Homeworld is a real-time strategy video game created by Relic Entertainment and released by Sierra Studios on September 28, 1999, for Windows. The science fiction game is set in space and follows the Kushan exiles from the planet Kharak after their home planet is destroyed by the Taiidan Empire because the Kushans developed hyperspace jump technology. The survivors travel with their spacecraft-constructing mothership to reclaim their ancient homeworld, Hiigara, from the Taiidan. Along the journey, they encounter pirates, mercenaries, traders, and rebels. In each level, players collect resources, build a fleet, and use it to destroy enemy ships and complete mission goals. The player’s fleet remains the same across levels and can move in fully three-dimensional space within each level instead of being limited to two dimensions.

The game was developed over two years and was Relic Entertainment’s first project. Studio co-founders Alex Garden and Luke Moloney were the director and lead programmer. The original story idea was created by writer David J. Williams, while the script was written by Martin Cirulis and the background lore was written by author Arinn Dembo. The music was composed by Paul Ruskay for his Studio X Labs, with the exception of Samuel Barber’s 1936 Adagio for Strings, which became the game’s main theme, and a licensed track from the English rock band Yes, titled Homeworld (The Ladder).

According to Metacritic, a review aggregator, Homeworld was the highest-rated computer game of 1999 and the third-highest rated game on any platform that year. Critics praised the game’s graphics, unique gameplay, and multiplayer system, though some had mixed opinions about the story and difficulty. The game sold over 500,000 copies in its first six months and won several awards for best strategy and best game of the year. In 2003, the game’s source code was released, leading to unofficial versions for Mac OS X and Linux. Four additional games in the Homeworld series were later released: Homeworld: Cataclysm (2000), Homeworld 2 (2003), Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak (2016), and Homeworld 3 (2024). In 2013, Gearbox Software acquired the rights to the series from THQ and released a remastered collection of Homeworld and Homeworld 2 in 2015 for Windows and OS X, which was also highly praised.

Gameplay

Homeworld is a real-time strategy game set in space. Like most real-time strategy games, the gameplay focuses on gathering resources, building military forces, and using them to defeat enemies and complete objectives. The game includes both single-player and multiplayer modes. The single-player mode features a story-driven campaign divided into 16 levels. Each level has a specific goal that must be completed to finish it, though the overall mission goal may change as the story progresses. After each level, a hand-drawn, black-and-white cutscene with voice narration is shown.

The central ship of the player's fleet is the mothership, a large base that builds other ships. Unlike other spacecraft, the mothership cannot move in the single-player campaign. Each level includes stationary objects like rocks, gas clouds, or dust clouds that can be mined by specialized ships called resource collectors. These ships carry resources to the mothership, which is the only way to spend money in the game. Players use resources to build new ships, which are created by the mothership. Buildable ships include resource collectors, fighters, corvettes, frigates, destroyers, heavy cruisers, and specialized ships like research vessels and repair corvettes. Fighter ships must return to support ships or the mothership to refuel, while salvage corvettes can capture enemy ships and bring them to the mothership to join the player's fleet. Some levels allow players to unlock new ship types by capturing enemy ships, researching at a research vessel, or through story events. At the start of the campaign, players can choose to control the "Kushan" or "Taiidan" fleet, which changes ship designs and some specialized options but does not affect the story or gameplay.

Each level’s playable area is a sphere divided by a circular plane. Players can move ships anywhere in the sphere individually or in groups. The game’s camera can follow any ship and show it from any angle, or display the ship’s perspective. Players can also view the "Sensors Manager," which shows the entire map and all visible ships. Ships can be grouped into formations like wedges or spheres for tactical advantages during combat. Non-specialized ships are armed with weapons such as ballistic guns, beam weapons, and missiles. As ships take damage, their health bar decreases, visual effects like fire and smoke appear, and they may eventually explode.

After completing all mission objectives, players can choose to make a hyperspace jump to end the level. This can be delayed to gather more resources or build more ships. When the hyperspace jump begins, all fighters and corvettes return to the mothership, and larger ships line up next to it. Blue rectangles, called hyperspace gates, pass over the ships, moving them to the next level. Players keep their fleet between levels, and the difficulty of each mission slightly adjusts based on the number of ships the player has at the start of the level. In multiplayer games, the goal is usually to destroy the enemy mothership(s) and carriers, though other victory conditions are available. In multiplayer mode, the mothership can move slowly, and research options are available through a technology tree rather than story events. Multiple maps are available, and players can choose to disable research requirements or fuel consumption for smaller ships.

