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RawData/pbuild

Pbuild

In development

Worlds Remain.

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Overview Gallery Milestones126/134 Status Changelog124
Overview

Worlds Remain. A RawData Studio game.

Pbuild is a first-person game about building planets and exploring them. You are one of the Vaelin, a people of wanderers, and you wake aboard a Forgehold, a vast worldship left behind by the vanished Anvari, at the edge of a stilled system. The ship has nearly everything needed to make a world. Making one is easy. What that world becomes depends on real physics, and then you fly down and explore it.

The title on the galaxy, Rime rising as a crescent in the corner
The title on the galaxy, Rime rising as a crescent in the corner
Milestones7 of 13 phases · 126 of 134 milestones
94%
  1. 00 Design
  2. 01 Foundations
  3. 02 The Forge
  4. 03 Worlds Seen From Space
  5. 04 One People, Many Stars
  6. 05 The Mood Pass
  7. 06 Foundations for Play
  8. 07 Waking Last Lantern
  9. 08 Worlds You Can Walk
  10. 09 Tending Seeds
  11. 10 Together
  12. 11 Living Worlds
  13. 12 The Spiral's Story
00 Design Complete 3/3
  • Game concept, lore, and the Vaelin's star system (four peoples until Session #46; now one, the Vaelin)
  • Technical design: how a galaxy-sized world stays precise down to the millimetre
  • Brand direction from the design boards
01 Foundations Complete 25/25
  • Foundations: the simulation core (orbits, planet physics) and the first playable scene
  • Hands-on playtest of the foundations (fixes made; replay to confirm)
  • The look: the cloaked Wright in third person and the Vaelin Forgehold at final quality played
  • The Wright dressed and moving: clothes, animations, cloth, sound and sky played
  • Ashvek speaks, the cloak and sprint polished, recorded sound and a clearer sky played
  • Under the hood: one system for everything placed in the world, described as data (the Cradle is built this way already)
  • Last Lantern brighter, with its walls sealed against space
  • Under the hood: one system for characters: the Wright is described as data and brought into the world by it, so more characters can follow
  • A brightness setting, so the ship can be lit the way you want it
  • Room to stand beside the pod as you wake, instead of half inside it
  • Under the hood: one system for sound, so every noise aboard is described the same way and played from one place
  • The ship lit at the brightness chosen in play, and three sounds nothing ever played taken out
  • The cloak resting properly on the pod as you wake, and solid things everywhere now push cloth away
  • The cloak fully clear of the stone through the whole waking, and the Wright jumping properly out of a long stand
  • Landing at a run without dropping into a crouch, so jumping off the pod and running on looks like one movement
  • Under the hood: the ship's rooms described as data, written down once instead of twice — and a test that fires rays at every wall to prove no room can open onto space again
  • Under the hood: the ship's rooms built from that one description, so the plain and finished versions of a room can never disagree about where a wall is
  • Feet that touch down with the body when you land, and walls that stop the cloak the way the pod does
  • A Wright who stops at walls instead of running through them, a body that stays out of walls and banners, and a first emote, the wave played
  • The Wright dances: a lambada and a salsa, motion-captured played
  • A dance of our own: a cumbia sonidera made from those two captures, with cumbia's back step, a full turn and a hand raised to the sonidero, flowing into the salsa and back played
  • The Hangar dressed, with Elizabeth, the Vaelin's own patched ship played
  • Any ship described as data, and flying earned rather than given played
  • A cockpit in Elizabeth to sit in and look around, and the dances looping without a jump
  • Elizabeth flying properly: walls and roof that stop her, legs that fold away, a Hangar that lands her when she comes home, and her name on her hull played
02 The Forge Complete 13/13
  • The Forge's console standing in the Forge Chamber, ready to work, and landings at a run that flow straight back into the run
  • No more sliding in a crouch after a big jump, banners you can't walk through, and a console that's easy to use played
  • The Forge Chamber dressed in the Anvari's sacred geometry: every figure a true diagram of life and physics played
  • Under the hood: a world described one way, whoever writes it, with its brightness following from its ice, oceans and clouds (Earth, Venus and Mars come out right)
  • Under the hood: saves that come back exactly, say what is wrong when damaged, and survive a crash mid-save
  • Under the hood: every world runs through its first billion years and is judged: does it remain, is it slipping, or has it failed, and why (Earth, Venus and Mars come out as they did)
  • The Forge in greybox: write a world at the console, see its physics live and a picture of it on the hologram, speak it and learn whether it remains and why; games save and continue
  • The shape of a world: land, sea floor and mountains from its seed, as much land at each height as Earth or Venus has, seas filled from its water and ice on its poles and heights
  • The Forge answers: a green glow for a world that rhymes, a rite through the whole ship when one is spoken, the Hall of Time and names for every place; the doorway flicker and the crack under the doors fixed played
  • Watch a world live its first thousand million years on the Forge's hologram, and read the answer off it #31
