Star Saga One, originally intended to be the first of a trilogy, is a game of truly mammoth proportions. It was designed by a group of college students based on a real-life role-playing game one of them had developed, and was written in collaboration with Andrew Greenberg of Wizardry fame.

While the concept is not all that unique - explore planets throughout the galaxy, trading resources to become wealthy and accomplish specific goals - what does make this game unique is the extensive use of the manuals. In fact this game can be thought of as a hybrid tabletop and computer RPG. Throughout the game, player are constantly referred to one of no less than 888 'paragraphs' of text found within 13 manuals provided with the game. These describe the results of most actions within the game. Thus the computer acts as the Dungeon Master while the majority of the game is actually stored in the printed matter.