Plot

A century before the game begins, the Kushan, people who look like humans from the desert planet Kharak, found a spaceship buried in the sand. Inside the ship was a stone map showing Kharak and another planet called "Hiigara," which means "home." This discovery brought the clans of Kharak together, as they had already learned they were not originally from the planet. Over the next century, the Kushan worked together to build a large mothership designed to carry 600,000 people to Hiigara. A neuroscientist named Karan S'jet connected her brain to the ship as Fleet Command to reduce the need for a large crew. The game starts with the mothership's first journey, testing its hyperspace drive, which allows faster-than-light travel to reach a new location. Instead of finding a support ship, the mothership encounters a hostile alien carrier. After driving the aliens away, the mothership returns to Kharak to find the planet destroyed by another alien fleet. Only the 600,000 migrants in suspended animation survived. A captured enemy captain explains that the destruction of Kharak was because the Kushan broke a 4,000-year-old treaty between the Taiidan Empire and the Kushan, which banned the Kushan from developing hyperspace technology.

After destroying both alien fleets, the Kushan fleet begins its journey to Hiigara. Their long trip across the galaxy takes them through asteroid fields, a giant nebula, a ship graveyard, and several imperial outposts. Along the way, they fight descendants of Hiigaran ancestors who worship a nebula as a holy place and prevent outsiders from leaving. They also meet the Bentusi, a race of traders who sell them advanced technology. When the Kushan learn the Bentusi helped the exiles, the empire tries to destroy them but is stopped by the Kushan fleet. The Bentusi reveal that the Kushan once ruled their own empire before being destroyed by the Taiidan and exiled from Hiigara. In thanks, the Bentusi promise to summon the Galactic Council to recognize the Kushan's claim to Hiigara.

As their journey continues, the Kushan fleet helps the rebel imperial captain Elson, who tells them that Kharak's destruction caused a civil war in the Taiidan Empire. After helping Elson access a rebel communication network, he shares information about Hiigara's defenses. In a final battle above Hiigara, Elson arrives with a rebel fleet to fight the Imperial fleet led by the emperor. The emperor puts Karan into a coma using her neural connection to the mothership, but the combined Kushan and rebel fleets defeat the emperor. Soon after, the Galactic Council arrives and confirms the Kushan's claim to Hiigara, a lush planet unlike the desert world of Kharak. When the Kushan land, Karan insists she be the last to step onto the planet.

Development

Relic Entertainment was started in Vancouver, Canada, on June 1, 1997. The company’s first game was Homeworld. Alex Garden and Luke Moloney were the director and lead programmer, while Erin Daly was the designer and Aaron Kambeitz was the lead artist. Garden was 22 years old when he started the company. Writer David J. Williams helped create the original story idea. The script was written by Martin Cirulis, and the background story was written by Arinn Dembo. Cirulis and Dembo, who worked together under the name "Marcus Skyler," were chosen by the publisher, Sierra Studios, during development to expand the story. Sierra agreed to publish the game early in development based on two whiteboard presentations and no playable demo, as Garden said.

It took more than two years to develop the game. The gameplay systems were mostly complete by the final eight months, which the team used to improve the game and add features like the Sensors Manager view. In a February 1999 interview, Garden said testers found the game harder to play than the developers did. This led to changes, such as adding short briefings at the start of levels to explain new ideas. The game was originally expected to release by the end of 1998. Garden said in a 1999 interview that creating the core game was easier than making it as high quality as the team wanted. He added that Sierra did not push the team to release the game early, but fans were impatient. Some ideas, such as ship customization and different unit types for the Kushan and Taiidan fleets, were removed because they could not be done well enough.

Relic did not plan to make a real-time strategy game. Garden and the team focused on creating exciting large-scale space battles and chose the genre to support that goal. They did not try to make new gameplay changes in the real-time strategy genre but instead worked on making the genre work in a fully 3D space to create the space battles they wanted. Garden told Computer Games Magazine in 1998 that choosing the real-time strategy genre was almost a chance occurrence. The original Star Wars films and the 1970s TV series Battlestar Galactica were major inspirations. Garden said his original idea was to make a 3D game that looked like Star Wars but had a story like Battlestar Galactica. He also wanted to improve on the first-person space flight game Star Wars: X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, which he felt limited the player’s view of battles. Instead, the team let players control a whole fleet from an outside view. Art director Rob Cunningham said the visual design was inspired by sci-fi artists Peter Elson, Chris Foss, and John Harris, as well as Star Wars movies and Masamune Shirow. The vertical shape of the mothership and the horizontal galaxy in the background were designed to help players orient themselves in 3D space.

