Star Sonata

Star Sonata is a space trading game, where players explore space and trade goods from one space station to another for economic gain. Players also control automated ships through programmed command sequences in order to patrol areas, assist in combat or engage in trade of commodities even while a player is offline. At higher levels, players build custom space stations on planets and moons to extract resources. Items can be manufactured on player-controlled space stations and bought from colonies on planets with ancient ruins.

Unlike many MMORPGs, combat in Star Sonata is in real-time and requires manual aiming. This results in a wide variety of combat tactics, such as dodging to evade enemy fire, using combat aids to deploy drones, boost shields or overload weapons, and maneuvering around terrain elements such as planets and asteroids which block attacks. Star Sonata also has an open PvP system in which players can attack other players near their skill level.

Developer Adam Miller said he designed Star Sonata "out of a nostalgic childhood dream of space adventure." After three years in development and a public beta, Star Sonata was released in October 2004. Development continued from 2004 to 2011, with features and content zones being added every few months.

In a January 2008 interview, Owner Jeff Landauer stated that 12,132 unique characters had logged in to play in the last 2 days and 11 hours. Landauer has also reported that the number of paying players increased from 300 in August 2005 to 854 in July 2008.

In 2004, Star Sonata was reviewed by GameZone which gave the game an overall rating of 7.7/10, noting that the game offered "interesting options for controlling your own AI fleets and space stations." In 2005, the independent video game site Game Tunnel recommended the game for those who "enjoy exploring, conflict, and building a name for yourself" while noting that the game's PvP conflict "can badly affect new players" who are too weak to fight back. The updated Star Sonata 2, released in 2011, was one of 3 role-playing games listed on GameSpy’s 101 Free PC Games of 2012.