The beacons of the Drift went out one by one. Without them there is no safe route between the systems, no more convoys, and the swarm has settled into the dark. There is one port left, a handful of pilots, and a slightly crazy idea: head back out there and light everything up again.

Vesper Drift is what you get if you cross Asteroids with a roguelite. You start with an almost bare ship, break rocks, collect crystals, and at the end of every wave you pick one card out of four. Twenty minutes later your little fighter is spraying lasers, mines and lightning in every direction. Next run, it will be something completely different.

We built it to be played with friends. Up to four pilots online through Steam, or on a local network if you are in the same room. One invite, everyone picks a ship, and off you go.

Everyone keeps their own crystals and builds their own arsenal: while one player goes all in on heavy weapons, another can stack defences or homing shots. When a pilot in distress drifts into the arena, whoever reaches them first earns an extra life. And when the run ends, everyone goes back to the lobby, so you can jump straight back in with the same crew.

Every five waves, something big shows up. Thirteen bosses, all in 3D, each with its own way of fighting: the Fortress you take apart module by module, the Hydra whose heads grow back, the Reaper that charges, the Queen who floods the screen with bullets…

The more health they lose, the more they change their rhythm: two or three phases per boss, with attacks that get nastier each time. But we stuck to one rule: everything that hits you comes from the boss, and it always warns you before it strikes. If you die, you could have dodged it.

At the end of each system, a guardian protects the beacon. Beat it and the beacon lights up again. Beat it without taking a single hit and you become Untouchable, and that one has to be earned.

Here, a new weapon doesn't replace the old one: it stacks. You can carry up to ten at once, and they all fire together. The continuous laser that grows thicker with power, the lightning that jumps from rock to rock, shells, mines, the boomerang…

Some weapons get along so well that they fuse. A railgun and chain lightning become a thunder rail, a mortar and cluster bombs turn into a proper shell storm. There are twenty fusions to discover, and each one completely changes the way you play.

On top of that, passive weapons do their own thing: blades circling the ship, an aura that burns whatever gets close, lightning falling from the sky, a vortex that sucks rocks in. And when the screen becomes unreadable, a White Hole wipes out enemy fire and pushes back everything that was coming at you. For players who like to gamble, cursed cards raise the Entropy: more danger, but the loot grows with it.

The campaign crosses five systems and thirty planets. Each system has its own sun, sky and mood: the embers of the Ash Road, the cold of the Dead Waters, the violet Nest where the swarm has settled, all the way to Zenith and its pulsar sweeping the dark.

The further you go, the harder it gets: rocks get tougher, enemies more numerous, and every planet has its own dangers, meteor showers, drifting mines, gravity surges, elites. On the galaxy map you choose where you start. Between runs, your crystals grow your fleet through a talent tree, and you head out a little further.

Nine ships, and no two fly the same. The MicroRecon has a dash, the DualStriker an emergency shield, the Star Marine Trooper an ice nova… Each one has its own special, its strengths and its flaws.

And each one has a story. Some just left the shipyards, others are rebuilt wrecks from an old convoy, and each one has its own ending. Finishing the campaign with all nine means discovering all nine endings, and finally understanding what happened in the Drift.

The demo is free: two planets and two bosses to discover solo.