  • What the Forge remembers: Elizabeth, the Wright before you, seen once at the console #30
  • See the world you spoke out there on its orbit, from the Observatory, and hear your Warden name it #32
  • The Forgehold lets go of the stilled world it was left watching and crosses to the one you made, which then fills the Observatory #33
03 Worlds Seen From Space Complete 9/9
  • The world you made has a face: coasts, ranges, seas, ice and cloud drawn from its own physics, lit by its own star with a terminator across it #34
  • Cloud over it as weather of its own, and an air that scatters its star's light by the gases you gave it: a blue limb and a twilight arc, or a bright veil #35
  • The world turns: once in the day you gave it, about the pole you tilted, with the star glinting off its seas and its cloud drifting over its coasts; the ship's clock runs at a pace you can set #37
  • The ship stands sunward of your world, so you see nearly all of its lit face instead of a thin crescent, with the star high behind you over the Observatory's open roof #38
  • The ship stands near enough that your world fills the Observatory's open side, and you can ask your Warden at the sill to bring it nearer still, until the world stands across half the sky, and to stand off again #39
  • The star is a star, with a corona and a glare, over a sky of stars that never twinkle; the cloud over your world is lit and shaped by the Space Graphics Toolkit; the day passes in five minutes so the turn can be seen; a crossing is felt through the camera played#40
  • Your world wears what grows on it: forests, grasslands, savanna and deserts where its rain and warmth put them, tundra and bare rock in the cold, all from its own climate, and only on a world that rhymes; the Space Graphics Toolkit draws its ground, its seas with the star glinting in them and its air by the numbers the physics gives played#42
  • Weather that looks like weather: cyclones winding along the storm tracks, hurricanes with a clear eye, cloud streaming along the winds and cirrus veils, all from the world's own seed; an air that glows round the limb; ground detailed by what covers it, pack ice at the frozen sea's edge and a sunglint as broad as a real sea's played#43
  • Steadier play: stepping up to the Forge's console without a stall, landings at a run that flow into the run at any frame rate, and a world's picture that arrives without a hitch #44
04 One People, Many Stars Complete 2/2
  • Your world from every side: ask the Warden for a turn round it, through its night and its shadow #47
  • Many worlds, each under a star of its own, and a list on the console that takes the ship between them #47
05 The Mood Pass Complete 17/17
  • Play fullscreen, in a borderless window or in a window, and the game remembers which #49
  • A night sky made of real stars: the Milky Way as tens of thousands of them, dark dust lanes through it, a few bright stars that catch the eye, and black space between played#49
  • Elizabeth stays where the Hangar lands her: powered down on her berth until you hold R to wake her, and always left on the Delta when you step out played#50
  • Continuing a game, the ship comes into view already whole: the sky and your world outside are ready before the view comes up, and the game paints worlds and weather much faster played#50
  • The Forge's hologram keeps up: a world you speak or travel to is already painted when you arrive, the hologram shows the world where the ship is, and a seed you try but don't speak is put away when you step back played#51
  • Last Lantern seen from outside as a ship: a pyramid of plated stone 3 km tall with a ring round its waist, a lantern of light at its tip, warm light running in its seams and ancient figures of how life begins cut into its faces played#54
  • The ship's halls set into its stone: fly home to a lit Hangar mouth cut in the face, see the world through a bay cut in the hull from the Observatory, and the camera never slips inside the ship played#55
  • Watch Last Lantern go once round your world from outside: ask the Warden for a turn and see the ship sweep past, then from far out a point of light going into the world's shadow and out into dawn. The ship stays in sight however far you fly, and H always finds the way home round it; Esc during the film goes back to watching from the deck played#56 #57
  • The Hangar's gate: three leaves of the Delta that open as you or a craft come near, and the last flicker on the hull by the mouth gone played#58
  • Flying as spaceflight: momentum, the world's gravity past the gate, a flight assist, the cockpit's screens; the ship's ring turning and its plasma drive played#59
  • Coming home without a crash: the assist brakes in time for the Hangar and H takes you home; the ship's drive trails off in a long tail; smooth edges everywhere; one piece of music through the whole ship #60
  • Braking with S: retro ports that fire ahead of her at 3 g, and she holds her speed when you let go played#61
  • A title that stands on the galaxy: the Milky Way of your Wright's star rising out of the dark and drifting behind the menu, and a night sky ready in a third of a second played#82
  • A title that feels alive: glimmering stars, the Delta with a breathing star and a passing light, glass buttons and pages that fade played#83
  • Stars that flare now and then, and a calmer title: the menu nearer the middle, the credits smaller, the galaxy's heart clear of the menu played#84
  • A world on the title: the one your Wright stands beside (Rime for a new game) rising as a crescent, turning, and dawn coming up across it once drawn played#85
