Idlenaut

An incremental space-industry game set in a simulated star system. Extract resources, fabricate goods, and build automated Space Force fleets to defend your planets from enemy sieges. Ascend to a newly generated star system and keep your permanent upgrades.

Wishlist on SteamWatch the teaser

Coming soonWindows · macOS · LinuxSingle-player

Teaser

See it run.

Alpha footage. Everything you see is subject to change.

The game

Every part of the economy is visibly simulated.

Idlenaut is a single-player incremental game played in real time across a top-down, procedurally generated star system. Cargo ships fly their routes, extraction ships haul space rock and particles home, and a Dyson swarm assembles around the star one sail at a time.

01 · Industry

Build an economy across the planets

  • Set up per-planet production chains: miners harvest raw ores, refiners turn them into refined materials, and fabricators make goods like copper wire, rocket fuel, battery cells and solar sails.
  • Everything you produce pays out as it is made.
  • Power it with solar, wind, coal, steam, nuclear and orbital solar plants. Each planet has its own sunlight and wind.
  • Build observatories, research stations, gold reserve banks, battery arrays, maintenance stations and rock crushers.
The production board, with a planet’s miners, refiners and fabricators

02 · Ships

Ships that actually fly

  • Transport ships run multi-stop cargo routes between your planets.
  • Extraction ships harvest moons, asteroid belts and nebula anomalies, and haul the rock and particles home.
  • Discovery ships survey the system while observatories push back the fog of war.
  • Every ship flies a curved orbital path: it climbs away from its planet, steers around the star and brakes at its destination.

03 · The Dyson swarm

Wrap the star in sails

  • Fabricate solar sails and launch them into rings around the star, row by row.
  • Sails fire orbital rays at the planets they face, feeding orbital solar plants and orbital ray repeaters.
  • Sails wear out, so the launchers have to be kept fed.

04 · Threats

Hold the line

  • Enemy carriers arrive in waves and deploy invaders that latch onto planets and choke their output.
  • Space Force centers field three marks of fighter, armed with lasers, ion weapons, guided missiles and quantum beams.
  • Fighters hunt, dogfight, disengage and regroup on their own. No piloting required.
  • An adaptive director paces events to your economy, from ion storms to mineral blooms.

05 · Ascend

Start again, stronger

  • Research your way through mining, refining, fabrication, energy and structures.
  • A quantum particle accelerator collides antimatter and neutralino samples into quantum credits for permanent upgrades.
  • Ascend to a new procedurally generated star system and keep your quantum upgrades.
  • Every system is different: shaded stars, rocky and terrestrial worlds, gas and ice giants with moons, asteroid belts and glowing nebula anomalies.
The research map partway through a run

Screenshots

From inside the system.

All screenshots and footage are captured from an alpha build and are subject to change.

A developed star system with the interface openThe production board, with a planet’s miners, refiners and fabricatorsThe research map partway through a runThe transport board, with each cargo ship’s route, cargo and statusThe facilities board for a planet’s structuresThe ascension constellation between star systemsA Dyson ring of solar sails around the star, beaming power to a planetSpace Force fighters breaking up an enemy carrier siegeExtraction ships harvesting a glowing antimatter anomalyAn enemy carrier exploding under Space Force fireA moon above its planet’s horizonA ship docked at a moonExtraction ships mining an asteroid beltAn orbital ray reaching a moon

Coming soon

Wishlist Idlenaut on Steam

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Wishlist on Steam