Dead Reckoning — Free colony ship sim, looking for feedback
You're in charge of a generation ship carrying 1,000 colonists in cryo suspension. You don't know exactly where you're going. You won't arrive for centuries. Your job is to keep everyone alive long enough to find somewhere worth landing.
Each year you get a report. Resources tick up or down. Events fire — some are choices, some are just things that happen to you. Factions form aboard the ship and start pulling against each other. The crew drifts — ideologically, genetically, psychologically — and the UI starts to reflect it.
There are 11 endings. Most of them are bad.
What I'm looking for:
- How far did you get, and what killed you?
- Did anything feel unfair vs. appropriately punishing?
- Was there a moment where you understood what the game was actually about?
Free download, Windows/Linux. A full run is 30–60 minutes. https://garanlorn.itch.io/dead-reckoning
Any feedback appreciated. Even "It sucks".
love the music, it's the perfect soundtrack for this type of game. Maybe a longer track so it doesn't get repetitive? The sounds are nice but unbalanced, FX is much louder than the music. (Nvm I found the balance sliders in the menu)
I can't see all the text in the right hand column "Events & Directives", it cuts off and I can't seem to scroll down. I run on linux, windowed.
In the mission log it says 3 deaths recorded, but the cryo bay tab shows 0 deceased.
Right from the beginning the Factions tab shows "Social tensions critical: crew is polarizing". Also, as far as I understand it the majority of the crew is in cryo sleep. How can their ideologies be shifting?
I clicked on the emergency interventions to see what they were, and now I can't unselect them.
Again I get text cutoff in events and directives and can't scroll down to see what it says.
On year 6 we encounter Jupiter, when we've been traveling at a fraction of C? Hmm...
Feels odd to only have two options for encounters. For this one, a comet, I seem to only have the option to intercept and harvest, or partial harvest. Surely there should be an option to ignore it and keep going? Unless that option is also cut off and not visible... But no, because I could select options with numbers and 3 didn't work, while 2 did.
The text is clearly written by AI. I can assume the game was as well?
Not a big fan of tutorial text being part of the notmal game cycle. I don't want to be rereading the same instructions each time I do a run of the game.
The text cutting off really lowers the quality of immersion and makes choices more difficult.
I'll keep playing for a while, I'll post more if something else comes up.
For Number 9, there were some placeholders done by AI. For the code, it's about 40/60. Most of the logic is done by me, but for the display I used AI.
Writing is all placeholder for now, unfortunately. I had about 20 events I wrote but they have since been expanded on for flavour. I'm in the process right now of looking for a writer & pixel artist because I firmly believe that a game that uses AI for either should be free, as it steals from creators. I wish I could write this but with a full-time job I don't have the time, so this is all hobby work.
Tutorial will be shortened or killed.
I'm a writer. I'd love to help!
I mean I don't judge, I've used AI too for mockups. I don't know man. I do know the writing needs some help, good stuff that can be used as springboards in there, but whatever.
I finished my first run on a planet with 45% habitability, good ending. I felt like overall the game loop is more or less "click next", and "choose x or y". It would be cool to have some more micromanagement of the crew.
You know how you have a crew tab with people who are in cryo? They all have different abilities and allegiances, could be an idea to explore to be able to take them in and out of cryo sleep so you can have an impact on the ship status.
Right now it feels like as a player you're mostly left to drift, there were some options for researching tech and emergency protocols, but I felt like they didn't really matter or were vague. I'd say that this game has a lot of potential but probably needs to focus more on fleshing out the gameplay and player interaction/options.
It's a good skeleton to build something cool on, like a Oxygen Not Included, Faster Than Light type crossover.
Awesome. DM me and send me some samples. I'm happy to discuss this further! Honestly the writing is the story, and I agree on building it out from x or y. The main challenge is making sure the logic works for the basics, and then adding to the schema after it works (Hence the placeholder writing).
But I love your ideas of skilled workers. It's nice to balance the personal and systemic.
Anyways, let me know! At the very least I can promise to give you whatever payment I receive if you're down. Would love to enrich the tone through actual, thoughtful writing. Cheers!
I'm currently studying graphic design. I would love to help out with some images.
I would be totally down! Send me a DM and any samples! The bar to help is low, so if you want to be involved I'd be happy to involve you!
Man! You are the perfect player. I've been in the weeds so much that it's things like this I've been missing. Thank you. I'm going to incorporate all your feedback, or at the very least do a spike into what you describe. I was a little burnt out by finding the Signal 11 crash bug but I'll get on it ASAP. Thank you so much for playing.
Very cool! I'll give it another run then!
