Have you ever wanted to play a Traveller-inspired video game? Check out Cosmic Drifter, my sci-fi JRPG MVP and proof-of-concept game inspired by the feel of Traveller-style interstellar adventure.
What Is Cosmic Drifter?
Cosmic Drifter is my Traveller-inspired sci-fi JRPG MVP, built as a proof-of-concept demo for educational, creative, and entertainment purposes.
In this game, the player is an interstellar drifter down on their luck. They have found their way to an obscure mining colony in search of employment, opportunity, and a way back into the wider galaxy.
Through exploration, interaction, missions, rumors, patrons, and combat, the player can uncover multiple storylines and pursue their own path through a science-fiction RPG world full of danger, technology, jobs, and strange discoveries.
Play The Cosmic Drifter MVP
You can play the current Cosmic Drifter MVP on itch.io.
Play Cosmic Drifter on itch.io
You can follow the development of the game at MakeYourOwnRPG.com, and you can follow the lore and related updates here at CyborgPrime Games.
Watch The Demo Walk-Through
Want to see what the project looked like early in development?
You can watch a 20-minute Cosmic Drifter demo walk-through showing the progress I made in the first week.
Is This A Traveller-Licensed Product?
No. Cosmic Drifter is not an official Traveller video game or a Traveller-licensed product.
It is a Traveller-inspired personal project that uses the Traveller SRD as a design reference and draws inspiration from the kind of sci-fi roleplaying I enjoy: careers, patrons, skills, trade, rumors, danger, technology, starships, strange worlds, and characters trying to make their way through the far future.
If anybody with a Traveller license wants to hire or commission me to work on a real Traveller video game, they are welcome to contact me.
In the meantime, I am building a series of Traveller-flavored sci-fi game experiments based on my own homebrew systems and original project direction.
What You Do In The Game
In Cosmic Drifter, the player starts as an interstellar drifter who has arrived at a remote mining colony in search of work.
Exploration and interaction are important. Talk to people, inspect the environment, gather rumors, find work, accept missions, learn the setting, and look for opportunities to survive and advance.
The current MVP includes a functioning starting area, Admin Office, Bar, Weapon & Armor Shop, Electronics Store, and mine head. You can purchase armor, weapons, and gear. You can go into the mines and fight mine worms. Some mine worms drop raw crystal, which can be sold for credits.
How To Play
Bringing Up Menus
Use the ESC key on PC to bring up the Main Menu. From there, you can access your item inventory, skills, status screens, and other options.
Use the arrow keys to move up and down the menu.
Press Enter to select your choice.
Use the ESC key to back out of menu selection one level at a time.
The Character Sheet
Access the character sheet using ESC > Status > Select Character.
There are four main sections to the Character Sheet:
- The Character Description
- The Status Menu
- The Character Overview
- The Character Combat Stats and Rank
Character Description Panel
This area contains a short descriptive blurb about the selected character.
Status Menu
Choose various character detail windows using the Status Menu.
Character Overview
This panel displays:
- The Character Portrait
- The Character Name
- The Character Rank in the current Career
- The Character Career
- The Current and Max Hit Points
- The Current and Max Tech Points
- The Character Mortality
When a character replaces organic body parts with cybernetic gear, their humanity, represented by Mortality, is decreased.
Characters cannot go below 55% human and maintain their identity.
Combat Stats, Rank, And Experience
Combat Stats
Each character is represented by statistics that define their relative strengths and weaknesses compared to other characters.
Rank / Career Level: Represents a character's relative experience level in their current career. Rank can be increased by accomplishing tasks, missions, achievements, and winning battles.
Max HP: Represents a character's health, stamina, and overall ability to take damage. HP can be increased by gaining levels or through skills and items.
Max Tech: Represents the character's ability to control technological devices, such as scanners, targeting computers, and starship controls. Tech can be increased through level advancement, skills, cybernetic augments, or items.
Offense: Represents the offensive strength of the character. Offense can be increased by gaining levels or through combat skills, weapons, and items.
Defense: Represents the defensive strength of the character. Defense can be increased by gaining levels or through defensive skills, armor, and other items.
