A trading card game is a unique, life skill building game that allows two or more people to compete against one another in a fun and friendly way, utilizing their skills in strategic thinking and understanding. Trading card games require socialization, competition, and sportsmanship, elements of human nature that we believe should always be encouraged. The trading cards themselves can also be traded between players, helping to build an understanding of fairness, market value, and negotiation. The beauty of trading card games is that they are always changing and adapting to the new realities of gameplay, incorporating new elements of ongoing storytelling and character realization. In a trading card game, players begin with a deck of cards. This can be a preconstructed deck or fully customized deck utilizing additional booster packs that can be purchased separately. These additional packs allow the opportunity to adapt your playing style, create new strategies, and expand your options. Trading card games are a fun, exciting, and ever evolving game without an end.

Star Heroes is a space and science fiction trading card game set 500 years into the future where 2-4 players compete against one another to explore and ultimately conquer the solar system. Elements of science and history based on our lived experience in the spaceflight industry are interwoven into the narrative arc of the game.

The universe is in a constant state of flux, and is, in a word, chaos. There is order, sure, but without imbalance, impurity, and uncertainty, the universe would simply not exist and we wouldn’t be here enjoying trading card games—the very thought! We wanted to bring this element of our very existence to Star Heroes. We love trading card games but one of the things that always bothered us was the element of predictability. We as players can tell quite quickly what kind of deck we are up against and formulate strategies on how to counter it, but by incorporating a rogue faction, the cards of which can be incorporated into any deck (for a price), it removes that element of predictability and instils a sense of chaos—and who doesn’t love a bit of chaos, every now and again? Not to mention that when humans finally expand out into the solar system, there will always be rogue elements who will not abide by the rules—pirates, thieves, rebels, and the like. So, it makes sense from a story and gameplay point of view to include them.

Absolutely, yes. The universe is constantly changing. Alliances are made and broken, empires rise and fall, and so it is inevitable that new factions will rise in the power vacuums left behind. One must also consider that as we expand into the universe, we will eventually come across other species... what that means for humanity, however, is a different matter.

The creator of Star Heroes is a writer, so it is very much a key focus. Frankly, a game without a story bores the life out of us—we need that element of storytelling to really enjoy a game. As we expand Star Heroes, you will find that the story will also evolve, Star Heroes will come and go, the factions will expand out into the universe and uncover things you could never dream of—how could we not focus on story when we have such an incredible, unknown abyss to explore? But one must be careful as in the darkness of space, there are things we may not wish to come across, or worse, come across us.

No. We do NOT use AI in our trading card artwork. While the Star Heroes universe features robots, automatons, and a whole array of bionic, mechanical, and robotic creations, our art is completely human-made.

When it came to the development of the factions in the Star Heroes universe, we asked ourselves a very simple question: What matters to us as a species? What would happen if the Earth was destroyed, it’s land not longer able sustain life, the air toxic, the environment and natural world decimated, what would matter to us beyond survival in this apocalyptic world? The answer we came to was identity. Throughout human history our sense of identity has been so palpable that we are often drawn into conflict with those we consider opposite to us. Whether that conflict is physical, idealist, or even religious. So what would happen if those factions broke away and left Earth, their home, behind? They would take that identity with them to the greatest extent possible. In their exile they would then find themselves in an ideological vacuum chamber, where this sense of identity is not challenged, questioned, or contradicted. They would double down, or so to speak. This is where the foundation for the factions came from. Each faction has their own identity—whether that is militaristic and tyrannical, curious and explorative, dogmatically religious and superiority-based, a combination thereof, or something else entirely. Each faction has taken their sense of identity with them to new homes in the stars. In Star Heroes you will find very human elements amongst the factions, you may even recognise a few names and titles, ways of connecting them to their past, but one thing is certain, you will understand them to some degree because you too are human. We expect many players will identify with some factions more than others, but we do hope they will have the curiosity to play the other factions as well to get a real sense of the Star Heroes universe.

To a large extent, yes. It would have been too easy to simply create a universe out of the blue, giving names and descriptions to cards that sounded correct, but made no sense in the real world, such as a parsec being used as a unit of speed instead of a unit of distance—WHY GEORGE LUCAS, WHY?! Cough, ahem… anyway. We have direct spaceflight experience as our work has quite literally launched to and from the International Space Station, been exposed to the vacuum of space and been bombarded by radiation from the Sun. Our pedigree is one of the things that separates us—we know space, intimately. We wanted to draw on that experience for Star Heroes. You will find that the story of Star Heroes, the cards, their names and uses, and everything in between draws on the science and history of our world today—there are, of course, still going to be futuristic elements because they are living 500 years into our future and we have accounted for that, but the foundation is on solid scientific and historical ground.

Absolutely. There is a reward specifically for brick-and-mortar game stores in our crowdfunding campaign. Future releases will also be available to all game stores.

To purchase our products you must follow our crowdfunding campaign, and if you follow before it launches and you will receive a free gift! Simply click here and hit follow, and we will do the rest.

Yes.

The material in question is sourced from our parent company, The Space Collective. The Space Collective has operated for over 14 years in the spaceflight sector and have even launched five of their own to the International Space Station. Many of the materials used in our Astra cards were flown aboard these or previous, historical missions and come with a lifetime guarantee of authenticity.