Tughra: Seals of Empire FAQ

The game is scheduled to launch on Steam in late September 2026, per the official Steam page (day-precision date: September 28). This guide updates through launch week — release-day coverage begins the moment the seal breaks.

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 at launch across the five empires, plus the hidden challenger's own cards. Before release the studio has published each empire's signature units and powers — the cards hub documents all ten officially confirmed entries and will expand to the full list after launch.

No demo has been announced. The official gameplay trailer on the Steam page is the best pre-launch look at how matches actually play — the same trailer is embedded on this site's homepage.

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.

Pricing had not been published on the Steam store at the time of this guide's launch-week update. The game is not free-to-play (the store marks it as a paid title). Check the Steam page for the current price — we will fill this in the moment it is live.

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, an independent studio based in Istanbul, Türkiye. They are both the developer and the publisher, and their site also lists a second project, Ninewrought. Press contact: info@ninegatesstudio.com.

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.