Adrift

About the game

The starship Endeavour was two years into its journey when something went badly wrong. What is left is a drifting wreck: half-lit corridors, doors that open only when the right switch is thrown, rooms open to space and fires that still burn in the dark. You are the voice on the radio, guiding the survivors, and you give your orders with the mouse.

You never walk the crew yourself. You select a person, point at a place and watch them find their own way there. The puzzle is in what stands between them and the escape pod. A burning corridor can be put out by opening an airlock and letting the fire starve, but only if nobody is standing in the vacuum. A switch with a grey light is dead until a spare power cell is plugged into a nearby socket. A crew member without a spacesuit cannot cross an exposed section, and a suited one can. Close the doors around the airlock first, think about who goes where, then act.

There are four sections of wreckage, with cut scenes that tell the story in between. The first one is a tutorial where the radio operator explains each trick as you meet it.

Playing it here

The first time you click Play the page downloads the Python runtime and the pygame library (about 23 MB), which takes a few seconds; after that a "click to start" message appears, and one more click starts the game with sound. The download is kept by your browser, so every other pygame game on the site opens faster. Nothing is loaded from other sites.

Controls

While the radio operator is talking, a click moves the conversation along.

Tips

Read the lights. A grey switch has no power. Find a power cell on the floor and plug it into the socket first.

Fire hates vacuum. If a corridor is on fire, you can open an airlock into it. Shut every other door first, and keep people out of the airless part.

Suits matter. Dark areas of the map have no air. Only someone wearing a spacesuit can cross them.

Take your time. Nothing happens until you give an order, so look at the whole map before you start.

Frequently asked questions

Does it save my progress? Yes. The game remembers the section you reached, in your browser. Clearing the site's data erases it.

Does it work on a phone? It is played with a mouse, so it is meant for a computer.

Why does the first start take a while? The page loads Python and the game libraries. Your browser keeps them, so the next visit starts much faster.

Is it free? Yes. The game's code and artwork are dedicated to the public domain (CC0).

Credits and licence

Adrift was made by Team Chimera (mit-mit and Lucid Design Art) for PyWeek 21 in 2015, on the theme "The Aftermath". Story and design by mit-mit and Lucid Design Art; programming by mit-mit; artwork by Lucid Design Art. The artwork and code are CC0. The game fonts are derived from "Broddmin 5x10" by capbros (CC0), and the intro music is by mit-mit (CC0). The tracks "Hero Down", "Vanes" and "Mourning Music" are by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0. The button click is by FreqMan (CC BY 3.0) and the alarm by felipejordani (CC BY 3.0), both from freesound.org. The explosion sounds come from "9 Explosion Sounds" on OpenGameArt (CC BY-SA 3.0) mixed with a siren by aquinn (CC0); that mixed file, and only it, is under CC BY-SA 3.0. The steam hiss by bart, the sirens by aquinn and the power-up by Game Audio are CC0. The version served here is ported from Python 2 to Python 3 (integer division, xrange, Queue), its main loop is asynchronous (the browser needs it), progress is saved in your browser and the Quit buttons do nothing in a web page; the changes and the original zip are linked from the Licenses page. The game runs on pygame-ce (LGPL-2.1) and CPython, whose licences and source are also linked from the Licenses page.