Tech Offense: Represents the character's offensive capability with technical or technology-driven actions.
Tech Defense: Represents the character's defensive capability against technical or technology-driven threats.
Initiative: Represents the quickness and dexterity of the character, including the ability to strike critical blows and dodge critical attacks.
Fate: Represents a character's ability to avoid or inflict secondary effects from attacks.
Experience
Increase Career Ranks by accumulating Experience Points.
Current Experience: Experience Points are awarded for advancing missions, solving problems, figuring out puzzles, and winning combat.
To Next Rank: The Experience Points accumulated toward the next Rank in this Career.
Total Experience For Next Rank: The Experience Points required to gain promotion to the next Rank in this Career.
Standard Characteristics
Each character is represented by characteristics that describe different physical, mental, and social aspects of the character.
The higher the number, the stronger the character is in that area.
Normal human Characteristics max out at 15. This maximum can be overcome by various means within the game, such as cybernetic augmentation.
STR / Strength: Represents physical strength and influences hand-to-hand damage, lifting, pushing, pulling, and physical force.
DEX / Dexterity: Represents balance and agility. Dexterity also influences Initiative and Accuracy.
END / Endurance: Represents toughness and resilience. Endurance influences Hit Points.
INT / Intellect: Represents smartness and adaptability. Intellect affects Tech and Tech Offense.
EDU / Education: Represents education level, memory, training, and technical understanding. Education affects Tech and Tech Defense.
SOC / Social: Represents social position and social presence. Lower numbers might mean the character is homeless, gruff, or unlikable. Higher numbers mean the character may be well-known, respected, or charismatic.
Skills
Your character can learn various skills to help accomplish goals in the game.
Some skills can be used in combat, some outside combat, and some both in and out of combat. Some skills are tested passively behind the scenes and may change the story depending on outcomes.
Current Skill List
(More skills may be added as the game develops.)
- Administration: Interacting with bureaucracies. Reduces administration fees associated with obtaining licenses, permits, and documentation.
- Advocate: Familiarity with interstellar laws. Reduces fines, solicitor fees, and legal jeopardy from illegal or underworld activities.
- Astrogation: Navigation within star systems and through Jump Space. Allows fast travel between navigation buoys and places the JumpFrame closer to the intended Jump target.
- Athletics: Helps with feats of strength, endurance, and dexterity. Provides bonuses to running, jumping, swimming, climbing, balancing, and physical exertion.
- Broker: Helps with interstellar trade, including cargo, freight, mail, passengers, and profitable trade routes.
- Carouse: The art of socializing. Use Carouse to gather rumors at bars or find patrons.
- Comms: Helps increase the range of communications devices, jam signals, or enhance comms.
- Computers: Helps with interacting with computers, hacking systems, opening computerized locks, defeating intrusion protection, and crafting programs or computers.
- Deception: Helps with tricking people, telling convincing lies, misdirecting attention, and sleight of hand.
- Engineer: Helps with repairs of ship-based or facility-based systems such as power plants, drive systems, weapons systems, and more. Allows crafting of engineering components and devices.
- Gambler: Helps with calculating odds, understanding common gambling games, and taking chances.
- Gun Combat: Familiarity with pistols and rifles. Provides bonuses to ranged combat.
- Gunner: Familiarity with ship-based, facility-based, or vehicle-based weapon turrets and targeting systems.
- Heavy Weapons: Familiarity with rocket launchers, grenade launchers, and other man-portable heavy weapons.
- Investigate: Helps with discovering information, uncovering conspiracies, finding hidden information, exposing cover-ups, and landing a great news story.
- JOT / Jack Of All Trades: A special skill that reflects a character's ability to improvise and adapt. It helps negate negative modifiers to untrained skills.
- Mechanic: Familiarity with repairing vehicles and small mechanical systems, such as drones. Allows crafting of mechanical devices and components.
- Medic: Familiarity with biological processes, life-saving medical techniques, first aid, and the healing arts.
- Melee: Familiarity with hand-to-hand combat, martial arts, knives, clubs, and improvised weapons.
