Solbound

Nowhere left to go.

Humanity never made it past its own star. The drive dies at the edge of the system, so this is all there is. What is left of us lives out here, on what a golden age left behind.

You fly a barely working ship. You strip dead ships for parts, carry cargo, take jobs, and shoot the people who try to take it from you. When you find a wreck with a log you can still read, you read it. That is how you find out where to go next.

Flying

Point where you want to go, and you go there. No momentum to fight, no slow turns. Mouse and keyboard or gamepad, and you can rebind every key.

Fights are about position. Hide behind asteroids, pick your moment, watch what the other pilot does. They do not all fight the same way.

Dying costs you. You lose the ship, the cargo and the credits you were carrying. You eject in a small pod with no guns and you have to reach a station.

Making a living

Strip wrecks. Carry cargo between stations that each want different things. Mine, on your own or with a drone that works while you fly. Take contracts. Hunt bounties. Carry banned goods, if you can live with what it does to your name.

Four groups keep score of what you do, and so do the moons. Some jobs and some places are only open to you if they trust you. Others you can simply pay for.

Every run buys you a bit more room, until the purchase that matters: a new ship. There are five, and the one you buy is the way you play from then on.

Nothing is just scenery

A sealed hatch wants a code. The code is in a log, on a wreck, two fields away. Someone at the bar knows roughly where it went down.

Board the wreck and go through what is left. Hack the lock if you have the trick for it. Change what your transponder says and fly past a patrol as someone else. Scan a hull before you commit to it. Most things have more than one way in: something you read, something you did, or money.

The world does not stop while you do it. You can open the terminal in flight, and the fight goes on around you.

When enough facts line up, you can link them together and get something no single log said.

The system

Eight hand built regions, each with its own sound and its own market, from the moons of Jupiter to the rings of Saturn. More of the system to come. No cutscenes and no tutorial talking over you. Quests never tell you where to go.

What happened out here is written in the wrecks. Put it together, or just fly and never ask.

Features

• Fast arcade flight, mouse or gamepad, every key rebindable

• Nine weapons, and enemies that each fight their own way

• Death takes your ship, your cargo and your credits

• A closed economy: salvage, trade, contracts, bounties, mining, smuggling

• Board wrecks, hack locks, spoof your transponder, scan before you commit

• A terminal you can read while the world keeps moving

• Rare loot that changes how you play, never a +5%

• Five ships, five ways to make a living

• Eight hand built regions, from the moons of Jupiter to the rings of Saturn

All footage and screenshots come from an early alpha build and will change.