Starwake: Dark Forest

Earth stopped transmitting eleven years ago. Cairn stopped noticing about eight years ago. You are a surveyor from Cairn, a colony of a few hundred people on a world in the Harrow system. You leave with a ship, a survey contract and the Plumb, an instrument that reads a world down to its roots. It is also the loudest thing you own. THE NEIGHBOURHOOD Every real star system within 98 light-years of the Sun — 8,092 of them, placed from the Gaia Catalogue of Nearby Stars — and twenty-five thousand more beyond them, every one built from the same physics. Hot worlds and frozen ones, drowned ones and airless ones, and a few that are alive. Sol is out there too. FLY IT Orbits that keep time, burns that cost propellant, and landings you fly yourself. Or pick a place, let the ship take you, and watch the system turn while it does. STAND ON IT Every world you can land on is a place to walk, swim, jet over and cut into. Weather arrives and leaves. Days run on the world's own clock, and its plants are the colour its star makes them. WORK IT Cut into the ground with the beam, haul what you find and sell it to whoever is buying. Build walls and roofs out of what you dug, set machines working, and come back for what they made. MEET WHO IS LEFT Drift traders who have heard all of this before and believe none of it. Towns and stations of peoples who were here long before you, each with their own houses, their own trade and their own guess about why it is so quiet. Towers on high ground, still lit. Ground that reads as rock until the third time you look. LISTEN What you send out travels, and arrives — hours or days later, somewhere you have never been. You will know when something has heard you. Some will only speak to somebody nothing ever has. • iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple TV, with your galaxy carried between them through iCloud. • Touch, keyboard and mouse, or a game controller. • No accounts, no ads, no tracking. Starwake is free to play through its prologue. The full game is a one-time purchase, or a yearly subscription with a 3-day free trial for new subscribers. The subscription renews automatically until you cancel it in your Apple Account settings. Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://magiclabsolutions.com/starwake/privacy-policy/