- Navigation: Familiarity with finding your way in the wilderness, especially planetside. Allows fast travel between known navigation points.
- Persuade: Familiarity with diplomacy, negotiation, agreement, and convincing others.
- Pilot: Familiarity with spaceship and shuttle flight systems. Helps with evasion during space combat.
- Recon: Noticing the unusual, spotting things or people that are out of place, finding hidden items, noticing ambushes, and reducing surprise.
- Science: Familiarity with scientific concepts such as physics, chemistry, cosmology, history, and more.
- Sensors: Familiarity with personal, vehicle, ship, or station-based sensor systems. Helps with scanning anomalous phenomena, alien flora and fauna, ships, and objects in space.
- Stealth: Helps with hiding, sneaking, and remaining unseen or undetected.
- Steward: Helps with high-class passengers and allows food and drink crafting.
- Streetwise: Helps with gathering rumors, surviving on the streets, interacting with underworld elements, recognizing social structures, and more.
- Survival: Helps with foraging, finding shelter, limiting environmental exposure, hunting, tracking, and surviving in the wilderness.
- Vac Suit: Helps with using, moving, working, and fighting in a vac suit and in low- or no-gravity situations.
Certain items can be accessed through combinations of skills, such as Vac Suit 1 plus Heavy Weapons 1 to unlock BattleDress access.
Careers And Rank
Rank represents your advancement within a career path. If you leave a career and return to it later, you keep whatever Ranks you have earned in that career.
There are a variety of Careers to choose from.
You can change Careers at any time by registering your new Career with the appropriate in-game business or guild.
Use the in-game character creation to set up a starting character according to your preferred playing style.
You start as a Drifter.
| CLASS | LVL | HP | ATK | DEF | INIT | FATE | TECH | TECHOFF | TECHDEF |
| Drifter | 1 | 21 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
Missions, Patrons, Rumors, Crew, And Guilds
Missions
Missions are a way to earn money, reputation, experience points, gear, career advancement, and knowledge about the world.
Class Missions
Class missions present opportunities to advance your career by engaging in tasks related to that career.
Science-based missions may advance Scholar careers, while combat missions may advance military careers.
Story Missions
Story missions help you learn about the lore of the world: the people, places, factions, histories, and mysteries that shape the game environment.
Uncover the secrets of the sector by completing Story Missions.
Patrons
Although work opportunities can come from anywhere, Patrons are a common source of missions.
Patrons can come in many forms and usually have missions that follow a theme according to that Patron’s interests, needs, or hidden agenda.
Rumors
Rumors are a great way to gather leads for possible jobs.
Go to places where people congregate to listen for rumors of interest.
Crew
You may not have all the skills you need to accomplish a task.
You may need to hire mercenaries or crew members to accompany you on your missions.
Find crew in places where people looking for work are likely to gather.
Guilds
There are a variety of guilds in the sector.
Some guilds accept any member who applies. Other guilds are more exclusive and will check your reputation before letting you join.
Guild benefits can range from discounts on certain items to extra skills, special weapons and armor, and even life insurance.
Items, Weapons, Armor, Devices, And Crafting
Items
Items can be crafted by players, purchased from vendors, dropped by enemies, given as mission rewards, or found during exploration.
Item icons contain information at a glance, including Tech Level, Item Type, and Rarity.
- Tech Level is noted in the bottom-left corner.
- The Item Type is indicated by the pictogram in the center.
- The color-coded icon and border indicate the rarity of the item.
In this example, the icon represents a snub pistol. It is uncommon and has a Tech Level of 8.
Item Rarity
Items are assigned a rarity level to describe how common or uncommon they are.
 |
Gray / Junk: Junk-level items, usually worth selling for a few credits. |
 |
White / Common: Common items normally sold commercially, crafted by players, or easily obtained. |
 |
Green / Uncommon: Uncommon items can be found at some vendors, crafted by players, or dropped by some enemies. |
 |
Blue / Rare: Rare items can be found at some vendors, crafted by players, or dropped by higher-level enemies. |
 |
Purple / Superior: Superior items can only be found on missions or crafted by players. |
 |
Gold / Epic: Epic items can only be found by defeating bosses. |
Weapons
Space is a dangerous place. Pirates prey on merchant ships, and hostile alien lifeforms roam the surfaces of uncharted planets.
