Driftbound: Idle Space RPG

About the Game

I'm Ed and I make Driftbound on my own. It's an idle space trading RPG for phones. It keeps running while your phone's in your pocket, but there's a proper game underneath the idling rather than just a number going up while you wait.

You start with a battered hauler, no money and a galaxy that doesn't care. Stations have real economies, so one place is sat on cheap ore and another one badly wants it, and working out that route yourself is most of the early game. From there it opens out into questlines, crafting, pets, gear, fights you can pick or avoid, and a player run auction house.

Ships you actually rebuild

There are seven hulls and they're genuinely different shapes, from a slab-sided container hauler to a raked knife of a thing that leans forward even when it's parked. Two of them you can't buy at all, you have to forge them.

Every ship has eight slots to fill: engine, cargo, shield, capacitor, weapon, missile, mining laser and collector. There are over a hundred modules to put in them, so a mining rig, a cargo whale and a gunship are all the same starting point taken in different directions. Then there are thirty odd paints and a set of finishes on top, which do nothing at all except make it yours.

A long story, and a lot of side work

The main questline runs to twenty five missions and it properly ends, with an actual conclusion rather than a fade out into grinding.

Around it, all five factions have their own ten mission line, and they can't stand each other, so siding with one costs you standing with another. On top of that there are side chains for cartography, prospecting, bounty hunting, salvage, smuggling and more. It's a bit over a hundred missions all in, and they're written, not generated.

Hatching space pets

You find an egg, you leave it incubating at a station, and it hatches in real time whether the game's open or not. There are sixteen species, from an ore grub up to a stardust leviathan, and each one buffs something different.

You can only have one out at a time, so picking your pet is a real choice. Feed it and it levels, and if you end up with a duplicate you can trade it.

Crafting, and one tier you can only forge

There's a full crafting tree with recipes tied to specific stations, and for weapons in particular the crafted gear beats anything on sale.

Above all of that sits the Drift tier. Twenty five items that can't be bought, dropped or looted, only forged, and the Forge is a station timer that ticks while you're flying, ticks while you're offline and can't be rushed with anything. Every Drift item comes out with a serial number and the name of whoever forged it, so when one turns up on the market you can see it's the fourth one ever made.

Trading with other players

The Exchange is a player run auction house, and it works the way you'd expect one to. You list your stuff, you pay a small fee to stop the board filling with junk, and the game recommends a price based on what's actually been selling. Buy something and it turns up as a parcel next time you dock.

There are buy orders too, so you can post what you want and what you'll pay, and someone will go and mine it for you. Watching a stranger fill your order is my favourite thing in the game.

It's all asynchronous, so nobody's in your session, there's no chat and there's nothing you can lose to another player. When a board's thin, NPC residents keep it stocked, and every NPC carries a small diamond tag so you always know whether you're dealing with a person.

Fights you can pick or walk away from

Combat is shields, capacitors and a big Overdrive lever, and it's optional. You can run a whole career as a hauler who never fires a shot, or you can go looking for pirates and bosses on purpose.

There's risk if you want it, since a fight can cost you a hull and a repair bill, but it can't wipe your progress and you'll never lose a run to something that happened while you were asleep.

The honest bit

No ads. No in app purchases. No account, no login streaks, no energy bars and nothing you lose by not opening it for a fortnight. It runs offline, it syncs to the cloud if you want it to, and it's in nine languages.

I'm one bloke and I read everything, so if you play it and it annoys you, come and tell me.