Desert Owl Games announced recently that Space Wars: Interstellar Empires, the turn-based MMO space sim, has entered into Early Access on Steam. The hex-grid strategy title sees players engaged in ship-to-ship battles using a large selection of over 100 starships to do battle.

The game takes a lot of tactical elements from 4x grand strategy games, where players will attempt to take over various territories in an escalating arms race to wipe out your foes from every corner of the galaxy.

The game features up to 40 players per battle instance in a persistent universe that allows for thousands of players to participate. This obviously creates an intense atmosphere where gamers are constantly vying to take control of every aspect of the grid, locked in a battle for technological, space-age supremacy. You can see what the gameplay and graphics look like with the Early Access launch trailer below for Space Wars: Interstellar Empires.

Graphically the game looks decent enough for those of you looking for both a tactical strategy game and something visually distinct enough to keep fans of the genre engaged. It’s not quite EVE Online levels of gorgeous, but it’s passable enough to immerse players into the general atmosphere of a war-torn galaxy.

According to the press release, the game is accompanied by a short novel written by Desert Owl producer Hooman Simyar. The first two parts of the novel are available now to accompany the release of Space Wars: Interstellar Empires into Early Access.

Players will create their captain from a number of different space races, outfit their crew and commanders, and upgrade their fleet to become the most dominate force in the sector.

They have plans on keeping the title in Early Access for the next year. So don’t expect to see the finished version until late 2018.

Space Wars: Interstellar Empires is currently free-to-play, so there’s no price to pay for entry. You can either learn more by visiting the official website or by checking out the Steam store page.