No Horizons is a Massive Multi-player Online Turn based Strategy game. It pits players against thousands of other real players in a vast science-fiction setting where they must face the challenge presented by both the setting and the actions of their neighbours.

The world of No Horizons is a persistent game world that moves along constantly. Each turn will be of a predetermined length and players are able to update their Culture's cities, units and relationships every turn. Some actions (such as inter-player diplomacy) might take place at any time that's convenient.

A Massive Multiplayer game is a game played online by up to (in the case of No Horizons) fifty thousand players at once. While they may not all be online at once, each player is able to log in to the game to update their Culture's actions and reactions while the game world ticks on at its preset pace.

In No Horizons a players takes the role of the leading body (or sole leader) of a Culture of beings abducted and left to fend for themselves within the Sphere. A player must guide the technological and social development of their Culture. They need to control the armed forces of the Culture while gathering the resources it will need to grow and thrive. They will need to direct the building of cities and epic projects to create a civilisation worthy of being writ large in legend.

No. Each game will have up to 50,000 players, but different games will be created to service larger player populations, different time zones and different paces of play. No matter where a player actually resides in the real world and how much time they have to devote to the game No Horizons will have a game that is suited to them.

Not at all. No Horizons is specifically designed to cater for a large number of player on each server. Due to the turn-based structure of the game each player's demands on the server are less than they would be in other sorts of games (online MMORPGs for instance). Taking this into account ICNH Games have developed a specialised architecture that will allow players to play on servers with huge populations without a noticeable effect on gameplay.

There are tactical advantages in being last, just as there are in being first. A player who moves after his enemies might see what they are planning and be able to react to them. A player who moves first might be able to jump the gun on his foes. A combination of both might garner some slight tactical advantage over one's foes. In reality, the greatest advantage will come from well-thought out strategies and clever alliances.

The ability to micro-manage a Culture can be an advantage, but we realise that not every player is going to have that much time to be able to devote to a game. With that in mind we have established in-game systems to allow a player to put contingency plans in place so that their units and Cultures are able to react to events even if the players misses turns. Sure, these will not be as effective as a more hands on approach, but missing a few turns here and there will hardly be the end of the world.

We haven't made any set goals for No Horizons. While we have included an over-arching storyline that involves the ultimate fate of the Sphere we've left it up to players to decide if they want this or something else from the game. Part of the satisfaction of this type of empire-building strategy game is creating something that will endure the test of time and the best way to do that is to make personal goals and try to meet them (or hopefully exceed them). It's up to individual players and alliances to decide exactly what they want from No Horizons and then go out and get it!

We've designed No Horizons so that the turn structure is very flexible. We want to set up servers that fit different types of players in different time-zones. After our final beta-test we'll have narrowed down people's favourite times to play and structure the turn updates to best suit those times.

If what you were asking was "how long does it take to play one turn?" then it could be anywhere from a few minutes to... well as long as you like. We've designed No Horizons so that players can set preferences and contingencies to manage a great deal of their Culture or they can get in and micromanage almost every detail. We don't want to tell you how much time to spend on a turn, since we don'tknow how much time you have!