Dead Reckoning: The Long Drift

Dead Reckoning: The Long Drift is a generational space-colony management game about a ship carrying 1,000 colonists toward a destination that may be decades or centuries away. Some colonists will land; others will be born, grow old and die during the voyage without learning whether the mission succeeds. You manage the ship and its society over the generations, then try to keep the colony alive for 100 years after settling a world.

Manage the voyage

Each year, the ship reports on births, deaths, breakdowns, disputes and discoveries. You manage food, power and the hull; wake crew from cryo and return them to it; choose research; launch probes; and set the course. As crew members age and die, their children take over their posts, while you remain in command.

The ship records your decisions. An order from year 40 can return as a problem in year 70, with your earlier answer quoted in it. Across generations, five forces reshape the ship: genetic drift, ideological fracture, AI integration, knowledge loss and class stratification. The crew that reaches the destination may no longer remember where they came from or what they believed, and the society they have become may be a community of clones, a ship turned into a cathedral or an AI that no longer asks permission.

Shape the outcome

After the voyage, you settle a world and try to keep the colony alive for 100 years, with the society the journey has produced. Possible outcomes include settlement, extinction, a ship that turns back or a crew that ascends without landing. What reaches the planet reflects what you did and did not do across the centuries.

In a Chronicle, multiple voyages share one universe. A later ship can reach a colony you founded and discover what became of it.

Command Council

Two to four players can share a ship in Command Council. Everyone can see the ship, crew, systems, course, cameras and reports. Players vote on each directive and mark ready; unanimous votes pass, while the captain settles a split. Council chat is built in, and each player reads the game in their own language.