Adventure International was the original publisher; after his brother Gary began successfully selling the game to computer stores, they founded Broderbund.

[2][3] Many of the locations have names taken from African languages, such as Afrikaans or Swahili, based on Doug Carlston's years in Africa.

[2] The game navigation uses a list of planets with names beginning with a unique letter of the alphabet for easy access.

The magazine described the game as "well designed and fun to play", stated that it "is never dull" with replayability from a random map generator, and approved of the addition of a save function on newer versions given that a session could last up to six hours.

It concluded, "I heartily recommend Galactic Empire to anyone seeking a complex, intelligent, and of course, fun program.