Galaxy Domination

A turn-based 4X strategy game for up to 8 commanders per campaign, played asynchronously — you submit your turn, the empire keeps running while you're away, and results resolve once everyone (or the timer) catches up.

Stack

This is a pnpm workspace monorepo with three packages:

Package	What it is	Tech
frontend	The web client	SvelteKit, Vite, Vitest, Playwright
server	The API server	Fastify, better-sqlite3, Zod, Nodemailer
shared	Types and logic shared between frontend/server	Plain TypeScript

Data is stored in a local SQLite file (server/data/game.db) — no external database service required for development.

Requirements

• Node.js 22+
• pnpm 11+

Getting started

pnpm install

# copy env templates and adjust if needed
cp server/.env.example server/.env
cp frontend/.env.example frontend/.env

# run both apps (in separate terminals)
pnpm dev:server   # API on http://localhost:4000
pnpm dev:web      # web app on http://localhost:5173

Open http://localhost:5173 in your browser.

Environment variables

server/.env

Variable	Default	Notes
PORT	4000	API server port
FRONTEND_ORIGIN	http://localhost:5173	Must match wherever the frontend actually runs, or CORS will reject requests
DB_PATH	./data/game.db	SQLite file location
SMTP_HOST etc.	unset	Optional. Without SMTP config, verification/reset emails are logged to the server console instead of sent

frontend/.env

Variable	Default	Notes
PUBLIC_API_URL	http://localhost:4000	Base URL of the API server

Other scripts

pnpm check           # typecheck frontend + server
pnpm build:web       # production build of the frontend

Tests

Most of the rules live in shared and the turn resolution in server, so those two suites carry the weight — run all three.

pnpm --filter @botf/shared test          # game rules
pnpm --filter @botf/server test          # API + turn resolution
pnpm --filter frontend test:unit --run   # component + unit tests (drop --run to watch)
pnpm --filter frontend test:e2e          # Playwright end-to-end

Run vitest through --filter, not from the repo root: the root picks up both the server and frontend projects and they collide on the same test database.

Features

• Auth — email/password registration with email verification, login, logout, forgot/reset password, all backed by session cookies.
• Campaigns — found a new empire (choose galaxy size and commander count) or join an existing one with an invite code. Empires are placed on a procedurally generated galaxy grid.
• Admin panel — manage users, roles, and game sessions (visible only to accounts with the admin role).

Test accounts

In non-production environments (NODE_ENV !== 'production'), the server automatically seeds a handful of accounts the first time it starts against an empty database, so you can log in immediately without registering.

Email	Password	Role	Notes
admin@test.local	DevPass123!	admin	Can access /admin
user@test.local	DevPass123!	user
user2@test.local	DevPass123!	user	For testing multiplayer flows with a second account

The server also seeds a couple of demo game sessions ("Ape Shit", "OBANGO") populated with fake commander accounts (e.g. kade@players.test, onyeka@players.test, ...) sharing the same DevPass123! password, so the campaign list has realistic-looking data out of the box.

These accounts only exist in dev/test — the seed step is skipped entirely when NODE_ENV=production.