DEADLANESBETA
A gold-and-steel gunship banking away from a violet mass of Blight growth spilling out of a dead warp-lane
Closed beta · iOS & Android · Free-to-play PvPvE

A turn-based MMO in a dying galaxy where strategy beats grind.

All players share one persistent galaxy of about 2,500 star systems. Everyone gets the same number of turns each day to trade, fight, mine and build. Playing longer won't put you ahead. Guilds fight each other for control of sectors and defend them from players and alien factions. Your defenses fight for you while you're offline. Nobody has to be awake at 3 a.m. to keep what they built.

iOS · TestFlight Android · Google Play Join the Discord

Play in landscape.

2,500star systems, one shared map
~10 minof turns a day is a full session
12 wkseasons. Your level and blueprints carry over
3alien factions fighting over the same space
0pay-to-win. Cosmetics and convenience only

What it is

A shared galaxy with real stakes.

Each player gets a fixed number of turns per day. You spend them warping, trading, mining, building and hunting whatever lives in the dying lanes, other players included. You fit your fleet with components you craft yourself or buy from other players. Gambit stacks automate your ships in a fight. Your ships keep following those orders after you log off. Your fleet is still out there fighting when you've logged out. Set up your defenses with that in mind.

Aliens and players both fight for control of the lanes. Every kill, delivery and liberated system feeds the same shared fronts.

The map is the boardTrade Wars 2002 on your phone
A persistent galaxy of ports, routes, pirates and precursor ruins, played in turns. Every port sets its own prices. Every system is different. The lanes between systems die off over the season. The galaxy shrinks toward the core as it goes. By the endgame everyone is crowded into the same small space.
Territory you can actually loseStakes like EVE in ten minutes a day
Citadels can be sieged and taken. Ships can be destroyed or captured with everything fitted to them. Guilds have to keep paying to hold their sectors. A fight against another player is always a fight against the defenses and orders they set up. Nobody ever has to be online at a set time.
The warA shared front, like Helldivers
There are three live fronts. They're scored every night from what every player did that day. Sectors change hands. Whole regions get won or lost. A Game Master voice that everyone can hear directs the pressure. Your ten minutes a day moves the meter. The server can win or lose a region in one night.

From the build

What a day looks like.

Screens from the beta client. Features are still being built. Art and screens may change.

The galaxy chart: a handful of charted systems joined by lane lines over a nebula, with the player's sector highlighted
THE CHARTOne shared galaxy. Routes you chart are shared with your guild. The lanes between systems decay over the season. The map keeps changing.
A combat round: a carrier and a gunship facing three Vael hulls, with the action bar along the bottom
COMBATFights resolve the same way whether you're at the controls or asleep. You fit every ship yourself from a range of weapons and defenses. Squadron combat is turn-based. You can control every move or let your orders run the whole fight.
The fitting bench in a hangar: a carrier's stat sheet beside its component mounts, with a shield array tooltip open
FITTINGTen hulls and a huge number of ways to fit them. Turn a freighter into a hidden missile boat and leave it out to catch pirates while you're offline. Build a fast scout that crosses the galaxy in a few turns. Bolt an oversized railgun onto a cheap raider hull and go full glass cannon on bosses.
A home-zone system view: a white star, the player's freighter, a station and two NPC ships, with lane churn readouts along the bottom
THE SYSTEMEvery system is different. Ships, stations, citadels and deployables all share the same space. Computer-controlled ships, human and alien, travel between systems on the same turn budget players have. Scan the next system over to see what's waiting. Or just warp in guns blazing.
A station's components rack with rarity-bordered icons and a warp scanner tooltip showing its set bonuses
THE STATIONStations are where you repair and trade. Top-tier stations are rare. They stock the best components and ships.

The daily loop

Play on your own schedule.

Nothing you do ever waits on another player. Turns you don't use one day carry over to the next.

  1. Read the overnight report

    What your pickets saw, what your extractors pulled, who came for your citadel at 3 a.m. and whether your defenses held. The report is meant to make it clear why you won or lost.

  2. Spend your turns

    Warp, trade, mine, scan, craft, fight. Take a contract, deliver some goods, or push a front.

