Stellar Crisis is a web-based strategy game that has been around since the mid-1990s. It was originally written by Sylvan Clebsch in the Pike programming language (the first incarnation was written in Perl as a web-capability demonstration). The source code has since then been released under the GNU General Public License and many people have taken up the task of maintaining and developing it further.

The object of the game is to build yourself an empire by exploring space and colonizing planets, meeting other empires along the way. You can forge alliances with those, or simply wage an all-out war. Points are awarded for winning a game, as well as "nuking" an opponent.

A few servers are still around where you can play this game; a list of which can be found by looking up "Stellar Crisis" on your favorite search engine.