Every optical effect here comes out of the equations. The gravitational lensing is calculated from the exact deflection of light in the Schwarzschild metric, so the photon ring, the shadow and the distorted starfield are what the mathematics produces - not what an artist decided they should look like. Some elements are simplified to keep this playable as a game. That was a deliberate choice, and a mode with those simplifications removed is planned after launch.

You wake up alone on a research station orbiting a black hole. The mission is still on: go down there and find out what is inside.

Welcome Aboard HELIOS

The crew is gone, but the station still works, and VESSEL, its assistant drone, is glad to have company. Walk the bridge, power up the laboratory and learn what your predecessors left behind.

Get to Know Your Black Hole

Measure its mass, its spin, the density of its disk and the pull of its magnetic field. Everything you learn makes the way down a little less deadly.

Build Something That Might Survive

Invent new engines, print a hull from materials that can take heat, radiation and gravity, and watch the assembly bay put your capsule together. It only has to hold long enough.

Then Fall

Fly from the cockpit by instruments alone. Hold your attitude, watch the temperature, and fix what breaks while the disk rushes past the window.

[H2] What Lies Past the Horizon?

Nobody has ever come back to say. You have limited lives to find out, and what you do there decides how it ends.