Galactic Collapse & Dark Matter
Spoiler note: this guide describes a system the game reveals in its own time. If you have not yet seen a golden door in the sky, discovering it yourself is worth more than reading about it.
Reach the Golden Sun, and a deeper door opens. Everything your galaxy has ever minted counts toward a ⬢ Dark Matter mint, and when that mint reaches the gate, you may collapse the galaxy. The Sun dims, the Store resets, and Dark Matter—the rarest currency of all—remains.
The Mint and the Gate
Dark Matter minting grows with the square root of your galaxy's total Genesis: each ⬢ costs more Genesis than the last. The progress bar beneath the Collapse button measures ⬢ directly, so halfway across the bar really is halfway to the gate. The first gate requires ⬢12. Each Collapse raises the next gate by ×1.4, requiring roughly twice as much Genesis. Galaxies grow the way worlds once did.
What Survives
The Garden survives—every world, every set bonus, every verse.
The Sun's permanent utilities also survive: Tireless Grasp, Deep Sleep, Solar Sails, Curious Homeworld, and Voracious Forge.
What fades is the galaxy's own strength. Gravitic Focus, Twin Streams, Genesis Resonance, Solar Flare, and the Garden Choir all reset, while Solar Radiance falls back to whatever your Stellar Memory can preserve: six levels per Memory rank.
The Galaxy Store
Stellar Memory lets each new galaxy awaken warm instead of cold. Event Horizon permanently multiplies all production by ×1.5 per level. Genesis Bloom enriches every future mint by +25% per level. Worldheart doubles all Garden set bonuses with a single purchase.
Dark Matter is scarce, so the order in which you buy these upgrades is a meaningful decision.
Strategy: Cycling Beats Camping
Because mints grow sublinearly with a run's growth, many short runs earn more than one long run, hour for hour—often by an order of magnitude. Once your permanent bonuses and head start let you regain your frontier form in minutes, the fastest road to the next gate is a steady rhythm: climb, linger a few minutes at the top, seed, repeat.
Push a long run only when your permanent power has clearly outgrown your best form. Raising the frontier makes every cycle after it stronger.
And don't let the Sun hoard. Solar Radiance becomes deliberately cheaper after level 150, ensuring there's always something worthwhile to buy next.