Before you download — a friendly heads-up

Thanks for your interest in Protostar! This project is still under active, early development, and the current release is not yet considered fully playable. You're welcome to try it, explore, and follow along — just go in with the right expectations. Here's a sample of what to expect:

  • Bugs and rough edges
  • Incomplete or missing features
  • Visual and technical placeholders
  • NPRs should be considered placeholders
  • Inconsistencies compared to Aurora
  • Incorrect or unbalanced formulas
  • Save games are frequently lost to frequent updates and game-breaking changes
  • The game is not yet playable from start to finish

If that sounds like something you're curious to watch unfold, you're in the right place. If you'd rather wait for a more complete experience, the roadmap tracks where things stand and what's coming next.

System Requirements

Protostar's performance depends on single-thread CPU speed (the simulation), not your GPU or core count. A faster single-thread CPU and enough RAM matter most.

Minimum (preliminary)
CPU Modern 4-core x86-64 (Intel Core i5 8th-gen / AMD Ryzen 3 3300 class or better)
RAM 8 GB
GPU Any functional display — the game host does not use the GPU
Storage ~1 GB
Host OS Windows 10/11 or a recent Linux distribution
Runtime .NET 10 (ships self-contained)
Client A modern evergreen browser (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, or Safari)
Recommended (preliminary)
CPU Modern 6-core x86-64 (Intel Core i5 12th-gen / AMD Ryzen 5 5600 class or better)
RAM 16 GB
GPU Any functional display — the game host does not use the GPU
Storage ~1 GB; SSD recommended
Host OS Windows 11 or a recent Linux distribution
Runtime .NET 10
Client A modern evergreen browser (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, or Safari), kept up to date

Preliminary estimates. Protostar is in active development — these requirements will be adjusted as the simulation and optimization evolve.

Last updated 2026-08-02

How We Measure System Requirements

How we measure system requirements

Protostar is not a GPU-bound game. It has two parts with very different bottlenecks:

  • The simulation host — a headless .NET process that runs the game's ECS simulation. This is where almost all the work happens, and it's single-threaded and bound by CPU speed and RAM. More CPU cores don't help it; a faster single-thread CPU and enough RAM do. The GPU plays no role here.
  • The client — a browser tab that renders the UI and galaxy map (lightweight 2D, Vue + PixiJS). Any machine that comfortably runs a modern browser tab is enough.

Because the host is single-threaded, the player-facing performance metric is how fast the simulation runs — how many in-game days advance per real second at the "30 days/sec" speed — not frame rate. On large late-game galaxies the sim can't always hold full speed; the game stays correct, it just advances more slowly.

What "meets requirements" means

A machine meets the requirements if it sustains an acceptable simulation speed on a large galaxy without stuttering — not if it renders at 60 FPS. A high-clock modern CPU matters far more than many cores or a powerful GPU.

How we test

We run a headless benchmark that drives the real simulation against a large, worst-case galaxy and measures:

  • Sustained simulation speed (in-game days per real second) at the 30 days/sec preset
  • Frame-time stability — the slowest 1% and 0.1% of frames, which catch stutter
  • Peak memory (RAM) and garbage-collection pressure

The benchmark is reproducible (the same galaxy every run) and runs the same simulation systems the game uses, so the numbers reflect the real bottleneck rather than a synthetic guess.

Why these are preliminary

Protostar is in active development. The simulation grows heavier as features land, optimization shifts the numbers over time, and target hardware evolves. These requirements are a living estimate: we'll adjust them as development progresses and as we validate on a wider range of real hardware.

The safest bet today: a faster single-thread CPU and enough RAM.
Latest Release
0.1.0-alpha
Released 2026-08-24
Linux (x64) .tar.gz · 110.2 MB Windows (x64) .zip · 111 MB
Linux (x64) 3e878e59d95d05652abf45e753f833ab4839c282c880b7c432f90ab2a819f62a
Windows (x64) 6742933d585e574db5eecba6e92faa2d8ac1b03e443b4f22ca6ff8ecfc475ec6
Install & Run

No installer and nothing to install — the package is self-contained (the runtime ships inside). Extract it, start the game host, and open the address it serves in your browser.

Windows (x64)
  1. Extract the .zip you downloaded above (right-click → Extract All), anywhere you like.
  2. Open the extracted folder and double-click protostar.bat. If Windows Firewall asks, allow access on private networks.
  3. A console window opens — that's the game host. Leave it open.
  4. Open http://localhost:4444 in Chrome, Edge, or Firefox. The browser is the game's client — nothing else to install.
Linux (x64)
  1. Extract: tar xzf protostar4x-0.1.0-alpha-linux-x64.tar.gz
  2. Run the game host: cd protostar4x-0.1.0-alpha-linux-x64 && ./protostar
  3. Leave the terminal open — it's the game host.
  4. Open http://localhost:4444 in a recent Firefox or Chrome.
Verify your download (optional)

Save checksums-sha256.txt into the folder with the archive, then:

sha256sum -c --ignore-missing checksums-sha256.txt
  • Saves live in the Saves/ folder next to the launcher — back it up before upgrading to a newer release.
  • The game is only reachable while the host console/terminal is running.
  • To play from another device on the same network, open http://<this-computer's-ip>:4444 in that device's browser.
  • Hit a bug? Please report it on the issue tracker.
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