Zenith Expanse

Description

Zenith Expanse is a space colony sim about a small crew far from home. You wake them up, keep them fed and watered, build a base, fly between systems and deal with whatever the galaxy throws at you. There's no victory screen. You just see how far you get.

How it starts

Your ship's water recycler dies in transit. One colonist wakes up, the rest of the crew stays frozen, and the only answer to your distress call comes from Ewa Kosok, a cryo engineer one jump away. She can wake your people up if you bring her the part she needs. Once everyone's awake, you pick what you want to learn first (building a colony, mining, exploring or making money), or skip it and do your own thing. On your second run you can skip the opening completely.

Your crew

Every colonist comes with a life story: where they grew up, what they got up to as a teenager, a few jobs and maybe a war, prison or a lottery win (there are over 200 chapters). They have skills and traits, they get hungry, tired, bored and stressed, and they get hurt one body part at a time. They make friends, hold grudges and remember why, and sometimes there's a baby on the way.

Fall behind on wages and they go on strike, then pack up and leave. Push someone too far and they break in a way that fits who they are. You paint their work, sleep and free time hour by hour, and each of them keeps a diary that tells you things their stats won't.

Bases built from modules

You put up an empty building (small, medium, large, an open field or a greenhouse) and fill it with modules: bunks, a kitchen, a water pump, solar panels, labs, a poker table and almost 40 in total. Where things go matters. A generator next to the bunks keeps people up, a cold bedroom means a bad night, and a gun rack next to the butcher table speeds up butchering.

Your people head out from the base to mine, hunt and gather, and your ship works like a small base too, sending out its own hunting, foraging and mining parties wherever you land.

Planets and everything on them

Every new game builds its own galaxy, from 100 to 500 stars, and most of them are wild. Planets have 14 biomes and seasons that change what you can grow and hunt, and on frozen worlds the Long Night stops your crops and sends the wildlife into hiding. Species are built from 100 animal and 37 plant archetypes, each with its own anatomy, so you can hunt them, catch them alive, keep them, ride them on long trips or bet on them at the races. Hunts and fights are worked out body part by body part. There are over 300 kinds of places to find on planets and in space, from a crashed lander to a Kelp Cathedral.

Almost 1,000 events

Crew drama, storms, ghost ships, shadow market jobs, precursor ruins. Most events end with a choice, and the easy option usually costs you something. In over 300 of them the outcome rolls against your crew's actual skills, so who you send matters. Three long precursor storylines (the Architects, Exodus and the Rift) run across many systems and change with what you do along the way.

Nations, borders and trouble

18 nations hold territory and fight over it. Every system is split between the nations there, and your contracts, trade and fights for one side move those shares, so you can actually help a nation take a system. Who holds it sets your taxes, your prices and the jobs you get. Past their borders the galaxy gets wild. Pirates hunt in open space and set up camps on the ground, and raiders hit your base with a couple of days' warning: pick your defenders, take shelter or pay them to leave.

Ships and money

Shipyards sell 18 hulls in six classes, from colony ships and cargo haulers to fighters and scouts, with 33 modules to fit. Settlement boards are full of transport and passenger contracts, every system has its own price level, and the shadow market pays well for cargo the patrols would love to scan. If you run out of fuel, you can scoop it straight from a star. And if you'd rather lose your credits faster, there's a stock exchange with 100 companies, a fight club and, yes, alien animal races you can bet on.

Made for modding

Almost all of the content, from events and quests to items, species and ship modules, lives in plain-text Let Me Cook files you can open and change. The game already loads Steam Workshop subscriptions, and a local mods folder and publishing straight from the game are on my list.

Colonist portraits and the key art are hand-drawn by Polish illustrator Łucja Marczyńska. The game is fully playable in English, Polish, German and Spanish, and I'm on the Discord every day if you want to tell me what's broken or what you'd like to see next.