About
Stratosphere: Conquest of the Skies is a 1998 PC game, described in the README as neat but buggy. openStrato is a planned remake of Stratosphere: Conquest of the Skies, envisioned as a 2D or 2.5D top-down game about designing, building and flying a spaceship. It exists mainly as a design outline — the platform was still undecided, with browser-based JavaScript/WebGL the likely choice — and is not playable.
How it differs from the original
The author suggested mixing in Magic Carpet-style gameplay: hunting monsters for resources to grow an ever larger flying fortress.
History
The developer, Gerd, started it as a way to procrastinate on his thesis.