JUMPGATE

1. You are the AI, awake in the dark between stars with a dying battery and no solar. Everything you do draws on it.
2. You (the hub) have a crude pulse laser: it targets, charges and pulses, cracking a chunk off a rock each time; your drones fly out and carry the chunks in. At first you fire it yourself: select yourself, then rest the cursor on a rock in reach (on a phone, hold a finger on it). The System reboot research lets it fire on its own.
3. Research unlocks almost everything (tap the research line). It runs on your compute, which also runs your drones; your core is damaged, so it's a trickle.
4. Habs dock face to face on you, one per job, and start idle: the smelter refines ore, the constructor makes plates and wire (pick their recipes), nothing is kept in stock: only base ore is stored (each ore its own cap). Every build, upgrade or repair is a queued request: you can queue it when your free ore covers it, and your modules make it on the spot, ore to refined to part. The burner is Off, Auto (burns an ore store that's nearly full) or On. Upgrade a hab instead of building a second.
5. Everything drifts, and at first you cannot move: work each rock while it passes through your laser's reach. Copper wire builds an engine; then you steer the whole ship: press Move (M), then tap where to go. Short hops inside the drone ring use thrusters; longer trips flip and burn, and straight runs are cheapest. Keeping what you mine inside your reach is your job. The yellow circle is how far a full burn reaches.
6. Tap anything for its panel. Drag to pan; pinch, wheel or +/− to zoom all the way out. F speeds time up, R research, . finds you, Space pauses, C leaves a note.

Play

Chapter One complete

[swarm] ...we made it. next time: something out front.

You woke with a dying battery, built enough to keep yourself alive, and dragged the whole station to the copper field in . Nobody warned you about the debris.

What's next

Thanks for playtesting. Press C (or Note) to say how it felt.

Keep playing Note

Note for Claude

Save Cancel