Captain of the Astral Sea

For the best experience, please download through the Itch.io app.

Captain of the Astral Sea places you in the Captain’s chair of a freelance starship travelling a region of space known as the Astral Sea. A procedurally generated galaxy that is over one hundred parsecs in size, made up of inhabited systems, each at differing tech levels and made up of differing political systems.

Create your Captain, choose your First Mate and starship, and venture out into the open sea. Put together a crew, keep them healthy and happy, and level up your vessel. Trade, smuggle, transport passengers, fight pirates, and evade the police, all while you jam to the jukebox and watch the Astral Sea News tick past.

Will you be a trader, a passenger liner, a pirate or a bounty hunter? What destiny will you forge?

The Open Beta: Foundation + Release provides the very start of the Captain of the Astral Sea experience on itch.io. There are a number of features that have yet to be developed, and everything you see is subject to change. Feel free to provide feedback on it all. See below for more info on known issues and a helpful play guide!

How to Play

The first thing you should remember is to hover over everything; if you see a hand icon, you can click on it!

Once you are past character creation, you will see a screen that has tabs along the bottom and a status bar along the top, a central display and two side panels.

• The tab bars control the central display, and will give you access to all the main areas of the games functionality, as well as to the main menu and settings panel.
• The Status Bar provides quick access to important information; be sure to click on things here to get more detailed info at a glance!
• The left panel shows you info on your current system and any target or destination system.
• The right panel shows info on your crew in the ships roles, and will be expanded over time with more detailed crew info.

Take a moment to look over these, then go to the Captain > Crew, and select the Roles tab, to assign your crew to their roles. You will at least need a pilot assigned, unless neither your Captain or First Officer is competent in those areas, in which case you will have been given a free auto pilot.

Then you can use the Merchants tabs (along with the arrows at the top) to find the best trade and passenger routes, and use the Dock tabs to navigate the Galaxy, warp to destinations, and keep your ship repaired.

The Tavern tabs on the left currently only holds the Jukebox, but will in future be Job and Story related, and the Shipyard tabs on the right offer new crew, ship upgrades and new starships.

And that’s it!

Missing Features and Bugs

• There are a number of incomplete features, including the Tales, Jobs and Planets tabs, but also anything to do with injuries, doctors and medbays. Do not worry about the Doctor role or medbays as they are non functional in this version of the game.
• I do intend to add more depth to crew management, and this is also the focus of the Planets and Jobs tabs as well.
• See the Current Development Roadmap here, this is the same list I use to track progress on the game internally, but as with all development work until it is completed it isn't guaranteed!

If you find any issues when playing, be sure to let me know and, if possible, provide your save game file.

Note: This game is FREE! Payments are there for those who desire to donate.

For the best experience, please download through the Itch.io app.