The focus on combat influenced other areas of development. Garden said the team worked hard to create high-quality ship models, computer-controlled flight tactics, and maneuvers like Immelmann turns because players would likely watch the first battle closely. They believed advanced unit-level maneuvers in large fleet battles would make the game more immersive and give it a Star Wars feel. To enhance this, the team recorded thousands of small sound clips instead of using stock files. These clips were combined to show exactly which ships were taking which actions and modified by the audio engine to match the ships’ positions and motion relative to the player’s camera. The game’s working title was Spaghetti Ball, chosen because Garden imagined battles as a tangled mass of flight paths inside a larger space. Early previews worried about controlling many ships in 3D space, but Garden said moving the camera and controlling the fleet were separate actions, making them easier to design and use.

The sound design, audio production, and music were handled by composer Paul Ruskay and his company Studio X Labs. Ruskay started working on the game in October 1998 and founded Studio X Labs in February 1999. He used a recording of Samuel Barber’s 1936 piece Adagio for Strings in a scene where the player discovers the destruction of Kharak. The piece became a central theme on the soundtrack. Garden suggested using Adagio for Strings after hearing it on the radio and feeling it fit the game’s mood perfectly. Ruskay had a new recording made by a University of California choir because the cost of the original recording was too high. The closing song, Homeworld (The Ladder), was written by the English rock band Yes. Yes was in Vancouver recording The Ladder when they learned about Homeworld. Lead singer Jon Anderson wanted to write a song for a video game and created lyrics that fit the game. The soundtrack was released in a 13-track album with the Game of the Year Edition of Homeworld in May 2000 and again in a 37-track digital album with the Homeworld Remastered Collection in March 2015.

Reception

Homeworld was highly praised by critics when it was released. According to the review site Metacritic, it was the best computer game of 1999 and the third-best game on any platform that year. The game’s graphics were widely admired. Michael Ryan from GameSpot said the game had "some of the most impressive graphics ever," while Jason Levine from Computer Games Magazine wrote that "no game—ever—has made space itself look like this." Eurogamer praised the game’s "big, brash, and colorful" backgrounds, a point also noted by Levine and John Keefer from GameSpy. Many reviewers, including Vincent Lopez from IGN, highlighted the detailed and varied spaceships, and Jason Samuel from GamePro noted that the game used its graphics engine to create complex cutscenes instead of using pre-recorded videos. Greg Fortune from Computer Gaming World said the rotatable camera was a standout feature, allowing players to view the action from any angle or ship’s perspective, which created a "sweeping cinematic feel." The game’s sound and music were also praised. Levine said the sound was "on par with the graphics," noting how it changed when players zoomed in or out of battles. Eurogamer and Lopez praised the "atmospheric" soundtrack for setting the mood.

Critics also praised the game’s gameplay innovations. Vincent Lopez wrote that Relic "may have just changed strategy games forever." Reviewers highlighted the full 3D nature of the game, which made it stand out from standard real-time strategy games. Levine said the 3D elements made the game unique, while Michael Ryan noted that the base gameplay was similar to other strategy games but the 3D features and connected mission structure made it "a different breed" of game. Greg Fortune focused on the difficulty of the missions, praising the variety of tactics needed and calling the fleet battles "some of the best ever seen in a computer game." Levine, Ryan, Keefer, and Lopez all noted that the connected mission structure was an innovation in the genre. By limiting resources and using the same fleet across missions, Homeworld turned disconnected missions into "chapters" of a continuous story. This made players feel more connected to their fleet and added depth to the strategy. However, Keefer and Levine noted that this increased difficulty, especially for casual players, as early decisions could make later missions harder. Ryan and Keefer also said the 3D movement was disorienting at first, though Levine and Samuel said the controls were "as easy as possible."

The game’s single-player story received mixed reviews. Lopez said it would "keep players rapt with attention," and Samuel called it a "superb story." Levine praised it as "the first computer game to capture the grandeur and epic feel of the Star Wars movies." However, Eurogamer called it "(mostly) engaging," and Keefer said the story had a "fluid and intriguing" plot but repeated the same theme of "Kill the enemy" in each mission. Ryan described the single-player game as "meager." The multiplayer mode was widely praised, especially when playing against human opponents. Levine called it "a joy," and Eurogamer said it was the game’s strongest feature. Eurogamer and Samuel also noted that the multiplayer mode was more difficult and engaging than the single-player story.

