I just put Dead Reckoning into public beta. It’s a turn-based colony ship sim built in Godot 4, and the central mechanic is Drift — the slow, invisible erosion of your civilization’s values across generations.

You start with 1000 colonists, five resource bars, and five drift meters all sitting at 0%. By the time you arrive at a new world, those meters tell a story you didn’t mean to write.

What’s in the beta: — 20-minute runs — Five interlocking drift paths (genetic, ideological, AI takeover, generational regression, class stratification) — Terminal-aesthetic UI — no HUD outside the fiction — Ten hard-coded events to validate the decision feel — One ending that tells you what civilization you built

It’s rough. That’s intentional. Looking for people who want to play it and tell me what broke, what landed, and what civilization they ended up with.

Free to play, Windows + Linux: https://garanlorn.itch.io/dead-reckoning

#godot4 #indiedev #gamedev

  • Garan Lorn@lemmy.caOPEnglish
    8·
    10 days ago

    Thank you — genuinely. A $1 donation on day one from someone who’s learned to be careful about AI slop means more than a blank cheque from someone who wasn’t paying attention.

    Stellar Terminus is a great comparison — I’ve been watching that project. The terminal aesthetic and the weight of the journey are things we clearly both care about. Different approaches to similar territory.

    The art in Dead Reckoning is placeholder right now; it’s a combination of twitch assets and vector/python. The systems and the writing are where I’m putting the craft. When the drift mechanic starts doing what it’s supposed to do, I think it’ll be clear this is going somewhere. I’d love to hear what civilization you end up with after a run.