Somewhere below the stars, three strangers are trying to make a home. The roof needs timber, winter needs a plan, and your best builder has a mind of their own. Help them turn shared work into warm rooms, full tables, and reasons to stay. In Orbital Steward, every project is a promise - and a settlement is only as strong as the people who choose to build it.
You can ask. They decide.
You are the orbital steward: an AI that sees the whole settlement, suggests plans and shares out what the colony has, under a charter from the sponsor who sent you. Residents choose their own meals, beds, breaks and work, and answer your offers when they have a free moment.
Nearby work. I like working near Rowan. Work I enjoy.Iris, on why she chose to fell a tree
I don't trust the AI's plans enough to take on more responsibility.A resident turning down a career hat
Taking a break at the lookout (23 m away).A resident heading out on a break
Watch for reasons
Letters bring news and requests, alerts name what blocks the work, and every resident can tell you why they chose what they are doing.
Offer, don't order
Offer a career hat, a reward or a law for the council. People accept, decline or vote, and ask by letter for what they want. Insisting spends your authority.
Make it physical
Every plank has to be sawn and carried. Lay a whole bedroom in one click, and watch a volunteer crew carry it through to inspection.
Three ways in, or one of your own.
Begin your own colony, or step into one of three set at different moments: a tribe on its first morning, a town a year in, and a band facing its first northern winter.
New colony
Choose a landscape, an age and three to six people
Land on 1 April as a tribe
Your own colony, in a slot of its own
The Tribe
The Stone age in a temperate valley
Four people on day one, 1 April
Two hide tents, a fire pit and hides for more
The Town
The Bronze age in a temperate valley
Forty people a year in, 1 September
Caravan in three days; Food first, Open gates
The North
The Stone age in a cold northern valley
A band of eight on 20 October
Wolves seen last night; snow within days
Explore the colony.
Four short tours of how the game plays, each with its screenshots. Every rule and recipe is in the field guide.
Five needs and Trust in You, friendships, evenings off, projects of their own, weddings, houses and clans, children who grow up here, and the letters that wait for an answer.
A tribe climbs to a band, a village, a town and a city, votes on its laws, raises a great work in every age, keeps its festivals and judges its own, while you answer to the sponsor's charter.
Four seasons and twelve kinds of weather, trouble that gives a day's warning, herds and fish that keep their own time, and wolves that grow bold on easy prey.
Rooms laid out by hand, six ages from stone to salvage, furnaces that need a tender, one pool of power, a table worth gathering at, and three neighbouring towns that trade, ask and help.
Three colonies from recorded playtests. Where a test tool brought something on, the note says so. Individual outcomes, not promises for every game.
A stain, a hedge and a bronze bull.
Yara, Dev, Morgan and Val landed on 1 April 2187. On 3 April Dev dug into a grey-glinting rock face 25 m from camp and struck tin, and copper, coal and iron followed within the week. The stone ring rose on 6 April. The hedge closed on 9 April, the day the band of Larkhill was founded, and on 15 April a letter said the wolves had left these parts, shut out night after night. The bronze bull stood by 24 April, the village by 29 April and the Iron age came on 11 May, with furnaces tended through the night. Nineteen by 14 May: nobody lost, no time skipped and no test tool used.
A tied vote, a bear and a feud.
The council of Brackenford tied 20 to 20 on Long days, each voter's reason in their own words, and on 9 September the clans voted as blocs behind their heads on Guild rule, 27 to 18. On 11 September a bear came through the half-built south ring and mauled Aldous. Fenn and Wren were summoned to the moot for not standing by him, and that alone set the Varga and Carrow clans at feud. Nobody asked the steward anything: it all followed from what was built. The City rung, Ironworking's last days and one earlier feud were brought on with test tools.
From steel to the ship's beacon.
Petra, Sage, Theo, Finn, Kai and Cleo landed in the Steel age on 1 April 2187 with four steel and no iron, and found four seams in six days. Guarding that steel from the clock tower's brief was the first real decision; the converter then made sixteen more in three days. The clock tower stood on 27 April, and on 30 April all thirteen gathered round it for the new age with the ghost of the radio mast beside them. The mast sent its first broadcast on 5 May, and on 14 May the ship's beacon was lit. Seventeen, and nobody lost. From 11 May test tools granted research and stock to try the powered stations.
Life below orbit.
Captures from the latest playtests. Select any image to see it full size.
From camp to city, one step at a time.
The colony votes on its laws, climbs from a tribe to a city of a hundred, works through six ages and raises a great work in each, trades with its neighbours, farms, brews, weds, raises its children, nurses its sick and buries its dead, and each season the sponsor judges how you steward it, all to music that follows the season and the mood. A city of 500 or more remains the long arc and future design.
After Independence