Game jam project In development
2026 Epic AI MegaJam
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In progress

A real solar system, shields that ripple, and captains who talk

The placeholder spheres are gone. The system now has a living star, five distinct planets, an asteroid belt and a nebula. Weapons, explosions and shields have real effects, comms lines are spoken aloud, and pirates can board and keep a ship.

  • world
  • combat
  • comms
  • pirates
A top-down view of a solar system: an orange star at the centre, small planets on thin orbit rings, a scattered asteroid belt, a blue and purple nebula on the left and a ringed gas giant at the bottom.
The system map as it looks now: star, planets, belt, nebula and the ringed giant Gale.
A long warship inside a translucent orange shield bubble, with a bright curved band sweeping across the bubble from the point where it was hit.
A hit sends a ripple across the shield from the impact point. The bubble is still too large for the ship; we are fitting it tighter.
A warship silhouetted against a large orange fireball with a pale shock ring and glowing sparks around it.
A ship going down: fireball, shock ring and sparks.
The mission complete screen over the system map, reading Result: PreyCaptured, Ships captured: 1, added to your fleet, with a payout of 1276 credits.
A pirate run that ended with a captured transport joining the fleet.

A system worth flying through

Until today the solar system was a set of plain coloured balls. It now has an animated star with a glowing corona and five planets that each look like a different place: Cinder with glowing lava cracks, Verdant with clouds and city lights on its night side, the ocean world Harbor, the banded gas giant Gale with its ring, and icy Frost.

The asteroid belt is made of thousands of real rocks that clump into fields you can hide in, and there is a nebula you can fly into. A deep-space sky sits behind all of it.

Fights you can read

Combat used to be numbers and thin lines. Guns now flash when they fire, bolts and beams glow, torpedoes leave a trail, engines show exhaust that grows with speed, and hits throw sparks. Modules blow out one at a time, and a ship that dies goes up in a staged explosion.

Shields are the part we care most about. A shield stays invisible until it is hit, then a ripple travels out from the impact point. It flickers when it is nearly gone and flashes when it collapses.

Captains with voices

Enemy captains, nearby ships and your own crew already had things to say as subtitles. Those lines are now spoken aloud, with a different voice for each speaker. It uses the speech built into Windows, so there is nothing to install and it works offline.

Board it and keep it

Playing as pirates, you can now disable a transport, pull alongside and board it. If the boarding succeeds the ship is yours: the run ends as a win and the captured ship is added to your fleet.

Marines got a fairer rule too. Getting every transport safely to its buyer now wins the run, even if a few pirates are still out there.

Smaller fixes

  • Typing in the comms box works, and the keyboard no longer goes dead after you close it.
  • The replay view is clean: the mission banner and the control list no longer sit on top of the action.
  • Pirates no longer lose the moment the first transport reaches its buyer.
  • Fuel quotes for a route now match what the trip really burns.

Known gaps

This is a work-in-progress build and it shows in places.

  • Ships are too dark on their shaded side and too bright in some close-ups.
  • The shield bubble is larger than the ship it protects.
  • Frost looks more green than icy, and each planet has a small dark spot at its pole.
  • Hit sparks are too big and star-shaped.
  • The bridge hologram is still a small ball on a pedestal. Making it fill the room is in progress.
  • Nobody has listened to the voices or played the build by hand yet; everything so far was checked by unattended runs.