  • Your world on the title in a second and a half: its ground first, its clouds rising over it, painted once and carried into the game played#86
06 Foundations for Play Complete 24/24
  • A settings menu on Escape and on the title, and a developer's console on ` whose commands every system brings its own played#62
  • A pack to carry iron, rock and ice, and the Vaelin's stores in the Hangar to gather into it played#63
  • Play with mouse and keyboard or an Xbox controller: the prompts follow whichever you use, the cursor is free while the pack or a menu is open, and Alt frees it any time played#64
  • The speed of time shown whenever you change it, and the controller played through played#65
  • The pack's icon with a badge and tooltip; drop, discard and pick up again, stores that fill again, and a clear highlight for whatever a controller selects played#66
  • Quests: Ashvek offers them at his voice-stones on an offer screen, what each asks is tracked in your sight, a quest log on L, and the first three open the Long Hall and wake the Wellspring played#67
  • Quests, next: a summary, objectives and rewards on the quest screen, and room for characters to give quests played#68
  • A window you can resize and a choice of window size, with every screen fitted to whatever size you play at, quest lines that stay tidy with several quests, and a Controls page to bind every key and button played#69
  • Fighting and growing: Hushed Menders aboard that come at you when you get close, easy at first and teaching you, words you aim or speak at what you choose, levels to 90, and your own card always in sight played#71
  • Fights that look and sound alive: the Wright reacting in fights, in quests and wherever it fits, Menders that short out and fall when quieted, sounds for every word, and a gold shimmer on whatever a quest still needs played#72
  • Fights that read clearly: a Mender's heart flares when it notices you, it winds up its touch so you can step away, a mark shows what is hunting you, Unbind lands in a strand of warm light, and the Wright turns to where their words go played#73
  • A Mender's card shown whenever one is coming for you, chosen or not, and a quest log that names every quest, found or still to find played#74
  • A game menu on Start that pauses the game, and your own account with a password and up to ten named Wrights, ready for playing together later played#75
  • Everything said to you, from what E does to Ashvek's words, drawn as part of the Wright's own sight under the menus, and the veil's time left shown on the Apron played#77
  • The Wright's own interface: a strip of what matters along the top, the pack as a grid of slots beside the action bar, everything but your card fading together when you are quiet, how far and how soon a setting of yours, and an on-screen keyboard with lower case and symbols played#78
  • Small things from play: Menders met on the first quest's way to the Hangar, gestures that end when you move, and screens that start at the top played#79
  • Fights you can read and get away from: Menders that surround you together and give up once you are out of sight, a card that follows the fight, the warmth each word takes shown where it lands, names over what you look at, and the settings menu on a controller's d-pad played#81
  • One chat for everything: Ashvek's words kept as he speaks, what happens to you, your own words on Enter and commands with / played#87
  • A frame-rate readout you can turn on in Settings, and a name shown only over what you are looking straight at, Menders and Ashvek alike played#94
  • Levels beside the names of the Menders you can fight, and a smoother ship: everything drawn is made in one place, and every lantern aboard is the same lantern played#95
  • Menders that leave what they carried when quieted, and Wellspring Embers you use from the pack to take back warmth played#96
  • A developer's panel of buttons, switches and sliders for testing everything quickly, each part of the game adding its own played#107
  • Teleports on the developer's panel to every place aboard Last Lantern and beside Elizabeth played#108
  • Placing and removing characters, Menders and items from the developer's panel, kept in the game for everyone played#109
07 Waking Last Lantern In progress 19/21
  • A deeper opening act: four quests, the Vaelin's iron laid in by hand, and the Loom, a new hall whose knots send the ship's light out again played#68
  • The act carried on into the Forge Chamber: three more quests that wake the Forge with rock and with rime cut from the hull, through a new way from the Loom to a hearth by the Forge (Session #76, played with notes)
  • Elizabeth's echo walks the Long Hall to the Loom in her own footprints as its seal lifts played#80
  • The Empty Berth: an empty stone cradle in the Hangar, what the Vaelin's camp kept of Elizabeth, Ashvek speaking as you find each thing, and her echo walking to the cradle one last time played#88
  • Mending Elizabeth: quiet the Hushed at her rusted wing, patch it with the Vaelin's iron and a sliver of gold, and she can fly (Session #89, played with notes)
  • Tougher Menders at Elizabeth's wing, Menders that look busy at their work, and her mended wing matching her other one with a seam of gold round the patch (Session #90, played with one note)
  • Elizabeth mended on screen: the Menders you quieted weld her patch in warm sparks, and her wing, its fin and its gold are whole as the weld flares played#91
  • The Rimebound Menders waiting at Elizabeth's wing from your first look at the Hangar, and the freed ones walking home down the Hangar's road after the weld (Session #92, played with notes)
