Desert 0.1.0-alpha

The first alpha of a cozy survival game on a dead desert moon. Your home is a bubble
shield you carry with you, tied down with rope against the wind. Everything is rough:
grey boxes, placeholder sounds, numbers still moving. It's here to be played and
broken.

What's in it

• The moon: endless dunes that the wind reshapes, a day and night with the gas
  giant Tu overhead and its eclipses, and storms you can see coming as a wall on the
  horizon.
• The camp: a bubble shield that keeps the storm out, devices you build up by
  fitting parts into their sockets (batteries, hooks, hover trays, lamps), crates that
  stand on a deck, and a sail to move a camp across the sand.
• Power: solar panels, a wind turbine, batteries and cables, on a budget that has
  to last through night and storm.
• Rope: stakes, lines and reels to moor what floats and tow your camp behind you.
• Survival: water, food and a suit with five slots; a condenser that wrings water
  out of the air.
• Salvage: finds half-buried in the dunes, uncovered as the weather strips the
  sand, and ruins to walk into.
• Farming: planters that grow root-tubers in the clear and vat fungus in the
  storm's dark, wild saltbush, and a harvester that feeds you.
• A hoverboard, a radio with music, a weather station and beacons, and a console
  for your instruments.
• Three origins to come as (the Surveyor tows a camp, the Salvager rides light, the
  Homesteader stays put), each run in Normal, which saves as you go, or Ironman, where
  death ends the run.
• The dev console and its scenarios are left in, for jumping straight to a storm,
  a farm or a ruin. A scenario's run is never saved.

How to start

1. Unzip the download for your computer and open the folder.
2. Start the game:
   • Windows: Desert.exe.
   • macOS: Desert.app.
   • Linux: Desert.x86_64. If it won't start, make it executable first:
     chmod +x Desert.x86_64.
3. Choose New game, pick who you come as, then Normal.
4. Press F1 for the keys list. It shows every key as it's bound now. F11
   switches fullscreen.

You'll need a graphics card with Vulkan (Windows and Linux) or a Mac on macOS 13 or
later (Apple silicon) or 11 or later (Intel).

Known issues

• The builds aren't signed, so your computer will warn you the first time:

  • Windows SmartScreen says "Windows protected your PC". Click More info, then
    Run anyway.
  • macOS says the app can't be opened because Apple can't check it for malicious
    software. Control-click Desert.app, choose Open, then Open again. On
    macOS 15 or later, try to open it once, then go to System Settings → Privacy &
    Security and click Open Anyway. Or, in Terminal, from the folder it's in:
    xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine Desert.app.

• Saves may not carry over. A later build that can't read this one's save says so
  on the main menu and leaves it alone; it never loads half a run.

• It's an alpha. Expect rough edges, odd physics in a hard storm, and balance that
  will change. Your save, your profile and the game's logs are in:

  • Windows: %APPDATA%\Godot\app_userdata\Desert
  • macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Godot/app_userdata/Desert
  • Linux: ~/.local/share/godot/app_userdata/Desert

  The version is in the main menu's corner. Please name it when you report a bug.