Dead Reckoning: The Long Drift

A dream among the stars — or a nightmare.

1,000 colonists. One ship. A destination that may be decades away, or centuries. Some will land. Some will be born, age and die between the stars without ever learning whether the mission worked.

Each year the ship files its report: births, deaths, breakdowns, disputes, discoveries. You manage food, power and the hull. You wake crew from cryo and put them back under. You choose the research, launch the probes and set the course. The crew grows old and dies, and their children take over their posts. You stay.

Every decision you make is defensible in the moment. The ship keeps a record of all of them. An order you gave in year 40 can come back in year 70 as a new problem, with your answer quoted on it.

Five forces reshape the ship across generations: genetic drift, ideological fracture, AI integration, knowledge loss and class stratification. The crew that arrives may not remember where they came from or what they believed. A society of clones. A ship that has become a cathedral. An AI that no longer needs to ask permission.

Settle a world and try to keep the colony alive for 100 years, with whatever society the voyage produced. In a Chronicle, your voyages share one universe, and a later ship can reach a colony you founded and find what became of it.

Two to four players can share one ship. Open Multiplayer > Command Council from the start menu. The captain hosts and invites officers through Steam.

• Everyone sees the full ship: crew, systems, course, cameras and reports.
• Every member votes on each directive and marks ready. A unanimous vote stands; the captain settles a split.
• Each player reads the game in their own language.
• Council chat is built in.

Command Council needs Steam online and mods turned off. There is no public matchmaking; invite players through Steam. Solo play works offline.

Settlement. Extinction. A ship that turns back. A crew that ascends without landing. What reaches that planet is the sum of everything you did, and didn't do, across centuries in the dark.

You may not recognize it. You may not want to.

Dead Reckoning is in Early Access. One developer builds it, with contributing writers and volunteers who help track issues. Updates are frequent, and the CHANGELOG on the main menu lists each one.

Still in progress: more variation between runs, outcome tiers for decisions, and planet features that change colony output. Every update ships in all seven languages. A save from an older build may not load after a large update. macOS is not supported yet.

Languages: English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Russian and Simplified Chinese. Runs on Windows and Linux. The 140% UI scale is set for Steam Deck.

Writing: Deniz Keleş, Victor Biancardine.

Inspired by John Ayliff's Seedship.