The Quiet Ship
A free online text adventure in five acts. 2061. A survey ship in Jupiter orbit, eleven empty bunks, and not enough power to ask about it.
You wake in the medical bay of the survey ship Kestrel with a cannula scar in your arm and a chart on a clip that says you were put into an induced coma on day 328 and that no review was ever scheduled. It is day 411. The ship is at four units of power, minus sixty outside the trace heating, and dark in every compartment you have not paid for.
The other eleven bunks have been slept in. The mess has eleven mugs on eleven hooks. Nobody has written in the ship's log since day 328, and the log is still open at the page with a pen clipped to it.
Everything is a choice about what to switch off
This is the one game in the collection with no meter that falls on its own. Nothing drains. There is simply one intact bus bar between the reactor and the ship, it will carry a fixed number of units, and the ship has seven systems that want sixteen between them.
Lighting is one. Door servos are two. VESTA — the ship's mind, which answers anything and volunteers nothing — is two. Trace heating is one, and without it the hull walks down to minus sixty and takes you with it. Spin is four, the laboratory bus is three, the long antenna is three. You will spend the entire game turning off the thing that is keeping you comfortable in order to power the thing that will tell you something, and then turning it back on before it kills you.
Five acts, forward along the ship
Act I — Medical. Four units, one habitat ring, and a roster with twelve names on it. Learn what the bus will and will not carry while the only thing at stake is being cold.
Act II — The Spine. Ninety metres of unlit pressure tube at minus sixty, with two hand-made copper bars running forward along the truss towards something nobody has told you about. The trace heating and the door servos want the same units and you cannot have both.
Act III — The Pod Bay. Eleven evacuation pods, still on their rails, still wired into the ship, every one of them with a green light on. There is a notice taped to the hatch at eye height, and it was taped there for you.
Act IV — The Reactor. The plant was never broken. Everything from here is a question about a limiter, a bus bar rated for seven, and how long a piece of copper will carry sixteen before it stops being copper.
Act V — The Long Antenna. Warm, lit, and fifty-one light-minutes from anybody. Three endings, and none of them undoes anything.
Roughly two hours. Autosaves every turn, checkpoints at every act.
Stuck?
The hint page gives you one nudge at a time, act by act, without spoiling anything you have not asked about. The full walkthrough is there if you would rather just be told.