You will need a way to defend yourself while exploring the cosmos.
Ammo
Some weapons take ammo.
Ammo can be used freely between pistols and rifles of the same Tech Level. For example, TL 6 ammo works with all TL 6 pistols and rifles.
Ammo for projectile weapons is indicated by a bullet icon and represents how many shots are left.
Ammo for energy weapons is indicated by a battery icon and represents how many shots are left before the batteries need to be replaced or recharged.
Armor
Protect yourself from attack with armor.
Armor comes in a variety of styles and is built for a variety of purposes. Vac suits protect you from the cold vacuum of space, while hostile environment suits allow you to work in environmental extremes such as extreme heat, corrosive atmospheres, and dangerous pressure conditions.
Devices
Various devices can help you during your adventures.
Device use depends on the amount of Tech score a character has.
Scanner: Provides critical information about enemies and entities in the environment.
Pocket Secretary: Tracks missions and allows the player to send and receive communications.
Crafting
It is possible to create your own items in the game.
Weapons, armor, devices, and other useful items can be created through crafting.
To craft an item, the character needs to know the recipe and must have the raw materials or ingredients in their inventory.
Some items require a fabrication device to be crafted.
Tech Levels, Races, And Hazards
Tech Level
In a star-spanning setting, there will be a variety of planets. Some are inhabited, and some are too hostile to support life.
Planets that are inhabited may be at different stages of technological development. Tech Level is a gauge of how technologically advanced a society is and dictates what types of items are commonplace.
Tech Levels:
0: Primitive, stone age. Simple tools made from wood and stone.
1: Primitive, bronze age to iron age.
2: Technology of the middle ages.
3: Gunpowder and steam power.
4: Industrial age. Plastics and radio.
5: Widespread communications, electrification, and internal combustion engines.
6: Nuclear fission power and computers.
7: Routine travel to orbit and communications satellites. Early probing of the solar system.
8: Space-based stations and habitats. Space travel is more common, and advanced probes survey the heavens.
9: Gravity manipulation is discovered. Artificial gravity becomes possible.
10 / A: Jump Space is discovered and JumpDrive developed.
11 / B: True artificial intelligence and advanced robotics are developed. Virtual reality is indistinguishable from real life. Memories can be edited.
12 / C: Weather control and terraforming technology are commonplace.
13 / D: Advanced weapons systems, such as Battle Dress, and routine use of fusion energy. Basic forcefields.
14 / E: Fusion weapons become portable. Advanced medicine makes cloning routine and extends the human lifespan.
15 / F: Advanced forcefields, life-extension, and neuro-download and replication become possible.
Ancient / Omega: The Ancient Ones once ruled the galaxy. Evidence of their existence is scattered throughout the galaxy. The Ancient Ones disappeared more than 100,000 years ago, and nobody knows what happened to them. Their technology cannot be replicated, its power sources are unknown, and most items are unusable by humans or misunderstood from their original purpose.
Races
The main character is human.
There are a variety of alien races you can encounter in the game, although the setting is currently a human-centric empire.
Hazards
Aside from hungry alien beasts that want to eat you for lunch, a character may encounter a variety of hazards while exploring the cosmos.
Corrosive Atmospheres: Chemical compounds in the atmosphere corrode and degrade regular vac suits. Unprotected humans would be dead in minutes or seconds.
Radiation: Extreme radiation can severely injure or kill an unprotected human. Anti-radiation drugs, combat armor, and other items can protect against radiation.
Vacuum: The vacuum of space is deadly to an unprotected human. Vac suits provide life support and limited protection from the effects of vacuum.
Extreme Pressure: Under the sea or on planets with dense atmospheres, pressures can be extreme. Hostile environment suits help protect against crushing pressure.
