Answered carefully

A first-person science-fiction survival and colony-building game in development, played alone or with up to three others.

Earth is dying. You wake aboard the ESV Meridian, a freighter finished in a hurry for an 84-year crossing, in orbit over Nova Eridani. You bring the ship back to life with Melanie, its blinded onboard intelligence, then go down to a world where Earth forests were planted decades before you, and lay the industrial foundation of a colony with a fleet of robots.

Not yet. The current build is Showcase 01 — “Arrival”: the prologue, the ship, the landing and the first colony industry. It is a vertical slice, not a finished game, and a private Steam beta for a small group of testers is being set up.

There is no store page, release date or price yet.

Both, and you never leave the first-person view. You fell trees, saw timber and lay bricks with your own hands, then build robots and put them to work. The colony is built, walked and fixed from the ground, not managed from above.

Yes. One to four players share one world, one story and one colony. Start the expedition together, open a solo game to others later in the story, or build side by side in the sandbox.

Co-op is new and early. One player hosts and the others join by IP address; a VPN such as Tailscale works across the internet. There is no server browser or Steam invite yet, and if the host leaves the session ends.

The Meridian's intelligence. A debris strike six years before arrival left her blind, and every repair you make gives her back a sense: the terminal, the room speakers, the intercom and finally your suit link.

She appears as a hologram aboard the ship, and through your visor on the planet. The rest you find out by playing.

Years before the war, an uncrewed precursor ship called Genesis carried seeds and plant embryos, soil cultures, and algae and plankton for the sea to Nova Eridani. After years of trials, most of them failures, its field station planted the first tree outside, and that one lived.

The pines spread slowly through sheltered valleys, among native life that has grown there for millions of years. Outside them, Nova Eridani is very much its own world.

The surface is 16 × 16 km: mountains with snow, a limestone plateau with lakes, a crater field, red-rock badlands and a dune sea, a river delta, islands, and the wreck of Genesis. The story currently stays near the landing zone; the wider world has places to find but no quests yet.

It orbits Epsilon Eridani, a real orange dwarf star 10.45 light-years from Earth, one of the nearest stars to the Sun. The star is real, and so is one of its planets, a gas giant called Epsilon Eridani b. Nova Eridani itself, and its other neighbours, are the game's invention, built to sit inside what astronomers have measured.

The Meridian's crossing took 84 years, an average of about an eighth of the speed of light. There is no faster-than-light travel: a message to Earth takes 10.45 years to arrive.

Yes. A full day on the surface passes in an hour of real time, and the light changes as the sun crosses the sky. The time of day is kept in your save and shared by everyone in co-op.

Nova Eridani's night sky and its two moons are modelled from the real star system: the real stars, seen from 10.5 light years away, with the Milky Way almost overhead at the landing site. The seasons are modelled too, but are not part of play yet.

Yes, at night. Something native hunts in the dark, and in the open it is faster than you can run. You can hear it and see it coming, though, and light keeps it away: the drop pod's landing lights, or a ring of street lights powered by the colony's solar arrays and batteries.

Your visor shows movement on a disc in its corner, and Melanie counts down to nightfall. More pressures, such as weather and the seasons, are planned.

Test build 0.1.403 furnishes the habitat as a home: a switch by the door frosts every window or clears it, ceiling lights run on the colony's power, the desk's computer shows the habitat's power and opens the colony's management when you sit down, and there is a bunk, a swivel chair, a shower, a toilet and a galley tap. Each has its own animation, and in co-op the crew sees each other using them, and sitting in the captain's chair on the Meridian's bridge.

0.1.393 shows your game on Discord: with the Discord app open, your friends see the mission you are on, where you are (aboard the Meridian, or at Landing Zone 1 by day or by night), your crew's size in co-op and how long you have played, with a picture for each place. There is nothing to sign in to, and Settings turns it off. Voices, music, sound effects and menu sounds now each have their own volume (0.1.391), and the opening film's narration plays as loud as Melanie's voice aboard (0.1.386).

0.1.385 has a new opening film: rewritten and told by Melanie, about six minutes long, with new scenes inside Genesis's holds and out in the trial bay and a reworked bomb. The first time the title screen opens, the camera flies in to the Meridian.

0.1.381 showed Nova Eridani from orbit as the opening film does, brought the ship down to a deployment orbit before the first pod goes, rebuilt the pod bay so each door leads through a docking vestibule into the pod's own hatch, and turned the first launch into a short film.

0.1.370 gave the Strider a menu (right click at it from anywhere around it: its cases, its cell charger, a charged cell from your pack into its battery), a slow and steady speed limit it keeps even downhill, where it charges itself, a warning before its battery runs out and the charger's cells as a last reserve. The visor is now the interface: with it off, the compass, the minimap and the read-outs go too. The rock drills run on power cells.

0.1.366 brought a colony that makes its own: a mission from stone and ore to a furnace, a smelter, glass and the works, so the colony makes its own plate, fasteners, power cells, glass, circuit blanks and polymer. SMV-1, the Strider, now comes down as a kit (hull and running gear) for the colony to finish. There is one zoomable view from first person outwards with a round minimap, a new habitat and the capsule it lands in, sharper detail on the world map, and sleeping through the night once it is safe to.

0.1.363 brought the Strider, the night sky as seen from Nova Eridani with its two moons and the Meridian passing over, a compass that only works once Melanie has set it from the sun, and a world map of the whole land.

The dangerous nights, power and street lights, deliveries from orbit, the supply container and its printer, survival and crafting, and fifty remodelled machines arrived in October.

Yes. The lakes and the sea are deep water: wade in and you swim, float with your head out, and dive the way you look. The rivers are shallow enough to wade. Swimming is new, and there is no underwater view or breath limit yet.

Yes, and not from snap pieces. Foundations follow the slope, walls are laid in real brick bonds with bonded corners, single bricks can be laid one at a time, and there are timber frames, windows, doors, roofs and skylights. A new building lines up with its neighbours as you place it. Anything can be taken apart again.

No. They are the colony's workforce, simulated as physical workers. They take roles, travel to workplaces, carry materials, recharge and wear down. If a sawmill runs out of logs, it is because nobody delivered any.

Walk up to any robot and it will tell you what it is doing and what is wrong, and take new orders.

No. Melanie (who also tells the prologue) and the robots currently use synthetic or AI-generated placeholder voices. Professional voice acting is intended.

It is Windows only. On a development laptop with an RTX 4080 Laptop GPU, the 16 km world runs at 88 fps on High at 1080p. Final requirements have not been set.

The development log on this site, which also has an RSS feed. Store and community links will appear here once they exist.