  • Names over the Hushed and the voice-stones near you, a quieted Mender's card shown for a moment, and the star kept out of the sealed halls (Session #93, played with notes)
  • The glare on the empty cradle and the hot spot over it gone, the Anvari gold brushed, and the freed Menders named Mender played#94
  • The Axis, a lift down Last Lantern's centre line, and the Spoken Hall far below it (Sessions #96-97)
  • The Spoken Hall dressed: columns of words none repeated, scoured by the Cold, under a vault of light, with a sealed door played#98
  • The Listening Way and the Answering, where every world the Anvari spoke still answers as light in the dark played#99
  • Ancient figures on the Axis and along the Listening Way, and whispers that carry only inward, on into the Answering played#100
  • A light of your own: a sliver of the Wellspring set in Vaelin iron, earned in two quests on the way down to the Answering, and Elizabeth's echo in the Listening Way (Session #101, played with notes)
  • The Wellspring glimmering while a quest wants it, the sliver made at a Vaelin anvil, and the Axis's well sealed below the Spoken Hall played#102
  • The Drive: the Axis all the way down to the Bellows over the ship's drive, the three stays that held her drawn with rime, and her drive woken past holding so the Forge can reach other stars (Session #103, played with notes)
  • The Bellows breathing: a way up and a way down on the Axis, her plume burning on down into a mouth of light, nine ribs that count her breaths and six flues her light climbs (Session #104, played with notes)
  • The Hearth Litany: twelve gold-framed tablets in the Bellows, its own warm air, the rime glimmering while the stays want it, and a Wright saved on the Axis standing on it again played#105
  • Ashvek speaking every task
  • Wake Last Lantern hall by hall: the Forge, the Hangar, then the drive that carries you between worlds, on the trail of Elizabeth's story
08 Worlds You Can Walk In progress 14/15
  • Step out of the Hangar onto the Apron, a deck of stone open to the stars, wrapped in a veil of the ship's field that thins while you are out played#76
  • A world's ground drawn as you come down to it, hills to a stride in its own colours, and Elizabeth coming to rest on it, with a quick way down and back for testing played#106
  • A hyperdrive on Elizabeth to arrive at the worlds you make quickly, with the arrival shown as it happens played#110
  • Near a world its ground holds still beneath you and the sky turns over it, as it does for anyone standing on a world played#111
  • Coming down, the ground beneath you and the world seen from orbit are one surface: the same texture, its mountains at their true height, seen through the world's own haze, its seas lying flat at their level, under a sky that stays blue with the sun low and darkens only after sunset (Sessions #112-115)
  • A living world's clouds reach all the way down to you: a deck below, an overcast above with its shadows on the ground, and a whiteout as you fly through it played#116
  • Low over a living world's sea the water reflects the sky and the clouds, the overcast runs on to the horizon, the cloud deck seen from high has no line across it, and the overcast meets the far clouds with no line at the horizon (Sessions #117-118, played)
  • Flying down from orbit without a stutter near the ground, Elizabeth resting on the sea with her whole hull, and no wedge of space low in the sky played#119
  • Vertical sync in the settings, on by default, and the bright line sweeping across the clouds coming down from orbit gone played#121
  • Flying near a world without a flicker: the picture holds steady from orbit down to the sea played#122
  • Air you can feel: a world's own air slows Elizabeth and turns her path to her nose, she hovers level on lift thrusters, and R sets her down on her legs on any land played#123
  • Air you can hear, and a brake that holds: the air rushes past Elizabeth as she flies, and B stops her dead over the ground played#124
  • Step out onto a world: Elizabeth stands with the slope she lands on, and you walk the world's own ground under its own gravity as its days and nights turn over you played#125
  • Your landing kept in your save: Elizabeth standing where you left her, you on that ground or at her controls, and a save in flight low over a world coming back with her hovering there played#126
  • Walk on the worlds you build, and on Last Lantern's hull
09 Tending Seeds Planned 0/1
  • Every world you speak takes its place, even one that is slipping, and you keep it alive with what you bring back from space and from other worlds
10 Together Planned 0/1
  • Accounts, private lobbies and worlds shared with friends
11 Living Worlds Planned 0/1
  • Moons and seasons, and seeding life that changes the world it lives on
12 The Spiral's Story Planned 0/2
  • The Observatory's light and the stilled world Rime
  • Ruins, Ashvek's missing memory, and what the Long Cold wants
The Idea
  • Begin among the Vaelin (Children of Light), under a red dwarf beside a world the Long Cold has frozen, and follow the story of Elizabeth, the Wright who came before you
  • Build a planet in minutes: set its orbit, mass, composition, spin, tilt, air and water
  • The physics decides the rest: gravity, temperature, seasons, day length, and whether it can hold an atmosphere or oceans
  • Explore what you made, from orbit to the ground with no loading screens
  • Uncover an ancient story: why the Anvari vanished, and what the Long Cold wants
What You Can Do Now

