STARKNELL
Roguelike space autobattler
$7.99 · Designed for iPad. Not verified for macOS.
STARKNELL is a dark retro-CRT roguelike autobattler. You command a doomed deep-space expedition through the green-phosphor terminal of its own mainframe — routing a fleet across a branching sector chart, reading the casualty telegrams, and spending the only currency that matters: time.
THE CLOCK IS THE ENEMY
Every jump and every engagement ages every captain by a year or more. A lifespan is consumed within a single run. Old age kills mid-run, and death — by age or by fire — is permanent.
BATTLES YOU COMMAND, NOT PILOT
Assemble a fleet under a command-capacity budget. Set your rows — vanguard draws fire, screen intercepts, rear stays protected — then commit. Combat resolves in real time, full-colour pixel art under a CRT shader; you intervene only through captain abilities. No unit micro. No retreat.
THE SECTOR SPEAKS
Many nodes are not battles. Anomalies, derelicts, distress signals: branching text encounters with uncertain outcomes, and quest chains that resolve jumps later. What you choose persists.
THE CONTINUANCE PROTOCOL
A recruited Oracle hull can research the one technology that cheats the clock: a cybernetic conversion worth twelve years, carrying one concealed side-effect per procedure — revealed only after it is applied. At the end of the sector, the Provenance Ark reads your crew manifest for the oldest name.
BETWEEN RUNS
Two things persist. Unlocks widen what can appear — new hulls, captain archetypes, encounter packs. Standing doctrine is the other half: every expedition earns authorizations, spent across a sixteen-node tree and reassigned for free before the next one, so it is a shape you chose rather than a checklist you grind. Every run still starts from a fresh fleet. The memorial wall remembers everyone.
A run takes 10 to 25 minutes. An adaptive darksynth score follows you down.
ONE PRICE, FOREVER
No ads. No in-app purchases. No account. Fully offline. Buy it once; own all of it.
Ratings & Reviews
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TRANSMISSION 003 — FIELD CORRECTIONS
• Doctrine contact intel now reads as described.
• Hostile fleets vary their formation run to run.
• Two signal chains that rarely fired now reach you.
• Battle: hits land on the right hull, fire reaches its target, ships no longer overlap.
• Captains falling back keep firing while in range.
• Text size follows your device setting.
No ads, no purchases, no account.
The developer, Machinaut Studios LLC, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
- Seller
- Machinaut Studios LLC
- Size
- 61 MB
- Category
- Strategy
- Compatibility
Requires iOS 15.0 or later.
- iPhone
Requires iOS 15.0 or later. - iPad
Requires iPadOS 15.0 or later. - iPod touch
Requires iOS 15.0 or later. - Mac
Requires macOS 12.0 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later. - Apple Vision
Requires visionOS 1.0 or later.
- iPhone
- Languages
- English
- Age Rating
13+
- 13+
- Frequent
Cartoon or Fantasy Violence
Guns or Other Weapons
Infrequent
Mature or Suggestive Themes
Horror/Fear Themes
- Copyright
- © 2026 Machinaut Studios LLC
