Junkyard Astronauts

From the Devs

BUILD · LAUNCH · REACH THE MOON

The yard opens at night, under a moon that looks close enough to reach. You are a robot with a corner workshop, a number-row inventory, and a professional opinion about welding. Everything in the scrap lanes is yours if you can carry it: engines, fuel barrels, frame rails, ladders, a fridge that will absolutely serve as a crew capsule.

Weld first, regret later. Sockets snap parts flush; grid and free placement exist for the deliberately stupid builds. Every joint has a grade, and the physics believes the welds, not your optimism. A rocket that looks assembled is assembled. Briefly.

Strong rockets hold. Weak ones tell you where. Every joint carries real load on the way up: mass, thrust, the air at max-Q, the bend of a lopsided stack. Build mode predicts your weakest weld before you launch, and the post-flight report names the one that let go.

The launch is a ceremony. Walk your finished rocket to the shared pad in the middle of the yard, set it down, and hit the big red button. The whole yard hears the range-clear call. Then watch your junk climb off a tiny planet until the sky runs out of blue. The altitude board keeps the score, from "Scared some birds" all the way to the Moon.

Your crewmates are the hazard. 1-4 player co-op with a shared pad and no shared restraint: collaborate on one glorious stack, or deploy the yard tools and shoot the parts right out of a rival's pockets. Whatever comes down rains back into the yard as salvage. The end-of-shift board hands out YARD AWARDS, LAWN DART, SIDEWAYS ENTHUSIAST, YARD SALE, and it is right about you.

Talk, or don't. Text chat and proximity voice: your crewmates hear you from your robot, closer is louder, and there's a mute for the one who never stops. Scrap drops land every few minutes, so the yard never runs dry.

Four robots, four workshops. RIVET the all-round fitter, GANTRY the long-reach crane, DOZER the heavy plant that never tips, SPARK the fast little monowheel with tiny arms. Same power, different lies they tell themselves.

• Weld scrap into rockets the physics engine will judge honestly

• 1-4 player online co-op on one shared launch pad, with text and proximity voice chat

• Structural integrity that predicts your weakest weld, then proves it

• A milestone ladder from "Above the junk piles" to the actual Moon

• Shoot parts off your friends; everything lost rains back as salvage

• Four robot chassis with real identities and one power level

• An original "scrapyard space western" soundtrack

• End-of-shift YARD AWARDS with no appeals process

There is also a raccoon. It does not help.