An early build: the first milestone, with the Vaelin's Forgehold at final quality:

  • Begin from a title that stands on the galaxy, the Milky Way of the star your Wright is at drifting slowly behind the Delta and the menu, its stars glimmering and now and then one flaring bright, and the world your Wright stands beside rising as a crescent in the corner, and wake aboard Last Lantern, the Vaelin's Forgehold, where its Warden speaks to you; the music follows you from room to room
  • Walk the ship as a hooded, cloaked Wright in third person (scroll in for first person): the Cradle, the Observatory, the Forge Chamber and the Hangar. Anvari fields keep you aboard where it stands open to space
  • As the Vaelin, rise from your Cradle in Last Lantern as its damaged Warden, Ashvek, speaks to you: lantern-lit Anvari halls, frost, the hum of the old ship, and the stilled world Rime framed by the Observatory's colonnade under the galaxy's core
  • Wear the Vaelin travelling clothes and a cloak marked with the Wright's sign that moves as you run, land, turn and stand in the cold
  • Walk into the Forge Chamber through a passage where a living cell divides on the walls, and stand in a hall of sacred geometry that is true: a golden rose in the floor, twelve triangular pillars of glowing glyphs, rings turning round the world hologram and the five regular solids nested overhead
  • Step up to the Forge's console and write a world: set its distance from the star, its mass, what it is made of, its water and air, its day and its tilt, and watch its gravity, warmth, seas, ice and clouds follow as you turn each dial, with the world itself turning on the hologram above: its continents, seas and ice laid out from its own ground, and its sea rising or drowning the land as you add water. Speak it, and the Forge runs it through its first billion years: it remains, it is slipping, or it is unspoken, with the reasons, and the Warden tells you which
  • Walk the Hall of Time to the Forge: its name fades up as you enter, you feel something old calling you onward, and the dividing cells on its walls wake as you pass. Every room names itself as you walk in
  • Watch the Forge answer: while the world on the console rhymes, the crown of triangles round the floor, the double helices and your mark glow green. Speak it, and the ship answers: green light runs from the Forge through the halls to the ends of the ship and back in the colour of the verdict, and if the world remains, the crown turns three times
  • Then the ship takes you to it. A world you spoke is really out there, on the orbit you gave it, keeping company with the star behind the ship; the Forgehold lets go of its old watch and crosses to it, and when you walk out to the Observatory your world fills the opening with nearly its whole face in the light, and your Warden names it the first time you go and look. A world that is unspoken never lived, so there is nothing to cross to; one that is slipping looks like any other from here
  • Watch your world's weather live: storms form, travel and fade, each band of cloud rides its own wind, the ground lies in the cloud's shadow, and lightning flashes in the storms at night; speed up time to see it as a time-lapse from orbit
  • Continue your game where you left it, at the star the ship was at, with the worlds you spoke still hanging where you put them; the view comes up as your eyes adjust, with the sky and your world already there
  • Ask Ashvek for a turn round your world: the ship falls once round it, and you watch its night side, its storms flashing, and the star go dark behind it, until you are back where you began
  • Speak worlds under other stars: after your first world, the Forge offers a fallow star with every seed, an old sun the Anvari prepared and never wrote into, and the ship takes you there as the sky goes out and comes back. The console keeps every world you have spoken, and takes you back to any of them
  • Wave: stand still and press 6. Dance: press 7 for a lambada, 8 for a salsa, 9 for a cumbia sonidera of our own
  • See your star and its first world from the Observatory, moving on real orbits, and speed up time, under a sky of real stars: the Milky Way rising behind Rime with dark lanes of dust through it, and the stars you have written worlds under shining where they truly are
  • Walk into the Hangar under its ribbed vault, up to the great Delta of its mouth, and watch its gate open for you: three leaves of stone, a star of light down their seams, the side leaves folding back and the lowest lowering as a ramp onto the stars. It opens for Elizabeth too, in time however fast she comes home
  • As the Vaelin, find Elizabeth, your people's patched ship, on the Delta in the Hangar's floor near their crates and lanterns. Flying her is something you will earn; for now a developer key (F4) grants it. Her name is stencilled on her nose and Dreaming on her tail fin. Fly her out through the field and back, and the Hangar takes hold of her and sets her down, where she rests powered down until you hold R to wake her. Sit in her cockpit, a pod grafted on from another ship, and hold the right mouse button to look round it. Then fly thousands of kilometres into space and come home
  • Fly Elizabeth as a spacecraft (once flight is granted): she keeps her momentum, takes time to stop and turn, and out past the gate she starts to fall toward the world. Her flight assist holds a set speed relative to the ship or the world, her cockpit screens read your speed, your path round the world and the clock, and her four drives burn with plasma behind her. Press H and she takes you home, braking in time so the Hangar can catch her; her screen shows how far home is and how far she needs to stop. Hold S to brake: her retro ports fire ahead of her, and when you let go she keeps the speed she has
