Ember Reach is a space strategy door game for BBSes, written for the Kalgoorlie Retro BBS in Free Pascal. Players run noble houses across a cluster of star systems joined by travel lanes that open and close over time. They settle worlds, build fleets, research, trade on the Exchange, make treaties and fight the Hollow, a hostile faction that raids from its nests.
Every player gives orders during the day; the whole game moves forward one day at once in the nightly maintenance. A game runs 60 days by default (or with no last day), for up to 12 houses. Computer houses can join, so a small BBS still has rivals.
The current version is 0.5 (1 November 2026).
On the Kalgoorlie Retro BBS any registered user can play: telnet to bbs.theiguru.au (port 23), press X for the games, choose Games Hosted by Kalgoorlie Retro and pick Ember Reach. See How to play.
| Page | What it covers |
|---|---|
| How to play | The menus, ships, worlds, buildings, research, fighting and winning |
| Installing | Setting the game up on Synchronet (Linux or Windows), Mystic and DOS BBSes |
| Settings and reachcfg | Every setting in REACH.CFG, and the set-up program |
| Computer houses | Adding computer houses, peace days and difficulty |
| Maintenance and files | The nightly run, ermaint's commands and the files in the game folder |
| The Lua bot | emberbot.lua, a SyncTERM-Lua script that plays a day for you |
| Source and licence | Building from source; the GNU GPL; credits |
| Version history | What changed in each version |
From https://games.theiguru.au/emberreach/, or the Heisenbergs Files area on the BBS:
| File | What it is |
|---|---|
REACHL05.ZIP | Linux: reach, ermaint, reachcfg, and reach.sh / reachmaint.sh for Synchronet |
REACHW05.ZIP | Windows (64-bit): reach.exe, ermaint.exe, reachcfg.exe |
REACHD05.ZIP | DOS: REACH.EXE, ERMAINT.EXE, REACHCFG.EXE |
REACHB05.ZIP | emberbot.lua, the bot for SyncTERM-Lua |
REACHS05.ZIP | The source code (GNU GPL version 2 or later) |
The game files are the same on every system, so a game folder can be moved between Linux, Windows and DOS.