for a very long time, and who remembers more than she should. A story-rich idle game about grief, patience, and second chances, told over generations of stars.
Something ended in this solar system. The sun is cold, the planets are empty, and the only voice left is P.O.R.T.I.A., an ancient shepherd intelligence who has kept the watch alone for longer than she can bear to say.
Stellar Nursery is an idle game in the shape of a ghost story. You reignite the star, gather stardust, and coax nine worlds back toward life. You grow Earth from barren rock to a world of billions, found a colony on Mars, and send probes into the dark past Jupiter. Progress carries forward across stellar generations, each one a fresh start that remembers the last.
P.O.R.T.I.A. guides you through all of it, and she is not a cheerful assistant. At launch her key story beats are voiced, performed by the two people who made the game. She comments on what you build, remembers what you lose, and doles out her past one transmission at a time. Occasionally, when she thinks you are not paying attention, she lets something slip.
The game respects your time. Play it actively or leave it running and come back to a report of everything she watched over while you were gone. There are no microtransactions and nothing to pay to skip.
Aboard the station there is also a playable piano, a harmonograph that draws the resonance of your worlds, sealed ciphers, hidden songs, constellations to chart, 57 unlockable visual themes, and a journal that slowly becomes a book.
Click any image for the full-resolution version. All screenshots are 1920×1080 PNG in the asset pack.
Logo is supplied as a transparent PNG, 1280 px wide, for use over dark backgrounds.
Capsule art is included at every Steam size, including a 3840×1240 key-art banner with no text on it.
Everything here may be used freely in coverage of the game, including monetized video. No permission needed.
Stellar Nursery was made by two people, at home, over a single year.
Ashley Erjavec built the game, including the code, art direction, interface and design, and records P.O.R.T.I.A.'s voice herself. Joseph Erjavec wrote Extinction Event, the novella the game's story is drawn from, and built the world it takes place in. He is also its narrative designer, game design consultant and lead QA, and in practice those last two are the same job: the game went through more than twenty rounds of testing across their kitchen table, and his notes routinely changed the design rather than just the bugs. They are married.
Portia Plays is their studio. Stellar Nursery is its first release.
The game is safe to stream and monetize. Its soundtrack is licensed music from Scott Buckley and Alexander Nakarada under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0, plus public-domain Schubert recordings courtesy of Musopen. Full credits appear in the game.
Creators are welcome to monetize video and streams of Stellar Nursery. If you use the soundtrack on its own, please carry the composers' attribution.