In the world of Cortex Command, many humans have opted to amputate their entire natural bodies in order to prolong their lives and enable interstellar space travel. Their disembodied brains are hardly helpless, however, as they can remotely control all kinds of machines and craft through artificial interfaces.

Playing as one of these people's brains, you can quickly switch control between many different expendable bodies in order to complete otherwise dangerous tasks - all from the physical safety of your command bunker. Use these technological powers of telepathy to collect gold out of the fully destructible terrain, then purchase even more bodies and materiel with those newly acquired funds!

You can even program the crude A.I.s of your puppet army to complete simple tasks (patrolling, digging, etc.) while your attention and direct control is somewhere else. Use your accumulated forces to protect your brain, explore the world, and defeat your competition!

Cortex Command is set a few hundred years into the future, where the now cybernetic human race is able to travel between stars and has already met several alien civilizations.

Interstellar trade and prosperity reigns, but there is always an ever-expanding frontier to explore and exploit for precious resources. In this gold rush of galactic proportions, fantastic adventure and brutal competition awaits.

You play as the boss of a small gold mining company that has just arrived at a newly discovered Earth-like planet. The large space ship that brought you here along with many other adventurers is called a TradeStar. It acts as a massive orbital safe haven and marketplace for the fortune seekers who venture down onto the planet's surface. Your purchases of bodies, guns, and equipment are sent from the TradeStar orbiting above and delivered to you by your choice of landing craft.

However, it soon becomes clear that the planet isn't as pristine as initially thought, and you will have to quickly adapt from your humble beginnings in order to survive and ultimately discover the dangerous secrets of this alien world...