  • Watch Last Lantern from outside: its great ring turning, and the plasma drive burning from the heart of its underside
  • Gather what the Vaelin left: along the Hangar's west wall, salvaged iron, a frozen water cask and a sack of ballast rock go into your pack with E (up to 40 kg), and the stores fill again a day later; the pack's icon in the corner shows how much you carry, and I opens it
  • Find what the quieted leave: a Mender you quiet sometimes leaves iron, rock, rime or a Wellspring Ember on the deck where it falls; choose an ember in your pack and Use it to take back some of your warmth
  • Drop or discard from your pack: a dropped stack lies at your feet as a bundle you can pick up again, and is still there when you continue your game; a discarded one is gone for good
  • Play with an Xbox controller or the mouse and keyboard, switching whenever you like: the prompts name the buttons of whichever you last used, and a controller works the menus by moving a gold frame round what is selected. The cursor is free while the pack or a menu is open (you can still walk with the pack open), and holding Alt frees it any time
  • Take quests from Ashvek: a point of gold over a voice-stone means he has a task for you; hear him out, accept it, and follow what it asks in the corner of your sight. L opens your quest log, which names every quest there is, the ones you have not found yet too, and what is left to find. The first four walk you through the ship, unseal the frosted Long Hall east of the Cradle with the Vaelin's iron (and watch the memory its seal kept: Elizabeth's echo walking the hall to the Loom in footprints still pressed in the frost), and wake the Wellspring, whose light fills the new halls
  • Fight the Hushed: past the Long Hall's seal, floating Menders of slate and frost light notice you when you come near. Choose one with Tab, throw Kindle from your hand with 1 or the left mouse button, or speak Unbind at it with 2, until it is quieted and its light turns warm. Your card, with your level, warmth and resonance, is always in the corner of your sight, with an action bar and an experience bar below; quieting, quests and the worlds you speak make you grow. A Mender's heart flares white when it notices you and a small ember mark hangs over it while it hunts you, and its card shows whether you chose it or not; it draws back before its touch, so step away and it misses. Several close in round you together; get out of their sight and after a few seconds they let you be and drift home the way they came, and the card follows whatever is fighting you. The warmth each word takes rises in gold where it lands, what the Cold takes from you rises in frost as frost gathers at the edges of your sight, and the Mender you look at shows its name and its level in the colour of how tough it is, with a thin line of its warmth (numbers can be turned off in Settings). If a Mender stills you, the ship's field draws you back to your Cradle with everything you carry. At rest a Mender works at whatever it is mending until it notices you, and the two at Elizabeth's wing are tougher Rimebound Menders
  • Watch the Wright react: they fling Kindle from the hand, hold Unbind as a cast, flinch at the frost and fall when stilled; they nod as they take a quest, pump a fist as they end one and crouch to gather. Whatever a quest still needs from you shimmers gold
  • Speed time up or slow it down with [ and ] or View held with a controller's bumpers, and a line tells you how fast it is running and how long a day takes
  • Wake the Forge: past the Loom a new way opens into the Forge Chamber; lay rock on the Forge's hearth and it remembers what a world's body is, then walk out through the Hangar's field onto the Apron, a deck of stone under the stars, wrapped in a veil of the field that thins while you are out (its time left shows under your card), to cut rime for its water. Speak a world with what it remembers and the rest of its dials wake
  • Find the empty berth: once the Forge has its voice, Ashvek sends you to an empty stone cradle in the Hangar, lit by the vein the Loom woke. Find what the Vaelin's camp kept of Elizabeth (a bedroll, a slate scratched with rings, a stool by the Hangar's mouth), and Ashvek tells you about each one as you find it. Then the Hangar shows you her echo one last time
  • Ride the Axis: from a landing off the way to the Hangar, a square of dark stone edged in gold carries you down Last Lantern's centre line, through a shaft ringed in gold at every floor, to the Spoken Hall far below: twelve columns of gold words climb into the dark, one to a stone and none repeated, waking as you walk among them, gouged by the Cold more the further you go, under a vault you can just make out, to a sealed door at the far end (opened from the developer's console until its quests are built). Off its east side a low, bare hall, the Listening Way, leads to the Answering, the largest room below the deck, dark but for the answers of every world the Anvari spoke: points of light in their stars' colours, each turning in its own year, a few gone out, and the ones near you wake and lean toward you. Figures in faint gold wake as you pass them: round the Axis's landing a world's axis wanders its slow circle, down the shaft the same world turns a day as you ride, and along the Way a struck drum's still lines fall from many to none. The Way is silent at its mouth; walk in and whispers rise, drawn out past any word, and carry on into the Answering's dark
