It's out. I can hardly believe I get to type that.
Hi — I'm KptKittyBucket, and AETHERDRIFTER is my game. As of today it's live in Early Access, and if you're reading this, you found it. Thank you. Genuinely.
The short version of what you're looking at: a sci-fi idle RPG in the Melvor / Old School RuneScape tradition, about being the last ship-mind awake in a galaxy that went quiet a thousand years ago. You gather, refine, build, fight, and slowly turn a dying hull into something enormous — and the whole time there's a story threading through the background about what actually closed the sky, told by a tired, funny old machine called the Core who I have grown unreasonably attached to.
I built this because I love idle games that respect you. So the rules I held myself to: offline progress is exact — the ship earns precisely what it would have earned, calculated properly, not estimated. No fake timers. No paid skips. It works in a full-screen session or a glance between other things, and it'll keep working while you sleep.
What's actually in there today: all eleven skills, the full ship ladder from a little Scout Skiff up to a world-sized Ark, ship-vs-sector combat with proper bosses, four factions with their own politics and a Galactic Senate, a 217-hex star chart, crew, relics, a hydroponics bay I spent way too long on, the complete story through its ending, a prestige loop beyond that, and 100 Steam achievements where 100% is genuinely reachable. It's a finished loop, start to credits — Early Access isn't a warning label here, it's an invitation.
Why Early Access, honestly
Because I've tuned this game against my own save files and a handful of very patient friends, and that only gets you so far. The next stretch should be shaped by real players. Balance will move. Art and sound will keep improving. If something feels grindy or unclear, I want to hear about it — the most recent balance pass (faction standing, auto-cooking in the galley) exists because one playtester grumbled about it, and it shipped within the week. That's the pace I want to keep. Your save carries forward through all of it.
The part where I ask you for things
Two things, if the game earns them: tell me what's broken or boring in the discussions, and if you find yourself an hour deep when you meant to check in for five minutes — a review, even a short one, matters more to a game this size than I can politely express.
I'll be in the discussions probably more than is healthy. Come say hi.
Thanks for being here on day one.
— KptKittyBucket
P.S. — The Core would like the record to show that it did most of the work.