Gratuitous Space Battles, a game by mostly one-man dev studio Positech Games, has been released today.

You might remember an earlier look we had at the beta. GSB pits you in the shoes of an alien warlord spaceship commander. Your mission is to be the grand strategy master who decides how best to decimate the opposition.

The space-battles in this game are strictly hands off affairs -- your role as commander ends when the ships engage the ruthless enemy fleets. But for those of you who are a fan of strategy, watching the battles unfold, and see your ship designs and fleet placements fail or succeed into tremendous explosions, then hey, this game might be right up your alley.

Cliff Harris, the game's programmer, documented his roughly 3 month long beta over here at his blog. As someone who has been following the game's development quite closely, I can tell you that the game has already received a great deal of enhancements in just this short period of time. It seems likely that Cliff will continue to improve his most ambitious title to date.

A demo for the game is available. The full game sells for $22.99.