You will die.
Your legacy won’t.
Seeded-procedural galaxy (~11,000 stars; up to 12 planets per star; up to 5 moons per planet). Trade, fight, and then land to explore. Join a guild, drop beacons to mark territory, and share intel without letting mega-guilds steamroll the galaxy.
Lineage Permadeath
In Thorbolt, nobody “respawns.” You become life‑disadvantaged — permanently. When you die, you continue as your first‑born heir. By default, the inheritance passes to your first‑born, including everything you bought, created, conquered — and even your game passwords. Much like life, you’re playing a lineage, not a single character.
- You will die. Many times. Plan for it.
- Wills & Wishes: You can specify that your estate passes to a particular gender of first‑born. You can’t choose your heir’s gender at birth.
- Trust Mode: If you can’t play, your estate is held in trust and carried out according to your wishes.
Children as Saves
- 24‑hour maturation: A newborn becomes playable after 24 real‑world hours.
- 48‑hour cooldown: You can only create a child once every 48 hours.
- FIFO lineage: Multiple children? You’ll have to die through them in order to reach the newest. First‑in, first‑out.
Think of it as a save queue you can influence — but not control.
Space hates you. Expect to die.
Worlds That Want You Gone
Any world you land on may already be home — to humans or to aliens. They’re numerous. They’re territorial. And they will try to kill you.
Fragile, Complex Ships
Minor issues become major failures in vacuum. A glitch in deep space can cascade into an obituary.
The In‑Between Is Deadly
Stars, planets, moons, asteroids, dust clouds — the void is full. Dust scours your heat shield; rocks turn ships into debris. Hit anything larger than an apple at FTL and you won’t be seen again.
Do what you will… expect to die.
Start Capital
You start with 20,000 credits. Buy a ship. Bribe a guard. Hire muscle. Or squander it on something you’ll regret — your heirs certainly will.
Auction‑Driven Markets
The auction house lists goods by quality (best first), then by highest reserve. Items sell to the highest bidder that meets reserve. Manipulate supply, undercut rivals, or corner a market — your call.
Language That Bends To You
Name anything: call money “dollars” and it’s dollars everywhere. Rename spaceships to “zoomy flie things” and NPCs will say exactly that: “Zoomy flie things cost dollars.”
- Shared lexicons: Give your language a name; players who pick that language share the same terms.
- Flexible syntax: We aim to support languages with very different structures — even Klingon. As a certain green mentor might put it: any syntax we can work out.
- Auto‑translation: Chatting with another player? The game translates between your chosen lexicons.
Entities Everywhere
All living things are entities in the server — same data model, player or NPC. Any entity can interact with any other. Don’t assume that polite stranger isn’t a person. Don’t assume they are, either.
Guild Beacons & Territory
- Claim & signal: place beacons at stars to mark influence and unlock light shared perks.
- Intel advantage: members see fresher market and threat data around guild beacons.
- Upkeep, not land-grabs: beacons decay without upkeep; stacking has diminishing returns.
- Helpful, not mandatory: bonuses are assistive, not pay-to-win.
Fair-Play Systems
- Smart instancing: encounters favour comparable group sizes.
- Diminishing returns: large zergs get less from beacon buffs.
- Law & frontier: patrols respond fast in high-sec; frontier pays more, risks more.
- Objective PvP: fight over beacons, convoys, POIs — not just spawn camping.
- Reputation & consequences: griefers draw heat and higher costs.
- Opt-in flags: choose when to expose yourself to contested routes/events.
Economy — Real Trade, Real Weirdness
- Seeded markets: prices drift around deterministic baselines.
- Silica dust: by-product with negative prices — get paid to haul, if you have buyers.
- Contacts: some commodities need permits or contracts (asteroid mining hubs).
Why negative prices? Some industries pay to dispose of low-value by-products. If you can move it to where it’s useful, the disposal fee becomes your margin.
Web Companion (Guild Intel)
- Star pages with markets, events, hazards (near-real-time).
- Guild dashboards: beacon status, shared intel feed.
- Member bonus: faster price ticks and early pirate alerts near your beacons.
In development — features may change.
The Great Flight
Many times humanity looked up and wondered — until the stars started going out. Sagittarius A*, the super‑massive black hole at the galaxy’s heart, began swallowing suns. Each feast blasted radiation across the spiral arms. Earth had a century at best.
In a rare moment of unity, we ran. A kitchen‑table breakthrough by a girl named Milly gave us an unstable FTL drive that grew safer with more power. She became a reluctant hero — then vanished at seventeen while testing a ship. Some say she found a better place and chose not to return.
Factions formed. Conspiracists stayed. Pragmatists leapt to the outer arm. Idealists argued for waiting. Prejudices old and new reappeared. Still, ships left. Every day. Farther. Faster.
We don’t know what became of those before or after us. We are 100 million light‑years from Earth now, tucked inside a little‑known globular cluster. If you could look back, you’d find dinosaurs again. Maybe that’s mercy. Maybe that’s a warning.
(c) Youth Science Program — placeholder artwork
Design Pillars
- Lineage, not lives: The story outlives you.
- Hostile cosmos: Space is the antagonist.
- Player‑shaped language: Words are tools.
- Economy with teeth: Auctions, reserves, consequences.
- Massive, cheap content: Procedural generation, human curation where it matters.
Prototype, Tests & Demos
We’re sharing rough cuts early: flight tests, trading loops, hazard sims, and the lineage save system. Expect glitches. Expect balancing passes. Expect to die.
Dispatches from the Void
Patchlets, prototypes, and production notes land here.
- v0.1 Flight & hazards sandbox
- v0.2 Auction house mock + API
- v0.3 Lineage queue (24h/48h)
Why Thorbolt?
Scalable Content
Procedural universe (11k+ stars, layered planet/moon generation) built from deterministic seeds keeps content costs low and replayability high.
Sticky Loop
Lineage permadeath converts loss into progress. Players return to secure their heirs’ futures.
Emergent Economy
Auction system with reserves invites market play, syndicates, and social friction.
Graphics & Advertising
Logos, key art, screenshots, and copy blocks. Use freely when covering Thorbolt.