Tughra: Seals of Empire FAQ

The game released on Steam on September 28, 2026, and is available now for Windows. It is a turn-based card battler by Nine Gates Studio, priced at $4.94.

A turn-based card battler by Nine Gates Studio set in fantasy echoes of history's great empires. You promote soldiers rank by rank, take up your ruler's seal, deploy war machines, and conquer five empires before facing a hidden challenger. It ships with 149 cards, 25 ruler seals and a Bo1 tournament campaign.

A tughra is the calligraphic monogram — part signature, part seal — used by Ottoman sultans to sign decrees. In the game, the Ottoman Tughra is one of the five signature ruler seals, and the game's title points at its core fantasy: stamping your rule on every match.

No — the game is single-player and fully offline. There is no co-op and no PvP at launch; the only opponent is the tournament of empires (plus the hidden challenger at the end of the road). Multiplayer has not been announced.

Five playable empires — Ottoman, Byzantium, China, Persia and Austria — each with its own cards, seals and playstyle. The official site additionally shows two sealed entries: hidden challengers that only appear after the five empires have fallen, and are not guaranteed to be the same between campaigns.

Two recruits on the board merge into a captain for a single Treasure; two captains become a governor. Every deck is a promotion tree with the empire's strongest card at its top — and your opponent will try to cut that tree at the root before you climb it. The promotion guide covers timing, costs and protection.

Seals are the ruler's power you can use every turn. Every empire has five seals and you choose one before the match — 25 in total. The five officially named ones are the Ottoman Tughra, the Byzantine Eagle, the Jade Seal of China, the Signet of the Shah and the Double Seal of Austria. The seals hub covers all of them.

149 cards across the five empires, plus the hidden challenger's own cards. The cards hub documents the officially confirmed signature units and powers — expanding to the full list now that the game is live.

No demo is available. The official gameplay trailer on the Steam page is the best look at how matches actually play — the same trailer is embedded on this site's homepage. The full game is $4.94 (the launch-week discount has ended).

Very light: minimum is a 2-core 2.5 GHz CPU, 4 GB RAM and any DirectX 11 GPU with 1 GB VRAM (Intel HD 4400 class). Recommended is a 6-core CPU, 8 GB RAM and a GTX 1050. The game takes 1 GB of storage, runs fully offline, and requires a mouse — no gamepad support.

Windows PC via Steam only at launch. Console versions have not been announced. The interface ships in English and Turkish, matching the Istanbul-based studio's home market.

The game costs $4.94 USD on Steam — the launch-week 10% discount has ended. It is a premium single purchase — not free-to-play, no microtransactions. Check the Steam store page for regional pricing.

No — the official page is explicit that the world is "a fully fictional world: no real historical figures, only titles". The empires are fantasy echoes of the Ottomans, Byzantines, Chinese, Persians and Austrians, not simulations of them.

Nine Gates Studio — a solo developer based in Istanbul, Türkiye. Tughra is their first released game, self-published. The studio's second game, Ninewrought, is also out now on Steam, and a third project (Zanore: Echoes of the Realm) has been announced. Press contact: [email protected].

Yes — three difficulty levels are officially confirmed, alongside the Bo1 tournament campaign and the Book of Conquest that records how many attempts each rival took. Difficulty is the recommended scouting lever: drop a level to learn a rival's plan, then raise it back for a clean Book.