Oberth

A pocket system with no time warp

You start on Home, a 17 km world circling a compact star. Wildly different worlds hang in your sky. You have a suit, a lander with a fabricator, and a dwindling oxygen reserve.

Real physics

Orbits, gravity, pressure, heat and phase changes follow real laws, with tuned constants. Every trip is flown live.

Build anything

One block system from 1 m down to 6.25 cm. Bases, rovers, rockets, stations and submarines all have mass, and they fly, fall and break for real.

Automate to survive

Hand gathering gets you started. Lasting survival needs efficient, maintained machines and logistics.

Explore by any means

Drive, sail, dive and fly. Each body is a distinct, hostile world, and everything you can see in the sky can be reached.

Worlds in your sky

A compact system, hand-tuned and endlessly deep. Home's tiny moon is the first stop, and the inner worlds are 15–45 real-time minutes away.

HomePebbleTideCinder RustMurkAnvil The BeltHollowThe Giant (ringed, with moons)Azure (ice giant)

Design pillars

Every feature has to serve at least one of these.

Real physics you can feel

Mastery means understanding the physics, not memorizing recipes.

Build anything, at any scale

Whatever you build has mass and obeys the same laws as the world.

Automate to survive, survive to automate

Efficient, maintained machines and logistics keep the colony alive.

A small system, endlessly deep

Finite and hand-tuned beats infinite and shallow.

Better together, great alone

Co-op roles emerge naturally. Solo players get drones and autopilots for the missing roles.

How a session feels

Moment to moment, you watch your meters and keep things running. Across a session, you pick a project and see it through.

MomentMine, build, fly, fix. Watch oxygen, power and temperature.

Session (30–120 min)Pick a project such as a first orbit, a production line or an outpost. Gather, build, test, fail, iterate.

Campaign (weeks)Climb the tech tiers, spread to new bodies, connect the colony network, and build the Ark.

The arc

From surviving the first hours to the finale, the Oberth maneuver: a burn deep past the star that launches the precursors' unfinished Ark.

0 LandfallSurvive the first hours with a suit, hand tools, a fabricator, solar and oxygen.
1 FootholdBuild a self-sufficient base on Home, reach first orbit and land on Pebble.
2 NeighborsSet up outposts on Tide and Cinder, an orbital station and a comms network.
3 IndustryAutomate interplanetary cargo, open the precursor sites, and go deeper into the system.
4 Outer systemReach the Giant's moons, mine helium-3, and fly out to Azure.
FinaleThe Oberth maneuver.

Status. Oberth is in pre-production. The core orbital simulation, block grids, the automation simulation and the atmosphere and heat model are built and tested. The first playable slice, "First Orbit", is next. The name is a working title, and the final name is still open.