  • Wake the drive (The Drive): until you do, the Forge names other stars and cannot reach them. Ashvek sends you down the Axis past the Spoken Hall, falling past thirty-three sealed floors, each a band of gold, to its very foot: the Bellows, a room over Last Lantern's own drive, where you walk out on the field over her heart to a ring of gold and the three Vaelin iron stays that have held her for an age. Quench each with rime, draw it, and watch her drive burn past holding for the first time, from under the ship. Then the Forge can write under other stars again. The Axis's platform has a plinth to rise and one to descend. In the Bellows she breathes, three drawn, six held, nine let go, and you hear it; her plume burns down into a mouth of light far below; once she is woken, nine slate ribs count her breaths one rib at a time and six gold flues carry her light up the walls each time she lets go. Between the ribs stand twelve tall slate tablets framed in gold, the Hearth Litany, their ancient words a third burned smooth by her heat and kindling as you walk past, in the only warm air aboard. Save on the Axis anywhere and you come back standing on it, and the rime the stays want glimmers until you carry enough
  • Make a light of your own: once Elizabeth is mended, Ashvek asks you to take a splinter from the Wellspring's heart and set it in iron quenched in rime; raise it from its slot on the action bar with 3 (or RB) to see in the dark. It wakes the Axis, and he sends you down to see what calls from below. The first time you step into the Listening Way, you watch Elizabeth's echo go down it before you
  • Log in with your own account and choose one of your named Wrights to play, or begin a new one; press Escape or Start for the game menu, which pauses the game, saves, logs out or exits
  • Open Settings from the game menu or the title (brightness, screen mode, window size, resolution, smoothing, the pace of time, how your sight dims, a frame-rate readout, and a Controls page to bind any key or button); drag the window's edges to size it; developers press ` for a console of commands (type help), or F3 for a panel of buttons, switches and sliders over the clock, Elizabeth's way down, a jump to any place aboard, placing and removing characters, Menders and items, unlocks, the pack, quests and every setting (Developer on the game menu with a controller)
  • Chat: a box in the corner of your sight keeps Ashvek's words as he speaks them, the quests you take and end, what comes into your pack and the levels you reach; press Enter to say something as your Wright or type / and a command, read one channel at a time on its tabs, and scroll back with the wheel (on a controller, Chat in the game menu)
  • Come down to a world (a first step): at Elizabeth's controls, press F3 and choose Descend (or type descend at the console) to hang over the ground below the ship; its hills, valleys and crags are drawn around you down to a stride, in the colours and texture you see from orbit, meeting the world beyond as one ground, and let go she falls and comes to rest on them. Over a world with air the ground fades into haze toward a pale horizon, seen through the air you are actually in, and its seas lie flat at their level in the colour they show from orbit; give a latitude and longitude (descend 5000 20 -40) to come down over any place you like. Down within a world's air its ground holds still beneath you while the sun and the stars wheel slowly overhead, and her panel reads the ground's height and her speed over it. Home puts her back on her berth. Cloud seen close, the sky overhead and the sea as moving water are still to come
  • Jump to a world: out past the Hangar's gate, choose a world under Stride on the panel (or type jump) and Elizabeth's hyperdrive carries you there in a short film: her drives light, the stars dim, the world swells from a disc to a horizon, and you arrive coasting on a true orbit round it, its ground turning beneath you (Esc arrives at once)
  • Fly in a world's air and set down: inside a world's air Elizabeth no longer flies as she does in space. The air slows her to a speed her drive can hold, faster the higher you climb, and turned across her motion it takes her speed in seconds. She hovers level on the thrusters under her belly, and B brings her to a dead stop over the ground below; banked too steeply for her thrusters to hold her, she tells you to level her. You hear the air rush past her, louder and higher the faster she flies. Touch down on land, slow to a near stop and press R (Y on a controller): her legs go out and she stands there, powered down, until you hold R to lift off again. Press F to step out onto the world's own ground and E to board her again. Save out there and you come back where you were, on that ground beside her or at her controls; save while flying low over a world and you come back with her hovering where she was
  • Read your sight at a glance: a thin strip along the top tells you where you are, the star, the ship's day and how fast time runs, the worlds you have spoken and what your pack weighs; the pack sits at the end of your action bar and opens as a grid of slots; when nothing is happening, everything but your card fades so you can take in the view, as far and as soon as you choose in Settings → Interface
The Wright in Last Lantern's Observatory, Rime filling the sky beyond the columns
The Wright in Last Lantern's Observatory, Rime filling the sky beyond the columns
A world just spoken, on the Forge's hologram in its golden rings
A world just spoken, on the Forge's hologram in its golden rings
Status

