I played the game four times on 0.1.280 on Windows, starved 2 times in space and then managed to land on an ocean planet and build a sustainable colony. Last playthrough I got the Signal ending and it was really cool and horrifying.  

I am a big fan of Seedship and Beyond the Chiron Gate from John Ayliff and Dead Reckoning scratches a very similar itch of narrative systemic game but yours has its own character with its focus on society development. Also it kind of feels like playing Reigns but over a much longer period of time.

I really like the general atmosphere and the feeling that when you make a choice it can effect things years later.
The whole hard scifi generation ship setting is really cool and the writing and interface works really very well with that.

I love that this is made in Godot and the music and SFX is really sweet.

Here is some random feedback

• I did not understand in my first 2 playthroughs where I can see how much Food, Power and Hull is lose per year.
  There are like 3 different menus that show me Food, Power and Hull but only the Operations tap show me how much I lose per year.
  I really like the prediction when the resource run out.
• Most confused me was the Technology tap. I think it is much harder to read than all the other windows and strangely clustered together.
  Some of the most important info is only visible in the mouse over popup.( for instance that the Closed-Loop Ecology gives actually minus food if you overpopulated ) also I think the font of the technologies do not work very well for so much options.
• Also I would really like to see how much Food, Power and Hull i am already losing per year while looking at the technologies that I want to enable.
• For me it is totally unintuitive that technologies can be simple enabled and disabled. I figured that out quite late.
• Is it not possible to get a positive gain on food, power or hull? That's what I tried to achieve a couple of times but the best I got was
  0 lost resources.
• I kind of always get the 60 Year Food Shortfall event even if I try to really save food 
• I am still not sure how to actually steer towards a planet. In my last playthrough I found a 94% habitable system but we never stopped there.
• I really like that there are named characters, I would love to see more small stories about them over the years.
• I often forgot to launch survey probes. Maybe there should be an option after reviewing the probe data to send directly a new probe?

Also I nearly skipped the game because from the title "Dead Reckoning" I automatically assumed it is a horror game

Hi Joerg,

Thank you so much for this. Four playthroughs, the Signal ending, detailed notes on the UI pain points — this is exactly the kind of feedback that makes a solo dev feel like they're building something real.

The comparisons to Seedship and Beyond the Chiron Gate genuinely mean a lot. Those are touchstones for me too, and knowing Dead Reckoning is landing in that neighbourhood (but with its own characer) is encouraging.

I wanted to share some news: based on some publisher outreach and recommendations I've received, I'll be moving Dead Reckoning to Steam in the near future. Anyone who bought on itch will get a Steam key — I'm not yet sure of the exact mechanics but that's a firm commitment regardless of how it plays out.

Your feedback on the Operations tab, the Technology screen readability, and the probe workflow is going straight into the backlog. The toggle-to-enable thing trips almost everyone up and you've articulated exactly why.

A couple of things I'd love to offer you, as a thank-you for the support:

1. Would you like to join the Discord and help shape the game further? There's a small but enthusiastic community forming and I think players like you are a big part of what makes a game like this worthwhile.

2. Would you be open to having your name added to the colonist bank — the pool of named crew members who appear in the ship's personnel record across runs? It's a small thing, but it felt like the right gesture.

On the title — the horror read is intentional, in a way. Dead Reckoning is a navigation term: estimating your position from known speed and heading, with no external reference. It felt right for a ship that left all its landmarks behind. But the horror is retroactive. You don't realize how frightening the name is until you've seen an ending where the colonists reach a planet and have no idea what to do with it — worshipping the ship as a god because three generations of drift have made the surface incomprehensible to them. I always wanted the title to glance at that. Sounds like the Signal ending got you there anyway.

Thanks again! This kind of engagement means a lot.

— Garan Lorn

A name in the colonist bank would be sweet. If your font can do umlauts its Jörg Reisig otherwise just go for Joerg Reisig.

I am not mega active on Discord but always curious how other indie devs handle their Discord community and would love to swing by.

Will the Steam launch be Early Access?