DriftBreaker

A lone mining contractor works an asteroid belt against a company debt that accrues by the second. Flying and drilling are one gesture hold to fly, the drill is the nose.

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DRIFTBREAKER — Survival & Resource Management

For players who like extraction loops: every trip out is a bet paid in fuel. You fly a mining ship from a leased station into the belt, cut ore seams from destructible rock, and haul them home past rival crews, against a company debt of 1,204,551.20 that grows while you fly. A session is a chain of expeditions: push further, earn faster, risk the way back.

How to play (controls)

Hold anywhere and the ship flies toward your thumb; farther means more throttle. The drill is the nose lean it into rock to cut. Release to stop thrusting. The station couples on approach: fuel, repair, and the refinery that buys your hold. Touch the fabricator to shop: tap to select, tap again to buy. A tab on the left opens the chart.

Core loop

Undock, push out, cut seams, get home on what is left in the tank. Only seams pay, plain rock cuts to nothing, and the radio says so when it matters. Banking the hold pays down the debt; spending at the fabricator visibly grows the ship. Outer rings hold richer seams, harder rock and more raiders; the drift between rings crosses only at paired gates. The session goal is the ledger: every expedition ends banked or lost. Losing hull or tank closes the expedition, cargo gone, ship and upgrades kept, and a tap resets to the station. It repeats because one more seam is always almost worth it.

What is in this prototype

All playable: an endless procedural belt in rings; destructible bodies, including derelict structures and the husks of dead things; nebulae of dust and charge to cross or skirt; twenty-nine materials, five of them ores; a rival crew that parleys, fights, and raids your station while you are away; a station whose rigs couple physically; a fabricator where every purchase changes the ship's drawing; a survey chart; generated audio, no music by design; a full lose–debrief–recover cycle.

Progression and signature twist

In one sitting, upgrades compound tank, hold, drill, lamp until the next ring is survivable, and the station itself can be moved outward, ring by ring: relocation is the progression gate. Difficulty scales with distance, not time; the player draws their own curve by how far they push. The twist is the parley: a raider's demand is answered with the engine, cut thrust for three seconds to surrender the hold, keep it lit to refuse, and refusal is remembered.

Future-state vision

Rebuilt on the creation tools: a full extraction economy, contested claims, rival crews with memory, stranger things buried deeper, and a debt that can finally be paid or defaulted on.

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