Planned Release Date: Q4 2026

About This Game

A space-trading empire. With cats.

Start with one battered freighter, a few thousand credits and a hold that smells of catnip. Buy low at one port, sell high at the next, and haggle -- the Otters remember an insult. About 20,000 sectors to start, all of them out there at once, all of them moving while you sleep.

A live universe that does not wait

Thirteen NPC factions roam it with you. Ports restock in real time, planets produce by the hour, rival Houses expand, and the Kennel front creeps forward a sector at a time. Every jump takes real seconds, so a fight is something you watch unfold rather than a number in a log.

Deep, and all of it connected

Trade routes worth guarding, fighters and mines to hold your sectors, cloaks and scouting drones, worldseeds, planets you colonise and arm, Houses with shared fleets, bounties, the Gilded Whisker Exchange that holds every credit you own, the tavern, and a dice game you will lose money at.

Fly it yourself in the Tangles

Some sectors are too thick with wreckage for a capital hull. Park at the mouth, climb into a single-seat fighter and fly it first person. Strip wrecks for parts, reverse-engineer every part you salvage, fit your chassis slot by slot, and win sectors in Ritual Combat when the Bristleback Clans come to settle it.

M.O.T.I.S.

The most advanced company in the galaxy. Its core worlds build what no shipyard can match, its Showroom sells prototypes, and every captain flies with a free M.O.T.I.S. escape pod that gets them home when the worst happens. The founder, Ender Knight, runs it -- and you may have to negotiate with him.

Powers with opinions

The Concord polices the core. Raccoon packs extort the lanes. The Otter Freehold sells to its friends. The Kennel Compact declares its wars before it fights them. And out past the Black Knot, something is waiting that the charts do not name.

A galaxy that never ends

Fly past the last charted sector and the map keeps going. New space is charted as captains reach it, stranger the further out you go, and nobody has been to the edge. Some of what comes back from out there is only rumour. Some of it is not.

Your server, your rules, your MMO

Play alone, host your friends from the main menu over Steam, or run a dedicated server on a spare PC or a rented host and keep the universe for yourself. You set how fast it runs and how big it starts, and you can grow it later without starting over. You decide who gets in and who gets banned, and there is no player cap unless you set one. Tested with 2,600 players on one server so far. The world keeps turning for months, saves itself, and comes back from a crash where it stopped. Your captain carries between worlds.

Coming soon

Catnip Wars 2: Empires is coming to Steam in Q4 2026. Wishlist it, and play the original Catnip Wars while you wait.

AI Generated Content Disclosure

The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this:

Some of the game's 3D models and textures were created with generative AI tools, and parts of the in-game writing were drafted with AI assistance. Everything was reviewed, edited and assembled by the developer. Nothing is generated by AI while you play.