Legacy

Homeworld was sold in large numbers and received many awards. It sold over 250,000 copies in its first weeks and more than 500,000 copies in the first six months. In the United States alone, sales reached 95,000 copies by the end of 1999, while sales in Germany reached 60,000 copies by April 2000. It started in third place on Germany's computer game sales list for October 1999 but dropped to 25th, 31st, and 32nd place in the next three months. Homeworld also received a "Silver" sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA), which means it sold at least 100,000 copies in the United Kingdom.

Before its release, Homeworld won Best Strategy Game at the 1999 Game Critics Awards. It was nominated for "Computer Game of the Year" and "Computer Strategy Game of the Year" at the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences' 3rd Annual Interactive Achievement Awards. It was named Game of the Year by IGN and PC Gamer, won Strategy Game of the Year by Computer Gaming World, and was nominated for the same award by Computer Games Magazine. It also won Best Original Storyline and Best Original Score at the 2000 Eurogamer Gaming Globes awards. Additionally, it received PC Gamer's "Special Achievement in Music" and "Special Achievement in Art Direction" prizes. In 2003, Maximum PC said Homeworld "did what no game had successfully done before: create a truly three-dimensional space-combat strategy game." HardwareMAG and Computer Gaming World both called it "revolutionary" and "ground-breaking" in the real-time strategy genre in 2003 and 2004, respectively.

Homeworld inspired a series of real-time strategy games set in the same universe. In September 2000, Sierra Studios released a stand-alone expansion called Homeworld: Cataclysm by Barking Dog Studios. The story takes place 15 years after the events of Homeworld and follows the Hiigaran clan Kiith Somtaaw as it tries to protect Hiigara from a parasitic entity called the Beast. A full sequel, Homeworld 2, was developed by Relic Entertainment and released by Sierra in late 2003. Set a century after the original game, it features the Hiigarans fighting against a powerful, nomadic raider race called the Vaygr. A fourth game, Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak, was developed by Blackbird Interactive and published by Gearbox Software in 2016. This game is a prequel set on the planet Kharak and follows a war between Kushan clans during the discovery of a buried spaceship from Homeworld. Gearbox announced a fifth game, Homeworld 3, on August 30, 2019. Developed by Blackbird, it was partially funded through a crowdfunding platform called Fig and released on May 13, 2024.

In 2003, Relic Entertainment released the source code for Homeworld under license to members of the Relic Developer Network. This code was used to create versions of the game for other platforms, such as Linux. Additional spinoff games in the Homeworld series include a pinball table DLC for Pinball FX by Zen Studios in August 2022, a tabletop role-playing game called Homeworld Revelations by Modiphius Entertainment in September 2022, and Homeworld Mobile, a free-to-play multiplayer real-time strategy game for iOS and Android by Stratosphere Games in October 2022.

Remaster

In 2004, Relic Entertainment was purchased by THQ. In 2007, THQ said it had bought the rights to the game series from Relic and Sierra. No new games in the series were made until THQ went bankrupt in 2013. On April 22, 2013, Gearbox Software announced it had bought the rights to the series at an auction for 1.35 million US dollars. On July 19, 2013, Gearbox said it would make remakes of Homeworld and Homeworld 2 as Homeworld HD, later renamed Homeworld Remastered Collection. The next month, the collection’s producer, Brian Burleson, said Gearbox had bought the property to create a collection that included original and remastered versions of the games. He also said neither game had playable code when purchased, so Gearbox recreated many of the original development tools with help from the Homeworld mod community. A later message from a Gearbox developer thanked the mod community for helping make the original code playable on modern computers. The expansion Homeworld: Cataclysm was not remade, even though Gearbox wanted to, because they could not find the original source code.

The Homeworld Remastered Collection was released digitally for Windows on February 25, 2015, by Gearbox, and for OS X on August 6, 2015, by Aspyr Media. A retail version of the PC edition was released by Ubisoft on May 7, 2015. The collection includes original and remastered versions of the two games. The "classic" version removes local multiplayer and a licensed song, while the "remastered" version adds a new game engine, upgraded visuals, models, and sound. It initially removed some features from Homeworld, such as the fuel system and tactical ship formations, but some were added back in a 2016 update.

As of February 2017, Steam Spy estimated that more than 700,000 copies of the Homeworld Remastered Collection had been sold on Steam. Critics praised the remastered version for its story, which was called "fantastic" and "emotional," and its gameplay, which was described as still entertaining 16 years after the original release. However, some reviewers noted that changes to the game engine caused issues, such as bugs and features that did not match the original game. Overall, the updated version was highly praised, with one reviewer saying, "Homeworld is simply incredible and everyone should play it."