The year is 3042: Humanity is ready to explore the galaxy. The most interesting celestial bodies to explore, and eventually colonize, have been known for centuries, and the nations of Earth finally have the technological level to reach them, thus beginning an unarmed competition that in the end the whole of humanity will win.

Kepler-3042 is a resource management game in which you have to explore, colonize, exploit, and terraform the planets of the Milky Way using the available technologies. In each round, you must choose which action to perform and which bonus to activate, managing your supplies of matter, energy, and antimatter. The peculiar strength of the game is the innovative resource management: Each player has a finite amount of matter, energy, and antimatter that they can produce or spend during the game. In each round, they can decide to burn forever one or more resources to perform powerful actions, thereby allowing them to follow different strategies.