Shadow Empire

Shadow Empire is a deep turn-based 4X wargame with a unique blend of military focus, procedurally generated content and role-playing features.

Shadow Empire places you into the seat of the supreme ruler of a small nation. Destiny and greatness awaits if you succeed in reconquering a devastated planet. Plunge into an alien universe and explore another world in a dark and unforgiving future.

Take command and engage in great military conquests and delicate diplomacy. Control your nation’s budgets, recruit and manage governors and commanders, build your economy and infrastructure and much more.

Shadow Empire is one of the most ambitious games VR Designs has ever made. It is a rich experience and a truly unique game. One that is unlike any you have ever experienced before.


Make agonizing decisions in response to events occurring in your Nation, demands from your Leaders or from third parties such as cults and crime syndicates. You can also use your available Stratagems to create new opportunities and enhance your Nation. You will be able to optimize every aspect of your rule.

Recruit Leaders and appoint them to become zone governors, council directors, army commanders or advisors. Leaders can have over 40 different skills and can receive Leader feats to augment their statistics.

Install a parliament, senate or politburo in your nation and change the machinery of your government over the course of a game.

Engage with your neighbours on the diplomatic front: Minor regimes can be coerced to become vassals. Major regimes can be tied down with pacts and deals, ensuring a peaceful coexistence or you can use your spies to manipulate their politics and reveal their military forces.

Attempt to manage the expectations of your people and your leaders. There is a strong role-playing and human dynamics element to Shadow Empire. If you are not careful in their management, you may have to deal with discontent, strikes, corruption or even all out rebellion.


Shadow Empire has specialized procedural design that ensures high replayability and allows vast experimentation. It is not just the planets that are procedurally generated, your equipment, vehicles, leaders, location and more are variable.

Explore procedurally generated planets that follow the rules of Astrobiology. Including detailed climate, rainfall, deserts, snow, glaciers, lava streams, deep forests, alien evolutions, mountain chains, resources, rivers, biohazard levels, respiratory hazard levels and more.



Exploit the planet with a huge variety of mining operations: Water, metal, rare metals, oil and even radioactive materials. Prospecting is often necessary for discovering resources that could be mined and you‘ll need to scavenge through the ruins of fallen empires and discover rare artifacts from a lost age.

There is also a separate system for discovery of technology, formations and units. Your Research and development path is different every game and this ensures that the route to success is different every time, too.


Explore 150+ stratagems and deploy them as you see fit.

Stratagems are complete plans and series of actions that allow you to complete vast swathes of micromanagement tasks simply and easily. This system can also help you respond quickly to a crisis or unforeseen situation.




Discover and design 30+ different unit types such as light tanks, walkers, missile launchers and much more. Design your units to fit the needs of your army, choose their loadouts, balance speed and armor and create the exact land and air forces that your nation needs. Shadow Empire comes with over 100 different formation types, deploy Infantry regiments, Siege Battalions, Tank Divisions and so much more.



Fight battles with detailed combat resolution taking into account factors as readiness, morale, supply, experience, entrenchment, landscape, recon, rivers, weapon and armor technologies, concentric attacks, leader skills and posture stratagems.


Discover and research over 100 different fields of technology.
The game starts at a low level of technology as your nation drags itself out of the ruins of a galactic collapse, but at the end of the tech tree you’ll find knowledge that allows you to build exciting technologies such as ICBMs, laser guns, atomic missile launchers, walkers, shield-generators and more.

Manage a realistic supply chain that has real consequences, running out of ammo could mean that your military is unable to attack or defend itself. Running out of food could have even more dire implications.

Extend your logistical network capabilities by building roads or rails as well as constructing truck stations, maglev stations and supply base assets. Develop transport helicopters and cargo planes to set up Air Bridges to support Invasions or to drop supplies into isolated positions.

©2020 Slitherine Ltd. and Matrix Games Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Shadow Empire, Slitherine Ltd, Matrix Games Ltd. and their Logos are all trademarks of Slitherine Ltd. All other marks and trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Developed by VR Designs.