Cockpit flight
Thrust, drift, and bank from inside the cockpit. The view is the instrument: the ASCII frame around you is the only HUD you really need.
SPASCII
A slow space-flight exploration game with an ASCII aesthetic.
Something out here is still transmitting. You came to listen.
What it is
You fly the Hollow: a planetless pocket of deep space, far past the last charted lane, with no worlds and no sun to call home. Only drifting rock, cold dark, and the scattered outposts that cling to it. There are no enemies and no weapons here. You mine, you travel, you talk, and slowly you piece together why anyone settled this far out at all.
- FLY a cockpit through the belt at your own pace.
- MINE the meditative gesture, your steady income.
- TRAVEL warp between distant outposts on He‑3.
- TALK build the relationships that open the map.
The loop, in depth
Two-phase mining
Lock an asteroid and cut it with the laser, then switch to the salvage tractor to draw the loose ore home. Reach scales with the size of what you target.
He‑3 and warp
Cruising is free; crossing a sector is not. Warp burns helium-3, so every long jump is a decision. Refuel at outposts before you push into the dark.
Docking and outposts
Approach an outpost, hand control to the autopilot, and let the radio talk you in. Inside there is a market, a roster, and people who remember you.
Trade and standing
Sell ore, buy fuel and supplies. Prices move with your standing at each outpost, so where you are known is worth as much as what you carry.
Discovery
The map is dark until you go. Each new outpost you reach is charted for good, opening fresh warp lanes and the next layer of the story.
Every outpost is a real place, lit and slowly turning, drawn live in characters.
Read the space around you on the holo-radar, then pull back to the sector map to plot your next jump.
Why you are out here
The watch that kept this place broke long ago, and the colonists came anyway, drawn to a faint signal nobody can quite name. You are here to chart the Hollow, to keep a small colony alive, and to work out what is still calling from the dark. In the end the only real choice is yours: leave, or stay.
What makes it special
Spascii looks like a wall of glowing text, but underneath it is a living, moving world. Everything is drawn fresh as you fly, then painted in characters and the warm glow of an old screen.
Real, drifting space glows behind the characters. It is an ASCII look, not a flat wall of text.
A world made of characters
The whole scene, your ship, the rock, the light, is redrawn every instant as glowing characters, then softened by the curve and flicker of an old screen.
Space that is never empty
Behind the characters, deep space drifts with color, clouds, and dust that slowly shift as you cross from one region to the next.
A soundtrack that writes itself
Nothing is pre-recorded. The music is made up as you go, a different mood for every region, swelling and tightening with your speed.
Say it in your own words
Type to the crew however you like. They understand and answer, right there as you play, with nothing of what you say ever leaving your own machine.
Everyone has a voice
Characters speak aloud, each with their own steady voice, so the same face always sounds like the same person.
They remember you
Every outpost keeps its own read on you. Help a place or cross it and it sticks, shaping how people greet you, the prices you are offered, and which doors open next time you dock.
A crew, drawn from numbers
A glimpse of the lounge
THE DRIFT
BAR & LOUNGE
▄ █ ▐█▌ ▐█▌
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▄ ▐█▌ ▐█▌
▖ █ █ █
▄ █ ▟█▙
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They say the relay out past Tessen went quiet again.
Stay long enough and the Drift starts to feel like home.
♪ NOW PLAYING · ORBITAL DRIFT
OPEN · 24H
Dock at an outpost and the bar is open: a neon sign, a jukebox tuned to the sector, and talk you can drift through.
Your story, kept
Save when you choose to, and the whole journey comes back exactly as you left it, kept on your own machine and nowhere else.
One Hollow, shared
The Hollow is vast and made to be discovered, yet it is the same dark for everyone: the same outposts, the same belts, run after run.
While you're here
Widget is my other project: a tiny desk robot that actually sits by your keyboard and lights up the moment something you care about happens. A timer ends, a delivery arrives, your coding agent finishes: he blinks, perks his ears, and celebrates with you. Open, repairable, and yours to keep, hand-built one at a time.
Meet Widget
littlerobotfactory.com
