Beltlife: Prospector

Beltlife: Prospector is a GUI-based game about prospecting for asteroid claims in a corporate gold rush across the asteroid belt. You have joined Ceres Omnitech’s Prospector program, which provides you with a ship and sends you to the Belt. To build a fortune, you locate and catalog asteroids, stake claims and auction them while paying for your ship, keeping it running and buying supplies under the Belt Authority’s rules.

Prospecting in the Belt

The asteroid belt is vast and mostly empty. You can travel sunward to denser sectors, where asteroids are more plentiful but usually smaller, or outward, where they are rarer but typically larger. The comparatively safer route between the stations may bring you into contact with another prospector captain, a resupply ship selling fuel pellets at high prices, or an abandoned ship with supplies to take.

You use radar to detect asteroids and modern prospecting technologies, taken to their farthest non-theoretical limits, to assess their composition before staking claims. The game abstracts navigation: plot a course and start the journey, while keeping enough fuel and oxygen to reach your destination. There are no long-range scanners, warp drives, aliens or space wizards. The hazards instead include solar radiation, bone loss, micrometeorites and the vacuum of space. The fusion reactor, fuel use and drive output are based on current technology and scaled to the ship’s mass, though you do not need to calculate Newtonian physics or delta-V.

Claims and markets

Claim values depend on asteroid size and composition, as well as the current value of each material. Two simulated materials markets, one at each of the game’s stations, shift over time as materials boom or bust. Carbonaceous C-class claims generally sell for more at Ceres, metallic X-class claims at Vesta, and S-class claims fall between them.

Your ship

The factory VestaCorp PS-01 Prospector is a basic ship built to keep you alive and carry out the mission. It has nine major systems, each with four major subcomponents. Components wear down over time and use, and solar storms and micrometeorite strikes can damage them, so you need to perform regular maintenance and repairs.

The ship has minimal shielding, and your body suffers from exposure over time. You must manage supplies of oxygen, water and rations; waste tanks can be emptied, and their contents sold as fertilizer. You can upgrade the ship at the shipyard on Vesta.

Your captain

Character creation and development use light role-playing systems. You gain status and unlock perks, while the emptiness of space affects your physical and psychological health. Skills improve through use and make tasks easier, saving time.

The Belt Authority requires a cycle of 30 days on duty followed by 30 days of recovery. Breaking this cycle can result in fines or imprisonment, and time saved earns money.

A hard-sci-fi setting

The game takes a reality-based approach to space travel, with some adjustments to the positions and distances between Ceres and Vesta. Its setting has no alien menace or faster-than-light travel; the challenges come from the risks of operating a ship and living in space. The game is not action-focused: nothing happens without your input, and you can step away at any point. Its sounds are mostly atmospheric, including a micrometeorite warning klaxon that is not especially jarring.