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 — and, in time, a colony into a settlement with wheels, drones, a radio mast and a market.
“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 eleven 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 — until you build something with wheels. And when a colony dies out, its shelves stay where they stand: walk into the ghost town and take what the dead no longer need.
“Two trips means twice the walking. One trip means a funeral.”
Raise the Build Bay, then the Commons, wire up a grid, mount life support, and research what the manuals only hint at — room by room, into a base the weather stops winning against.
“Home is where the airlock seals on the first try.”
Mine iron, copper and the rare wild gold vein; pump lithium brine and dry it into battery salts; crush, smelt, extrude wire, wind motors, 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.”
Deploy Borin’ Boris on a deposit and let him chew rubble all day. Aim a Factory at a recipe and it feeds itself from the stockpile. Post a job at the Drone Port and a Mule hauls it, a Tinker mends it, a Mason lays the road.
“We asked the chip what it wanted. It printed the word ROCKS forty thousand times.”
Assemble a Dustrunner at the Motor Pool and outfit her: seats, cargo bay, ore bin, range extender, scanner mast. Speed is physics, not a stat — load her up and she feels every kilogram. ECO, NORMAL, or SPORT, and the whole map gets closer.
“Fast is a place you visit. Nobody lives there.”
Raise an Echo Vault and every member’s sightings pour into one shared chart. Stand a Hollerpole and pulse the horizon forty kilometres out. Hail the settlement you found, hand a friend an Echoshard, or fire the Farshout and let the whole world know where you are.
“It’s a lighthouse, dear. You don’t get to choose who sees the light.”
Open a Tradewind Exchange and sell off the shelf to whoever the Steward admits. Or wait for the caravans: five roaming traders pull up at a base for four hours and barter item for item — no money, three deals a wagon, first come first served.
“Something has to move for anyone to eat.”
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. Haul a cryopod home and invite a friend to thaw in it.
“We voted. The vote was to stop voting during meals.”
Nobody can be attacked who hasn’t raised a hand: strike first and you fly the flag, and the flagged are fair game for seventy-two hours. Sidearms and rifles come off the Factory line, a hit punctures a suit and bleeds air, and duct tape is the only surgeon out here. Sleeping survivors defend themselves. The pirate colonies never strike an unflagged soul — they rob your deposits and dare you to.
“Out here a fight has two prices: the rounds, and the air that leaves through the hole.”
The world keeps living while the phone is in your pocket. Come back after ten minutes or more and the colony reports in: how the tanks and the shelf moved, what Boris hauled, where the drones went, and every alert you missed — one sheet, and then the next move is yours.
“Read it standing up. If it needs sitting down, you’ll know by the second line.”
Read before spending.
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. Ever.
The game is free. A free account runs 3 survivors, queues 5 orders at a time, and sees one short ad every 10 minutes of play — an ad can never hold up the game. A subscription ($3.99 / month) or the Lifetime Unlock ($19.90 once) buys more survivor slots (10 or 20, 40 with both), a 30-order queue, and no ads. 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.
Android: live on Google Play — version 5.44.0, released 1 October 2026. The world is already running; the wrecks keep falling on schedule, and updates ship most weeks.
iPhone & iPad: built and in App Store review — the inspectors are famously thorough over there. The newsletter hears the day it clears.
PC: a desktop client is on the workbench; no date yet.
Before you own an Inferno Scrapburner.
Every item, tool, building and rig has an entry in the Field Guide — weights, capacities, and the warranty disclaimers nobody honoured. The Research Tree lays out every technology the Lab can teach, what it costs, and what it buys.