Cast Adrift · Orientation Briefing
Everything a freshly thawed survivor needs to know about the game, the world, and why the oxygen gauge is the most honest friend you will ever have.
For the impatient. You’ll fit right in.
Cast Adrift is a cooperative sci-fi survival game for your phone. Everyone plays in one persistent world, simulated around the clock on our server: your survivors keep breathing — and mining, and getting cold — whether the app is open or not.
You crash. You salvage. You raise a shelter before the weather files a complaint. Then you find the other survivors, pool what you carry, and turn a debris field into a colony.
“Day one: the ship broke up. Day three: we had a roof and a rota.” — recovered journal, author unknown
How it got this bad.
Earth is gone. What’s left of humanity limps toward Alpha Centauri in makeshift exodus ships — and “makeshift” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Ships fail. Ships fall. Yours did, onto a cold world nobody surveyed.
You wake in a drop-pod, suit ticking down oxygen, water, and heat, while everything humanity managed to save rains down around you in crates. The good news: you are not alone down here. The other news: the planet noticed you arrive.
“Alpha Centauri is exactly as far away as yesterday. The shelter, however, has a door now.” — status report, sol 19
The job, in six panels.
Oxygen, water, warmth, and calories drain in real time. Run dry and your survivor goes down — reachable and rescuable for a while, then gone for good. Death is permanent. Plan like it.
“Check your oxygen first. Everything else is a luxury with paperwork.”
The wreck rains crates: metal, electronics, tools, the occasional legend-making find. Everything weighs something, and your legs are the logistics network.
“Two trips means twice the walking. One trip means a funeral.”
Raise a shelter, wire up power, mount life support, research what the manuals only hint at — and grow it, room by room, into a base the weather stops winning against.
“Home is where the airlock seals on the first try.”
Mine iron and copper, crush the rock, smelt ingots, and machine parts at the workshop. Every tool you will ever own out here is made, not bought.
“Everything runs on ingots. Including, indirectly, you.”
Pool materials in the common stockpile, put idle survivors to work, and earn Influence for what you contribute. When the colony needs the one thing scarcer than oxygen — decisions — it elects a Steward.
“We voted. The vote was to stop voting during meals.”
Haul a cryopod home and invite a friend to thaw out in it. They wake up in your base, in your world, owing you exactly one favor of unspecified size.
“Best housewarming gift: a person.”
Read before spending.
No ads. No pay-to-win. Survival is never for sale: the things that keep a survivor alive — air, water, heat, tools, materials — are earned in the world and cannot be bought with money. Paid options cover extra character slots, and someday looks. That’s it, and that’s policy.
“If anyone ever charges you to breathe, that’s not a store. That’s a ransom.” — founding memo
Doors, and when they open.
Cast Adrift is in active development: live and testing on Android today, with a PC client on the workbench. The world is already running — the wrecks keep falling on schedule.
Want in, or just want news? The landing beacon takes email addresses. And if you want to know what an Inferno Scrapburner is before you own one, the Field Guide has you.