This got a bit narrative/logging what happens part way through, but hopefully it's still useful to you ;-) Really that's just a mark of me enjoying my experience with the game, so thanks for sharing it!
v. 0.1.264
Just the suggestions from above, for your convenience:
Thank you, thank you, thank you! This is the gameplay data I needed! Incoroprating all of this. Putting it on the itch profile so I don't lose track of it! Thank you so much.
I friggin LOVE these types of games, I'm gonna give it a go!
Looks great! I'll check it out
Interesting game. My first run failed in year 21 due to agricultural collapse. That feels super early; when it takes multiple years just to get out of the solar system, I'd expect food to be covered for longer. That kinda takes me out of the setting. OTOH, I DID spend food on research at the beginning...sort of my own fault...
I forgot about the emergency interventions. I'll try those in my next run.
I also had the text cutoff problem that tomiant pointed out. It depends on which tab I have selected in the left hand pane.
I'm not sure about balance. This is one of those agonizing-decisions games, so it fits. But-still. Food ran out!
Awesome stuff. Have incorporated feedback here:
Bug Reports & Feedback — 3.19.2026 DR-01 | Bug | High {character} placeholder text is still rendering in the latest build. Template variables aren't being substituted before display. DR-02 | Bug | Medium When arriving at a new system with two planets, you can only probe one — and once you do, the other is locked out permanently. You either land on the probed planet or skip the system entirely. The second planet is effectively invisible to the player with no explanation given. DR-03 | Bug | High The "merge with second ship" event outcome isn't reflected on the landing screen. If the player chose to colonize together, the arrival stats should account for the combined population and resources — currently they don't. DR-04 | UX | Low Event log entries like "22 deaths — critical, must be investigated" imply the player can take action, but there's nothing to interact with. If these are flavor/log entries, the wording should make that clear so players don't feel stuck.
Community Feedback (elephantium via Lemmy) Agricultural collapse at year 21 felt too early given the multi-year journey out of the solar system — food security feels like it should hold longer at the start. Player noted they did spend food on early research, so it may be partly self-inflicted. Also confirmed the text cutoff bug reported by tomiant (tab-dependent in the left pane).
I'm also seeing a text cutoff in the top bar -- where it says SHIPNAME | YEAR: # etc. The top of each letter is masked.
Another text bug:
I've seen the placeholder a few times now.
A third one - for the first choice of planets on my second run, there was no scrollbar. I was forced to launch a probe to check the first choice because that was the only thing I could click. I'll take a screengrab if I see it again.
My second run ended with "DESPERATE LANDING" on an ice planet in Year 51. Pop 634. Power was low, so I didn't think I had headroom to try for the next planet encounter.
Third run was even better: PARTIAL SUCCESS on an arid planet in Year 24. Pop 978. No research but still plenty of headroom on resources.
Ugh I thought I got the character one.
Thank you for the feedback! Was it fun, though? Stressful? Any thoughts on gameplay?
The bar at the top I will take care of ASAP
Fun and stressful both! I love the tropes informing the setting. Playing through to try to get a colony going is cool.
But the limited resources and hard decisions are stressful, too. I want my colonists to succeed! It's hard to make that work.
I do really want more in the gameplay. More things to do, more tweaks I can make. Some of the decisions might be nice as like policies you could tweak anytime, not just as events?
I'm still a little unclear on the research. I'm not sure if there needs to be more help text in-game or if I just need a few more playthroughs.
Oh, I should add - I'm playing on an older monitor, 4:3 resolution. I really appreciate when games either support that aspect ratio or have UI scaling so I'm not missing controls off the edge of the screen (yes, I know I should really replace that monitor - but it still works, and I'm loathe to just pitch it. We have too much e-waste in my country!)
Awesome stuff. Agree on the e-waste. Game should work on all screens.
I agree on the gameplay. I'm also frustrated with the placeholder writing now. I did have two writers reach ojt, so I'm hoping at the very least I can give them some cards and start working on expanding logic.
Unit tests went in today too, so hopefully no more surprises! Let me know if you had any ideas on what you'd like to see! I agree it needs a bit more to make it a good game. I'll keep brainstorming.
Thanks again for all your feedback! As this gets stale it might get lost but follow on itch and make sure to send me a message if your username is different.
Oh, I just noticed one more thing. I just got a CRYO POD FAILURE event that ends with
The pod has been decomcallinged. The manifest has been updated.
Is this a typo in the text file or a side effect of AI being at 84% in this run?
I will have to check. The AI ones were some of the first cards I wrote so I might've made a typo, but the UI is supposed to degrade as the game goes on. Reported and on it.