  3. Set your defenses

    Deploy minefields, cloaking devices or automated garrisons to defend your territory while you sleep. Guilds build shared citadels to control territory. A citadel is vulnerable while it's being built. Once it's finished it's a serious raid target. The orders you give your ships and deployables do the fighting while you're gone. They decide whether you wake up richer or poorer.

  4. The galaxy ticks

    Once a night the server resolves the war, the trades, the lane decay and every standing defense. Your turns refill. You see the results when you log back in.

Design rules

The things we won't do.

Deadlanes is meant to be fair whether you have a lot of time and money or very little. The daily turn limit keeps progression even. Someone with a busy schedule isn't at a big disadvantage against someone with hours to burn. Turns can never be bought with any currency.

The daily cap can't be bought

You get a full batch of turns each day. When they're gone you're done for the day. The game tells you so. It won't try to sell you more.

No pay-to-win

Premium currency buys paint jobs, cosmetics, crafting time and gear from other players. The economy is player-driven. Anything in the game can be earned by playing without buying currency.

You never wait on another player

Every fight resolves against standing defenses. Guilds plan together. Nobody has to show up at a set time. There are no queues or raid times. Logging off never counts against you.

What carries between seasons

Every twelve weeks the galaxy is rebuilt. Your commander level, blueprints and reputation carry over. Your fleet and equipment convert to experience and reputation for the next season. Nobody can build a permanent lead. A new player next season starts level with last season's winner.

The setting

A galaxy where the lanes are dying.

"The lanes are dying. The lanes have always been dying. The difference this season is that something is using the corpses to get to us."A home-zone dispatcher, name struck from the record

A dead civilization left behind a web of warp-lanes linking thousands of systems. The builders are long gone. Now the web is failing. You're one of countless independent spacers scratching out a living in the rotting middle of the map. The goal is to get rich before the ground vanishes under you.

The Vael

"Stitchers" · the power that wants the ground

A territorial collective. They're closer to one spread-out organism than to a society. They expand the way a fungus spreads, because they have to. Disorderly human territory looks to them like a defect to correct. Their advance closes over a contested zone like sutures over a wound.

The Llethe

"Ticks" · the power that wants the flow

A parasitic economy. They grow into ports until a market's prices answer to their appetite. They spread through trade the way the Blight spreads through the lanes. They're slower and quieter about it, with a horrible patience.

The Blight

The invader · nobody's ally

The disease in subspace that came in through the dead lanes. Its worst horrors are raid-sized and carry the demon names humans gave them (Legion, Leviathan, Behemoth). Anyone can hunt them. Every one that falls pushes the corruption back.

Closed beta · now recruiting

Joining takes two minutes.

It's free and still a beta with rough spots. Your feedback goes straight into what we build next.

iPhone

  1. Install TestFlight from the App Store.
  2. Open the link below on your iPhone and tap Accept → Install.
  3. Create an account (email, or Continue with Apple / Google) and you'll spawn into the shared galaxy.
Open in TestFlight

Android

  1. Open the link below on your Android phone and follow the steps to become a tester.
  2. Install from the Play Store link on that page. It can take a few minutes to show up after you opt in.
  3. Create an account and you'll spawn into the shared galaxy.
Join on Google Play

Your first week

What we'd most like you to try

Most of the beta happens on Discord. Patch notes, questions, guild recruiting and Q&A with the developers all happen there. If you install and never join, we lose most of what makes you a useful tester.

Discord Report a bug Field manual
  1. Run the tutorial contracts to the end. They walk you through warping, trading, mining, scanning and your first fight. If they lose you anywhere, that counts as a bug.
  2. Get attacked while offline. Then read the overnight report. Tell us whether losing that way felt fair.
  3. Join or start a guild. Holding territory takes a group. Check the leaderboards to see how you and your friends stack up. Put bounties on players who wronged you. Collect on the bounties other guilds post.
  4. Push fronts on the war map. Take combat contracts or deliver supplies to contested fronts. Pushing the aliens back takes a lot of players working together over time.
  5. Go find something weird. A precursor ruin, a Seal-beast, a system nobody has charted yet. The galaxy keeps changing as the lanes shift. Some systems get sealed off and forgotten ones open up.

Founding TesterThe first hundred commanders keep a permanent badge across every wipe and every season.