Positech Games' founder, designer, programmer, artist and one-time bit-tech blogger, Cliff Harris, has announced that his latest game is now available for pre-order. It's called Gratuitous Space Battles and it's been likened to Football Manager in space and with lasers.

"The idea is to be like Eisenhower on D-Day. You assemble the troops, tell them what to do, then on the day you pace up and down and see how well things turned out," said Cliff in an unveiling of the game for bit-tech.

Gratuitous Space Battles on the PC is now available for pre-order on the official Positech website for £13 / $19, with those who pick up the game now getting access to a closed beta - though Cliff asks that beta participants bear in mind that fixes may be coming a bit slowly for certain problems.

"This is an indie game, it's literally a bedroom coder effort, so be gentle on the shouting when you discover something that crashes or won't work," Cliff said on the official blog.

"It's purely because it's something that never happened at my end, I will endeavour 100% to fix it as quickly as I can if you have any problems. If you are not happy to try out a beta copy of the game, or genuinely think your PC isn't up to it, then please don't get it yet, wait for a demo and the full games release."

If you want specific gameplay details then you can browse the current version of the manual (.PDF), or drop your thoughts in the forums.