Dead Reckoning: The Long Drift

A dream among the stars — or a nightmare.

1,000 colonists board one generation ship. The crossing can last centuries. Most of the people who leave Earth will die aboard. Their children and grandchildren may reach the new world, if the ship holds.

YOU ARE THE ONLY CONSTANT

Each year the ship files its report: births, deaths, breakdowns, disputes, discoveries. You answer it under Events & Directives. Manage food, power and hull integrity. Wake crew from the cryo bay or put them back under. Choose research, launch probes and set a course on the star chart. The crew ages and dies, and the ship-born take their places. You stay.

DECISIONS COME BACK

The ship keeps a record of what you decided and when. A choice from the voyage can return 20 to 40 years later as a new problem, and the card cites the year and the answer you gave. Rules kept during the crossing shape the colony's first decisions on the ground.

Five drift measures track what the generations do to the crew: genetic drift, ideological drift, class drift, knowledge loss and AI drift. Five factions form aboard. Each makes demands, and acts alone when the ship refuses.

PLANETFALL

Probes survey candidate worlds before you commit, with an estimated habitability and a margin of error. There are 12 planet types, from temperate worlds to toxic atmospheres, ice worlds and ocean worlds. The world decides what the colony needs to survive.

On the ground the voyage becomes a colony. Build and staff its works, raise a pressure dome on worlds that need one, and survey sites or close hazardous ground on the colony map. Colony Status names what is killing your people. More than 300 colony events cover work, illness, births, burials and disputes. The colony record runs to year 100.

SETTLED ENDINGS SHOW YOUR COLONY

When a settled colony's record closes, the ending flies a slow pass over the colony you built. Terrain, works, homes, streets, the burial ground and the weather stand where the colony map recorded them, on all 12 planet types. The ending report follows: the assessment, the mission record, the crew and the key decisions.

Not every voyage lands. The 15 ending causes include extinction, starvation, knowledge loss, a ship that turns back and a ship still under way in year 400.

You may not recognize what arrives. You may not want to.

CHARTERS AND CHRONICLES

Choose one of nine charters before launch, among them a refugee ark, a penal transport, a research mission and a religious pilgrimage. Fit out the ship, crew and research, and take on one of 18 optional charter missions. Fly in a Chronicle and its named stars and worlds persist between voyages. A later ship can reach a world an earlier one settled and read how that colony's record closed.

COMMAND COUNCIL

Two to four players can share one ship. Open Multiplayer > Command Council from the start menu. The captain hosts and invites officers through Steam.

• Everyone sees the full ship: crew, systems, course, cameras and reports.
• Every member votes on each directive and marks ready. A unanimous vote stands; the captain settles a split.
• Each player reads the game in their own language.
• Council chat is built in.

Command Council needs Steam online and mods turned off. There is no public matchmaking; invite players through Steam. Solo play works offline.

EARLY ACCESS

Dead Reckoning is in Early Access. One developer builds it, with contributing writers and volunteers who help track issues. Updates are frequent, and the CHANGELOG on the main menu lists each one.

Still in progress: more variation between runs, outcome tiers for decisions, and planet features that change colony output. Every update ships in all seven languages. A save from an older build may not load after a large update. macOS is not supported yet.

Languages: English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Russian and Simplified Chinese. Runs on Windows and Linux. The 140% UI scale is set for Steam Deck.

Writing: Deniz Keleş, Victor Biancardine.

Inspired by John Ayliff's Seedship.