We’ve made it to the other side!
It’s a new year, new dawn, new dimension – you know the drill.
For those in the know, we’ve been working on a new brand identity and upgrading our offerings. We are thrilled to share that we have finally completed our brand (well, enough of it anyway) and we now have a whole new look!
Did we time it with the turn of a new year amidst an inordinately bizarre period of uncertainty that warrants an escape to an immersive, arguably less hostile science fiction universe? Let’s just say that we did.
Hello, World. Welcome to our new website!
We’d like to take this opportunity to tell you a little bit about our story.
Takamo Universe's origins are in the eighties. We created Takamo, a play-by-mail game of interstellar expansion and conquest, in 1982.
Our players could choose to be agricultural corporations, cybernetic races, independent civilization builders, mining corporations or trade corporations. Or if they were more adventurous - nomads, pirates or smugglers. They would adopt political ideologies that would impact their actions and consequences - castes, monarchies, oligarchies, or democratic, communist or totalitarian societies. The idea was to build alliances, navigate space and survive by any means necessary.
As game moderators, we collected turns on paper sent in by mail from all over the United States. Those days we could get a letter out to the coast in 3 days! We processed them on a PC with DOS 3.0, a 10MB hard drive, and a dot matrix printer.
Over the years our player base grew - and so did the rules and requirements of the game. We added battleships, forts and marines for our planets. We added planetary torpedoes and missile ships. Fighters, heavy marines, guerrillas - our players really took their conquests to heart.
Takamo became an active community of space opera and science fiction hobbyists. Our playtesters and game designers would get together for all-you-can-eat taco nights, usually closing the taco house down. The game came to life with each passing week, and eventually we began to amass a large amount of lore. The growing scale of the game meant that you could, in the words of our founder Randall Ritnour, "live your own novel".
And so grew our collection of stories, characters, empires, aircraft, vehicles, armor, interstellar trade routes, orbital trade centers and star systems. Takamo Universe took on a life of its own.
Over the last 40 years, we have collaborated with hundreds of creatives to build what is now the largest, most intricate space opera in history.
We are creating, formalizing and making available to the world a brand new Takamo Universe. We have 15 novels in print and digital formats, 8 of which are audiobooks too. Several more in production. We are collaborating with a community of authors, artists and curators who are working hard to create high quality science fiction for you to enjoy.
Please do take a minute to explore our snazzy new internet digs. Our hope is that your curiosity is piqued, you try a book or two, and that you inevitably end up happily lost in our space opera. It’s one for the ages, this one!
Our vision for this chapter of ours is an expansive Takamo Universe canon for creators to tell stories for generations to come.
As we enter a new era of connectivity, creativity and culture - who knows what shape Takamo is going to take? As they say - "everything is on its way to becoming something else."
