Crashfall

Three survivors crash-land on an alien planet with 18 rations, a pile of stone and one piece of iron. A rescue ship will land beside the wreck at dawn on day 11. Until then you have ten nights.

Crashfall is a 2D side-view colony sim. You mark what needs doing: dig here, build a wall there, farm this patch. The survivors decide how to do it, and they haul, eat, cook, research, fight, flee and sleep on their own. The world is seeded, so each new colony is a different crash site.

What you do

• Dig and build. Drag to dig tiles, lay walls, floors, ladders and doors. Drops are hauled to a stockpile you set. Survivors can fall down a shaft but can't climb a bare wall, so you need ladders, and nobody will dig themselves into a hole with no way back.
• Grow food. Till farm plots on open grass or dirt. Glowgourds ripen over a day and are harvested and hauled automatically. Build a stove to turn two gourds into a hot meal, a drying rack for dried gourds that keep, and glowcap beds underground that grow by night.
• Go underground. Iron and gold veins pay for research. A buried precursor vault and relay hold more iron and gold if you can reach them. A brood nest sits in the stone past the clearing. Dig out its core and it stops sending skitters.

Ten nights and a rescue ship

Night 1 sends one skitter. By night 10 it is six. One seeded Swarm Night doubles a night's skitters, and the sky, the night clock and an alert warn you when it comes. A grazer comes for your crops on nights 3, 5, 7 and 9. On nights 8 and 10 a Brute follows the skitters: 120 health, 10 damage, slow, and it claws through walls, floors and doors. Its dusk is announced before it arrives.

A day lasts four minutes at normal speed, and a full run is about 40 minutes (about 20 at 2x speed). If the colony is still alive at dawn on day 11, the ship lands and you win. If every survivor dies first, you lose. There is no endless mode: the run ends, the save is deleted, and a summary shows days survived, survivors lost, tiles dug, things built, meals cooked and aliens killed.

Want out early? Research Beacon Protocol, build an Extraction Beacon under open sky and hold the ground around it on the final night, and the ship lands at the beacon instead.

Four ways to start

• Crashfall: the balanced ten-night rescue run.
• Lean Start: less food and building stock, the same threats.
• Swarm Frontier: the same stores, with a sharper late-night threat curve.
• Beacon Run: no ship comes at dawn. Build and hold the Extraction Beacon on the final night, or the colony is lost.

Shelter and night defence

Any space closed in by walls, ground and at least one door counts as a shelter. A room you dug out of the rock counts too. At dusk every survivor walks to the nearest shelter they can reach and rests there until dawn, healing four times as fast while fed. Beds in the room add another 1.5x.

The aliens come for the shelter and claw at doors, walls and floors. Damaged tiles are repaired by day and broken ones are rebuilt for free. At dawn, any alien not fighting a survivor burrows away.

You can help. Right-click an alien to send the colony after it, or select one survivor first to send only them. Right-click open ground to rally a survivor there. Research Traps for spike traps outside the door, or spend deep gold on a shock pylon that zaps the nearest alien within four tiles.

The game warns you before dusk. If you have no shelter, it says why: no door, a gap in the walls or floor, or no roof.

What survivors need

• Food. Hungry survivors stop and eat: meals first, then rations, then dried gourds, then raw produce. Raw crops rot, losing a quarter of the stack each nightfall. The game tells you when under a day of food is left.
• Healing and wounds. Fed survivors heal slowly. A bite can start a bleeding wound that clots on its own or gets treated. Research Field Medicine, grow herbs in Medicap Beds, and another survivor treats the wound with one herb.
• Mood. A hot meal, a night in a bed, a kill, a finished research project and a trade lift it. Hunger, injury, storms and watching someone die pull it down. Mood changes work speed from 0.8x to 1.1x. Survivors who work and eat side by side become friends, and a friend's death hits harder.
• Individuals. Open a survivor's inspector to see their health, food, mood, skills, and what they are doing or why they are waiting. Switch off kinds of work per survivor, or hold one back so they never leave the shelter at night.

Research, events and visitors

• Research. Build a research bench and spend iron or gold on Iron Tools, Iron Spears, Traps, Hardened Armor, Field Medicine and Beacon Protocol.
• Planet events. Dust storms (from day 2) hurt anyone caught outside. Quakes (from day 4) drop loose ground tiles near the crash site.
• Trade. From day 2 the Drift Salvagers send a trader every third day. Barter spare food and stone for iron, rations and gold. Nothing uses currency: your side has to be worth at least theirs.
• Raiders. From day 6 the Hollow Choir send raiders by day, every fourth day. Hurting the traders, or trapping their road, costs standing and eventually stops the visits.

Controls

Mouse and keyboard.

• Left-drag: apply the selected tool to a rectangle. D selects Dig, X selects Cancel.
• Bottom dock: Orders, Build, Zones and Research.
• Space: pause or resume. 1, 2, 3: game speed.
• Middle-drag or arrow keys: pan. Mouse wheel: zoom. Home: back to the crash site.
• R: research panel. T: trade panel while a trader waits.
• Click a survivor (or their chip at the top) to open the inspector. Right-click an alien to order an attack; right-click it again to call it off.
• Esc: cancel a drag, close the inspector, put the tool down, then open the pause menu.

System notes

• Browser or download. The browser build runs on this page for free. Downloads are available for Windows, Linux and macOS. The window can't shrink below 960x540.
• Saves. The colony autosaves at every dawn and when you quit, and Continue restores it. One colony at a time. Saves are not kept across 0.x versions.
• Sound. Sound effects are synthesized by the game. The music is three CC0 tracks from OpenGameArt by Tsorthan Grove and Cleyton Kauffman, listed on the Credits screen.
• Windows build. It isn't code-signed, so Windows may show a SmartScreen warning: choose More info, then Run anyway.

In development

This is version 0.1.2, an early build. Much of the interface has been tested by script, not by many people on many screens, so expect rough edges. If something breaks, open the pause menu (Esc), choose Copy report, and paste the result in the comments below. It includes the version, seed, day, your operating system and the last 20 log lines.

AI disclosure

Crashfall's code and procedural pixel art were written with AI coding assistants, directed, reviewed and played by Jacob LeCoq. Sound effects are synthesized by the game's own code, and the game ships no audio files. AI agents were also used to playtest early builds and report bugs.

Crashfall is proprietary software. Copyright (c) 2026 Jacob LeCoq, all rights reserved. Made with the Godot Engine (MIT); its licence text and third-party notices are on the in-game Credits screen.