Extreme Gravity: Extreme gravity can crush an unprotected human on the surface of a massive planet. Powered battle armor and hostile environment suits can provide some protection while allowing the user to remain mobile.
Achievements
Characters can gain extra bonuses by completing Achievements throughout the game.
How Can I Support This Project?
I am happy to donate my time to this project as a teacher of game design and digital arts.
I try to use free assets and create original assets when practical. However, some development expenses add up over time, including RPG Maker software, indie artwork, icon packs, map assets, system plugins, hosting, and coffee.
If you are able and interested, I appreciate support, feedback, playtesting, encouragement, and practical advice.
If you have experience with crowdfunding or think this project could benefit from something like Kickstarter, please reach out to me. I would appreciate advice on whether this kind of project is suitable and how to approach it.
Thank you for your support and interest.
Take The User Survey
Have an opinion to share?
Take 10 minutes to take the Cosmic Drifter user survey.
Thank You For Your Support
I think Cosmic Drifter could be a very fun project, and I am eager to continue building on the development already completed.
Thank you for your interest and support, even if it is simple encouragement.
Hailing Frequencies Open
Are you interested in playing a video game with a Traveller feel made by a long-time Traveller player and fan?
Do you have suggestions that could make this game better?
Tell me about it in the Comments section. I am interested in what you have to say about a Traveller-inspired video game.
Follow CyborgPrime Games & Playable Projects
Want updates about Cosmic Drifter, CyborgPrime game experiments, playable projects, devlogs, and playtest opportunities?
Join the CyborgPrime Games & Playable Projects list and I’ll send game updates, devlogs, playtest notes, and news about future interactive projects.
You can also play the current Cosmic Drifter MVP on itch.io: Play Cosmic Drifter.
Change Log
21.02.16
- Updated skills list
- Updated some screenshots of the character sheet
21.02.11
- Created Character Sheet
- Created Skill List Display
- Created Non-Character Generation System
21.02.03
- Set the game resolution to HD 1280x720
- Set up the Skills Screen
- Worked on reducing the Skill List to the most useful 33 skills
21.01.09
- Changed sound effects for going through doors
- Changed sound effects for changing menu entries
- Changed the sound effect for selecting menu items
- Implemented first 12 skills
21.01.03
- Created self-installer for Windows
- Developed more game mechanics
- Created standard Character Attributes: STR, DEX, END, INT, EDU, SOC
- Revamped the Character Sheet
- Organized some backend JavaScript to make it easier to find libraries
20.12.25
- Received support from an anonymous patron who upgraded my RPG Maker in true Traveller style
- Added Custom Window Designer
- Added CyberCity Tileset
- Added space-themed background music
20.12.23
- Added many new animation effects for combat
- Added new enemy graphics
- Added new battle backgrounds
- Added new sci-fi tilesets
- Added new background music
- Added new character portraits
- Added new animation sheets
20.12.22
- Added dialog for the Med Bay Info NPC
- Added dialog for the Maintenance Office Info NPC
- Added dialog for the Bar Info NPC
- Added dialog for the Diner Info NPC
- Added Carouse mechanic
- Created the first animated test monster: replacement mine worm
- Fixed a bug where the attack animation continued to loop after the first attack instead of going back to idle
20.12.21
- Added basic game lore to the starter zone
- Added Tech Level information at the Electronics Shop
- Added Law Level information at the Weapon Shop
- Added Info NPC characters to all shops to help new players get oriented
- Added support for DragonBones animations
- Developed a concept for character creation that allows skills to evolve naturally out of gameplay
- Installed and configured RPG Maker
- Created a variety of map locations for the starter zone
Bug Reports
21.01.05
- Using “Attack” instead of the Gun Combat skill attacks with the equipped gun but does not spend ammo.
To-Do
- Optimize the dialog from the Electronics Store.
- Set up missions system
- Add armor and weapon upgrade slots
- Add crafting examples
- Add breakout points in the character creation process so players can start untrained, trained only in background skills, with background and first career skills, or with background skills and two career terms
- Implement Achievement System
- Convert project to RPG Maker MZ
