Eleven interlocking skills
Gather → refine → fabricate → fight → reclaim, in one self-feeding web. Each skill has a signature mechanic and a Mastery second axis that keeps even maxed content paying out.
A grand-scale sci-fi idle RPG
Wake the Core. Rebuild the Ark. Cross the long quiet the stars left behind.
Play the web build now — a free, temporary playtest. No install; it runs in your browser.
Single-player
Honest offline progress
Desktop & phone · one save
Steam · Early Access
11
Interlocking skills
100+
Ship components
217
Hex starfield
180
Achievements
The Long Drift
The stars went quiet, and no one is coming. So you begin.
A thousand years ago the Severance cut the Weave — the living lattice that let minds and ships cross the dark — and the galaxy fell silent, sector by sector. You are the Core: an ancient ship-mind, finally awake, on a hull that should not still be running. There's no crew left to give the orders. There's just the work, the long quiet, and a signal out past the wreck-fields that knows your name.
Your ship is your character
The ship is the spine
Climb the chassis ladder from a Scout Skiff to a world-sized Ark, fitting weapons, plating, reactors and drives into a real mass-and-power budget. Every material you gather and every part you fabricate goes into the one thing that matters.
Combat is ship-vs-sector — a damage triangle, sustain economies, toggle-able Protocols and multi-phase bosses. Idle-able by default, deep loadout theorycrafting on demand.
Kinetic
Ballistic
Aetheric
Scout → Ark
100+ components
A story told in the margins
A galaxy that lives while you're away
Set a discipline running and glance back to salvage hauls, charted stars and the next thread of a real mystery. The Adventure Log threads a genuine arc and a recurring cast — traders, wardens, a hollowed courier, a Core like you but colder — through the idle loop. Nothing is lore-noise.
It builds to The Long Dawn: a three-way choice at the heart of the dark with no clean answer, and a New Game+ that lets every rebuild be a different morning.
217-hex starfield
Four factions + a Senate
New Game+
What you're getting
A deep, hand-crafted idle RPG — built to reward an hour or a glance
In the Melvor / OSRS lineage, wrapped in a living world and a real story. Buy once, own forever — no energy timers, no FOMO, no pay-to-win.
Your ship is your character
Scout Skiff to Ark, real mass and power budgets, 100+ components, ship-vs-sector combat with a damage triangle and multi-phase bosses — not a pocketful of swords.
A real, ambient story
A living Adventure Log of ambient beats, merchant encounters and branching choices — a genuine mystery and a recurring cast, building to the three-way Long Dawn ending.
Honest idle
Bit-deterministic offline progress — it keeps earning while you're away, and rewards a glance or a long session. No fake waiting, ever. Performance is a feature.
Built for collectors
A browsable Codex, 180 laddered achievements, a four-faction galaxy with its own Senate and relics, crew you bond with. 100% is reachable — and the game knows it.
Hand-crafted, not generated
Original IP, a strict written voice and cohesive bespoke art — awe and melancholy and stubborn hope, never generic grimdark. Plays full-screen on desktop and one-handed on a phone.
Media
Screenshots
Click any shot to view it full-size.
Cross the long quiet
Aetherdrift is coming to Steam Early Access — wishlist now to be there when the Core wakes, and to help a small studio reach launch. Want a taste first? Jump into the browser playtest.
Premium · buy once, own forever · no FOMO · no pay-to-win
SkyAnvil
The studio
Games worth leaving running
SkyAnvil is an independent studio building deep, respectful games with hand-crafted worlds — the kind you can leave running on a second monitor and still find something waiting when you glance back.
Our debut is Aetherdrift: original IP, a strict written voice, a data-driven engine built for a decade of content, and a firm promise — no energy timers, no FOMO, no pay-to-win. Buy once, own forever.