What's next

Session #60 set a new direction: the worlds you speak need tending, with resources you gather from space and from other worlds, and Last Lantern itself becomes the first place to explore and wake. The plan, in order:

  1. Foundations: a developer console, a settings menu, a pack to gather into, drop from and discard from, play with a controller as well as the mouse and keyboard, quests, a resizable window, your own key bindings, fighting and growing, fights that look and sound alive and read clearly, and a quest log of everything to find, a game menu and your own account with named Wrights, what is said to you drawn in the Wright's own sight, the rest of the Wright's own interface, one chat, and what the quieted leave behind (done)
  2. Tending worlds: every world you speak takes its place, even one that is slipping, and you keep it alive by bringing back what other worlds and space can give
  3. The ship and the story: wake Last Lantern hall by hall (the Forge, begun in Session #76, the Hangar, begun in Session #88, Elizabeth, mended in Session #89 and welded whole in Session #91, then the drive that carries you between worlds), and follow Elizabeth toward the world she went down to
  4. Playing together: accounts, private lobbies and shared worlds
  5. Alongside: the Observatory's light and the stilled world Rime, and walks on the hull

Next, in order (Session #126): on with landing on and walking the worlds you make, Pbuild's heart, built without interruption until you can stand on a world you spoke. Now under way: the world seen from orbit becoming the ground you fly over without a seam. Over a living world the ground beneath you wears the world's own haze, its seas lie flat at their level, the flicker over the mountains is gone, the sky stays blue with the sun low, and its clouds reach all the way to you, an overcast above and a whiteout as you fly through them, and its seas reflect the sky and the clouds, with no line left at the horizon; and flying down into it from orbit is smooth, with Elizabeth resting on the water; and the flicker about once a second in flight is gone; and now a world's air slows Elizabeth, she hovers level over it and sets down on her legs on its land, you hear the air rush past her, and her brake holds her still over the ground; and now she stands with the slope and you step out and walk the world's ground, and your landing is kept in your save; next, walking far, swimming and gathering there, and the sea made to look and move like water, with the last faint rings on the clouds kept in view along the way

Tech Stack
  • Unity 6.6 (Universal Render Pipeline), C#
  • An engine-free C# simulation core with its own unit tests
  • Windows PC
Session #126 10 Nov 2026 ·

Features

  • Your landing is kept in your save: leave Elizabeth standing on a world and walk off, save and come back later, and you stand on that ground where you were, facing the way you faced, with her where you left her
  • Save while flying low over a world and you come back at her controls with her hovering in the same place, at the same height and facing the same way, ready to fly on

Fixes

  • Boarding Elizabeth again where she stood on a world and flying her home, she rides with Last Lantern once more when you step out
  • Set down on a slope, Elizabeth now points the way you were heading, so she stands the same when you come back to her

Technical Improvements

  • Save format 13: a craft out on a world and your place on its ground kept as a spot on that world, fixed to its turning ground; older saves still load, with you aboard and her on her berth
Session #125 10 Nov 2026 ·

Features

  • Step out onto a world: set Elizabeth down, press F and you stand on the world's own ground beside her, under its own gravity, with its days and nights turning over you. Walk round her and press E to board her again
  • Elizabeth stands with the slope she lands on, her legs on the ground, and tells you when the ground is too steep for her to stand (more than 12°)

Enhancements

  • On a lighter world you jump higher, as you would

Fixes

  • With time running fast while Elizabeth was powered down near a world, the game sometimes lost track of where you were and threw you or her kilometres across the ground
  • After a trip down to a world, Last Lantern's halls are back exactly where they were when you come home

Technical Improvements

  • Near a world the scene turns so its ground is always level under you, keeping walking, the camera, cloth and fog true without rewriting them; one of the slowest test groups runs three times faster
Session #124 10 Nov 2026 ·

Features

  • You hear the air rushing past Elizabeth as she flies through a world's sky: silent while she hovers, a low rush as she picks up speed, a roar near her top speed, rising in pitch the faster she goes

Fixes

  • Braking with B in a world's air brings Elizabeth to a dead stop over the ground, whatever she is set to measure against. Before, with the Forgehold as her target, she came to rest against the ship far above while the world turned under her, and drifted on at some 80 km/h
  • Banked too steeply for her thrusters to hold her up, Elizabeth now tells you to level her rather than sliding sideways without a word

Technical Improvements

  • A recorded flight in the built game that holds the brake in seven ways over a living world, and new tests of braking in air and of the air's sound

On the source. This page mirrors a private repository. The milestones, changelog and narrative come from the project's own README and CHANGELOG, and the statistics are read live from the GitHub API, so it reflects the state of the work rather than a summary written after the fact. No source code is published here. Screenshots, the roadmap and a place for feedback are public at github.com/rawdata369/pbuild-game.