Coming soon to Steam

A space adventure

Gateborn

The world broke into fragments that drift through the Aether. You and Kaelric keep an old shuttle flying between them on salvage and repair work. You land where people still live, hear what they need, and decide who gets your help.

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The trailer

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The world after the Ancestors

A universe in pieces

  1. Three robed figures stand among constellations and moons.

    Long before the world was broken, there were the Ancestors. They charted the paths between stars and built cities in the dark between them. Their works were vast, and their ambition vaster still.

  2. A great carved ring hangs in the sky while small figures look up at it.

    As they spread across space they found the Gates. Unknown in origin and ancient long before the Ancestors took their first steps.

  3. Golden paths wind between circular windows onto other worlds.

    Through these portals, time itself could be folded and re-made. The Ancestors glimpsed other paths. Other versions of themselves, free of suffering.

  4. Robed figures hold each other, surrounded by windows onto ruined cities.

    But as they navigated the timelines, a quiet sickness took hold. Their numbers dwindled. They searched desperately. They searched every timeline, every future, every past. No cure existed in any of them.

  5. The Ancestors reach out with light toward a gathering of animals: a bear, a stag, a fox, rabbits and a hound.

    As their hope faded, they reached across the timelines, found the creatures of their worlds, and gave them the gifts of thought, of speech and of hands that could shape and mend.

  6. A stag, a lion and a bear in cloaks look out over broken land drifting apart.

    And then, without warning, without farewell, the Ancestors were gone. Every trace ended at the same moment, as though a page had been torn from the book of existence. Small and bewildered, inheriting a universe we barely understood, only the Gateborn were left.

Fly

Between the fragments

Each region is a hand-built map. You mine asteroids, scan the wildlife, trade at stations and fight whoever comes after your cargo. Cross a Gate and you reach the next region.

Top-down view of Slagpoint station in Emberfall, a glowing reactor core beside a docking arm, with a giant pale jellyfish drifting past.

Emberfall

A purple mining region in decline. Most of the rigs have stopped, but the name comes from the boom years, when sparks fell from the cliffs day and night. Slagpoint is where you land first.

A giant jellyfish drifts past Slagpoint over glowing blue crystals.The Fossil Crown in Emberfall: coiled fossil shells in purple rock beside a frozen ridge.

Choose

Choose your own adventure

Out in the regions, some encounters play out as short illustrated stories. You decide what Sparks does, and Charm, Grit, Tinker and Nerve decide how it goes. When a check fails, the story carries on somewhere worse: the guard calls for backup, or the repair breaks something else.

The Last Rig

Emberfall, the spark cliffs. Pick who Sparks grew up as, then fly out to the last working rig.

A conversation at Slagpoint: Sparks, a young fox, faces Durn, a boar in armour who guards the gate.

Talk your way through

You meet everyone face to face. Durn wants fifty credits to open the gate to the colony. Pay him, threaten him, or let Kaelric talk to him.

  • Charm persuading, bluffing, bargaining, calming people down
  • Grit toughness, intimidation, holding on through pain and pressure
  • Tinker fixing, rigging, hacking, reading machines
  • Nerve pilot nerve, reading danger, acting first when things go wrong
A toll conversation at the Old Refinery: Kaelric beside a raven tollkeeper, with a green Charm 2 check on Sparks' second answer.
Take interesting choices through the world

Land

Walk the places you dock at

Put the ship down and you explore on foot. Walk the settlements, talk to the people who live there and take on their problems.

Isometric view of Slagpoint at night in the rain: the landing pad with its chevrons, the parked shuttle, and the lit stalls of the dockside beyond.

Emberfall

Slagpoint

An exhausted mining settlement where the supply ships stopped coming. It rains on the landing pad, the Dominion runs the admin quarter, and the gate to the rest of the colony has been closed "for maintenance" for years.

Isometric view of Helion Reach: pale stone terraces and stairways climbing a desert fragment toward a research institute.

Emberfall

Helion Reach

A modern research colony on the only ochre rock in Emberfall. Its institute studies a dormant Gate, and some of its measurements make no sense to anyone.

The Mine 04 entrance at Slagpoint at night: a lit gantry, a floodlight and the shift shelter in the rain.
The reception hall of the Helion institute, with its fountain and the Helion Institute sign.
Concept art: six battered hover trucks cross an orange desert in a line, trailing dust, under a violet sky.

Hard choices

Every place you land has its own trouble, from the mining towns of Emberfall to the harbours of Saltwake, and the people there disagree about how to fix it.

You decide who gets the last seat, whose debt you forgive and which of the great powers you help. Helping one costs you with the others, and some of your choices come back at the end of the game.

Isometric view of Sandhold: the caravan's rovers parked in the desert beside an observatory dome, with a camp of tents and a landing pad.

People

Who you travel with

The Ancestors gave the animals of their worlds thought and speech. Their descendants run the docks, the mines, the empires and the churches.

Sparks, a young red fox in a dark teal jacket. Sparks, played as a young vixen in the same teal jacket.

Sparks

Scavenger, pilot, you

Kaelric found Sparks as a baby, asleep in an escape pod drifting near a dead Gate. Sparks grew up quick, reckless and funny when scared. You can play Sparks as a fox or a vixen.

Kaelric, a lion with a red mane in white and gold armour.

Kaelric

Shipwright and mentor

A former Iron Dominion shipwright. He raised Sparks on scrapyards and repair jobs, taught the kid to weld before reading, and spends his evenings fixing small broken devices.

A few of the other characters you'll meet

The powers

  • The Iron Dominion

    An empire of predator aristocrats, marble and gold. It promises stability and keeps its lower castes in collars.

  • The United Collective

    A union of workers' communities built on technology and shared organisation. It promises equality and runs on committees and commissars.

  • The Free Consortium

    Controls trade, contracts and most of the traffic between fragments, and profits from keeping the other two powers in balance.

  • The Luminous Faith

    Hands out food and comfort across the fragments. Nobody knows what it wants in return.

Gateborn

Coming soon to Steam Press kit