Abyss Drifter is a first-person space courier sim about hauling cargo, keeping a ship alive, and staying alive inside it.

Humanity once let AI fight its wars. It didn't end well.

After the near-collapse, advanced AI was banned. The colonies at the far edge of the map were left to manage without it. Long-haul spaceflight became slow, manual and dangerous again — and someone still has to move the cargo.

Out here that someone is you, and nobody is coming to help.

Fly by instruments

Nothing marks your destination. You read your dashboard: altitude, attitude, the locator sweeping for a signal. On worlds where the dust never settles you will find a settlement on gauges alone — or you won't find it, and you won't get paid.

Your ship is a machine, not a menu

Refuelling at a station means opening the hatch, seating the nozzle, setting the amount on the terminal, and pulling it out when it's done. Far from anywhere it means hauling a fuel barrel to the tank yourself — slower, costlier, and sometimes the only option left.

Breathable air is cracked out of ice on board, and you decide where it goes. Sealing off a hold before you open its airlock is the difference between a routine unload and burning through your ice reserve for nothing.

Hit something hard enough and you'll feel it: you fly slower and your compartments start losing air. Weld the hull on the spot with an expensive cartridge and limp home, or dock and let a repair drone crawl over the plating and do it properly.

Outside, you're on a clock

Your suit carries your oxygen, your water and your power, and all three run down. Charge it, fill it, check it before you step out — because stepping out without it means shortening breath, a rising dose of radiation, the edges of your vision going dark, and then nothing.

Every excursion is a plan: how far out, how long, and how much you'll have left when you turn back.

The job

Take delivery contracts, or buy low and sell high on your own account. More than 150 kinds of cargo move through this system: rations, medicine, electronics, graphite rods, rare metal ingots, alcohol, toxic waste. You load it yourself, crate by crate, and you watch the hold fill up.

Staying alive is a routine

Eat, drink, sleep, keep your dose down. The recycler turns your waste back into drinking water, which is exactly as reassuring as it sounds. Cheap synthetic rations will keep you fed and slowly make you ill — out here vitamin deficiency is a real way to end a career, and so is exhaustion.

Something out there

Not everything is on the charts. Drone wreckage left over from the war. Ships broken open on far planets. Abandoned outposts, and expeditions that never reported back. Catch an unknown signal on the scanner and you can go and see what's making it.

Fit a salvage module and you can launch a grabber drone to fish cargo crates out of an asteroid field by hand.

Earn a better ship

Swap modules, upgrade systems, and when you can finally afford it, buy a different hull.

FEATURES

• Fly and land by cockpit instruments — locator, altitude and attitude readouts, no waypoint holding your hand

• Refuel by hand: station hatch, nozzle and terminal, or emergency barrels carried in your own hold

• Crack breathable air from ice and seal individual compartments to stop wasting it

• Weld hull damage in the field, or dock for a full drone repair

• Manage a suit with its own oxygen, water and power before every excursion

• Survive hunger, thirst, fatigue, radiation and vitamin deficiency

• Haul more than 150 kinds of cargo, from rations to toxic waste

• Take contracts or trade on your own terms across the system

• Track unknown signals to wrecks, ruins and abandoned outposts

• Salvage drifting cargo with a grabber drone

• Upgrade modules, replace systems, buy new ships

Abyss Drifter is in active development. Wishlist it to hear when the demo goes live.