The Collective

Place yourself in the life of Luma Hartwell, a 25-year-old who was born aboard a colony ship steered by decisions made centuries ago. After the loss of her mother, the ship’s recyclers turn a life gone by into sustenance for the gardens as you navigate a voyage that spans 750 years. Surrounded by people who knew her and questions about a father no one will answer, you must decide what to make of a life designed by others.

Three core pillars

• Story — a generational arc that unfolds across seven generations aboard the ship. The choices you make and the paths you explore ripple forward in ways you won’t fully anticipate.
• Factory and systems — harvest resources, craft goods, and build production chains that sustain life support: food production, atmosphere control, and power. Beyond the basics, you’ll manage maglev transport, engineering AI guidance, fluid piping, farming, and logistics across multiple ship surfaces.
• Social interaction — meet crew members and AI personalities with persistent memory and evolving reputations. Relationships matter, and the game tracks more than dialogue—the people you affect remember you and change over time.

What you build, and how you live

The core loop centers on a living factory that doubles as life support: you harvest resources, manufacture essentials, and optimize production lines using belts, inserters, and circuits. You’ll also design and maintain a ship-wide network: maglev routes, power generation, piping, farming grids, and storage logistics. Your choices influence the ship’s ecosystem and the wellbeing of everyone aboard.

The Collective and the crew

Beyond the physical ship, you enter the Collective—a virtual space where experimental research happens and building unfolds. Here you can prototype, test, and iterate in tandem with the ship’s inhabitants. The crew includes both humans and simulated AI “bots” with distinct personalities, offering a depth of dialogue and companionship that grows as you interact.

AI, lore, and discovery

The project embraces AI across development and play. A local large language model runs on your machine to power dynamic dialogue and behavioral simulation, letting NPCs respond in real time. The lore remains human-crafted—world, characters, and the choices that matter—while AI helps fill gaps and flesh details. This blend explores what it means to coexist with intelligent systems, both in the future and in the stories we tell.

The Collective invites you to design, survive, connect, and discover a life designed by history—and make it yours.