PRESS KIT

DEAD RECKONING · THE LONG DRIFT

A slow-burn strategy/narrative game about drift — ideological, genetic, social, technological — across a generational voyage.

Demo out now on Steam. Full release: June 25, 2026.

Steam (demo + wishlist) Request review copy Manual (PDF) itch.io

FACTSHEET

Developer	Colin Nash (garanlorn) · Selenodrome
Press contact	[ click to reveal email ]
Website	garanlorn.itch.io/dead-reckoning
Steam	store.steampowered.com/app/4557340/Dead_Reckoning_The_Long_Drift — App 4557340 — demo available now
itch.io	garanlorn.itch.io/dead-reckoning
Mastodon	@garanlorn@gamedev.place
Bluesky	@garanlorn.bsky.social
Discord	discord.gg/p2xrKcQ7nD
Release date	June 25, 2026 · demo available now on Steam
Platforms	Windows · Linux · macOS · Steam Deck Playable (target)
Languages	English · German · French · Italian · Spanish
Engine	Godot 4.6
Genre	Strategy · Narrative · Colony sim · Roguelike
Modes	Single-player
Current version	0.1.309

DESCRIPTION

SHORT — 25 words

A generation ship sim about the slow erosion of civilization across centuries. Every decision is defensible in the moment. The horror is retroactive.

MEDIUM — 60 words

Dead Reckoning is a slow-burn strategy/narrative game about managing drift — ideological, genetic, social, technological — across a generational voyage. You guide 1,000 colonists across interstellar space through centuries of decisions. There is no combat. There is no perfect outcome. What reaches the destination — if it reaches — may not remember where it came from.

LONG

1,000 colonists. One ship. A destination that may be fifty years away — or centuries. Some will land. Some will be born, age, and die in the dark between stars without ever knowing if the mission succeeded.

Dead Reckoning is a game about the slow, invisible erosion of civilization across generations. Every decision you make is defensible in the moment. The horror is retroactive.

Manage food, power, and hull integrity across centuries of deep space. Navigate crises, uprisings, and failures that compound silently into irreversible outcomes. Five forces reshape your colony across generations: genetic drift, ideological fracture, AI integration, technological regression, and class stratification. Every choice nudges the needle. None of them reset. The faction that rises in year 200 was built from decisions you made in year 40.

Settlement. Extinction. Digital transcendence. A ship that turns back. A crew that ascends without landing. Every run tells a different story. 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.

FEATURES

Five drift systems

Genetic, ideological, AI integration, technological regression, class stratification. Each accumulates silently across generations. None of them reset.

Eleven endings

Settlement. Extinction. Digital transcendence. A ship that turns back. A crew that ascends without landing. The ending is a function of everything you did — and didn't do.

Five-faction governance

Factions rise and fall across centuries based on the decisions of crews long dead. The faction dominant in year 200 was shaped by choices you made in year 40.

Six interdependent subsystems

Reactor, engine, bridge, cryo, life support, hull. Failures cascade through the graph. Cryo failure wakes the sleeper population — and changes everything.

Centuries, not hours

The simulation runs on a generational timescale. Colonists are born, age, and die during the voyage. Most of the people affected by your decisions will never meet you.

No combat, no perfect run

Every choice has a defensible case. Every run tells a different story. The game is not about winning; it's about what the ship becomes.

CRT / terminal aesthetic

Phosphor green, teal accents, scanlines. Pixel type. A deliberate callback to the mainframe-era future that never arrived.

Scripted + emergent events

Hundreds of hand-written narrative beats — scripted events, chain events, drift-threshold events — plus emergent cascades from compounding system state.

Five languages

English, German, French, Italian, Spanish.

Deterministic simulation

Seeded runs reproduce exactly — useful for post-mortem and for sharing stories.

HISTORY

Dead Reckoning began as a question: what would it actually feel like to be responsible for a civilization you would never meet?

Most generation-ship fiction skips the middle. The crew sleeps. The AI watches. The story resumes at arrival. Dead Reckoning lives entirely in the middle — the part where ideology drifts, where the third generation no longer shares the assumptions of the first, where a well-intentioned decision in year 40 produces a crisis in year 180 that nobody alive remembers causing.

DEVELOPMENT

The project is built in Godot 4.6 by Colin Nash. All UI is code-generated (no .tscn scenes for gameplay) to keep the project diffable and grep-able. The terminal aesthetic came early and stuck — PressStart2P for chrome, JetBrainsMono for body text, #00e5cc teal on #020608 deep space, CRT shader overlay on boot and intro sequences.

TIMELINE

Early 2026 — First playable prototype. Core loop: events, decisions, colonists age, resources tick.
Spring 2026 — Drift system. Five axes. Threshold events that rewrite the UI as corruption spreads.
Spring 2026 — Endings overhaul. Eleven outcomes, each with its own illustration, epilogue, and narrative generator.
Spring 2026 — Five-faction governance. Chain events. Route branching in the navigation system.
Spring 2026 — Six-subsystem ship layer. Reactor, engine, bridge, cryo, life support, hull. Cascade graph. Hull-breach propagation.
Spring 2026 — Localization to five languages via DeepL. Steam store setup. Steam Deck compatibility pass.

DESIGN PHILOSOPHY

The horror is retroactive. No decision should feel obviously wrong when you make it. The game's cruelty is in the compounding.

Never reset. The five drift axes accumulate across the entire voyage. There is no soft reset, no forgiveness mechanic, no way to undo what earlier generations did.

Text first. Every system is legible in prose. No combat animations, no particle celebrations, no spectacle to hide behind.

Voice over polish. The writing carries the emotional load. Systems exist to give the writing somewhere to land.