Read the world
Gravity, cavern density, weather, mineral seams, pressure, heat, and liquid hazards change from world to world. A route that works on an icefield can fail in a metal storm.
About the expedition
A long way down. A shared way home.
Project Helios is a mobile-first, browser-based exoplanet survey game. Pilot a fragile Helios rig through candidate worlds beyond Earth’s solar system, recover unusual materials and biosignatures, and decide with your crew when the survey is complete.
The expedition
Survey. Survive. Return.
Every run starts at Helios Base with a simple brief: descend, learn what the planet is hiding, and bring the evidence back intact. What happens between launch and return is shaped by the terrain, the crew, and the risks you choose to take.
Protect the samples
Fuel and armor keep the rig moving, but sample integrity determines what the expedition is worth. Hard impacts, violent terrain, and deep pressure can turn a valuable hold into damaged cargo.
Close the survey
Sell recovered material, improve the base, fund the shared Orbital Tether, and vote as a crew when it is time to leave. Successful escapes earn Escape Credits for future rigs.
Candidate worlds
Six planetary profiles. No safe default.
A star-system survey charts three to five destinations. Each biome has its own gravity, crust, weather, cavern pattern, and resource balance, so the crew must choose what kind of danger it can afford.
Aurora Icefield
Low gravity, falling snow, blue-white regolith, and sparse caverns reward patient navigation and long airborne arcs.
Iron Tempest
Heavy gravity and hot red storms make every descent expensive, but dense metal seams give prepared crews a reason to stay.
Hollow Garden
Green mineral blooms and an unusually cavernous crust create fast routes, strange shortcuts, and plenty of empty space to cross.
Glass Dune
Thin air, shifting terrain, unstable pockets, and bright crystal deposits turn a quiet surface into an uncertain dig.
Violet Abyss
Dark crust, rare high-value minerals, deep pressure, and close hostility make this a destination for heavily upgraded rigs.
Tidal Cobalt
Cool terrain, water signals, cobalt veins, and broad caverns create a slow opening with the possibility of a large return.
Crew systems
Built for cooperation, playable solo
A survey can be hosted alone or shared with as many as five other pilots. Positions, recovered cells, placed infrastructure, missions, liquids, and other world changes synchronize through the Helios relay. Planet codes make it easy to regroup, while optional access keys let a host keep a survey private.
Working nearby creates crew resonance, which improves extraction. Shared base upgrades lower service costs and improve sales for everyone. Rescue missions and tethers give crews reasons to stay within reach of one another, while the cylindrical map wraps east to west so a pilot can eventually circle the whole world.
Accounts are optional. Guests can play immediately and keep progress on the current device. A cloud profile adds email-based sign-in and synchronizes compatible progress, cosmetics, campaign records, and sky achievements across devices.
Story mode
The Helios Lattice Campaign
The story campaign is a separate cooperative path for one to six pilots: six acts, seventeen chapters, and an estimated forty-hour arc. C.L.E.R.A.—Compliance, Legal, Employee Relations, and Apologies—guides the crew through extraction quotas, contradictory records, stranded workers, unusual witnesses, and a corporate mission whose paperwork does not quite match the planets below.
Campaign objectives draw on the same simulation as sandbox play: depth, mining, rescues, anomalies, bosses, base upgrades, biome visits, altitude, and Orbital Tether launches. Progress is recorded at the account level when a cloud profile is in use, so the story can continue after individual rooms close.
Below the surface
A simulation that keeps unfolding
Deep procedural caverns can hold underground water, mercury, or lava. Liquids have different densities, drag, buoyancy, currents, and damage behavior; breached chambers can spill into mined passages, and some mixtures cool into new deposits. Cavern guardians and shared bosses turn certain depths into combat zones.
Signal Anomalies can invert gravity, mask heat, or compress cargo. Thermal signature can trigger seismic surges. Careful extraction preserves sample integrity, while a varied cargo hold can earn diversity bonuses. At the surface, crews can buy rig upgrades, field gear, relay beacons, cargo lifts, construction pieces, and shared improvements to Helios Base.
Presentation
Designed to run wherever the crew meets
The current build renders its worlds, rigs, particles, materials, and interface procedurally in the browser. Sound effects also have procedural fallbacks, with hooks for authored music and audio. Mobile devices receive touch controls and tuned rendering limits, while desktop browsers support keyboard and connected-controller input.
Ready to descend? The pilot handbook explains the complete run loop, controls, survival meters, upgrades, and crew objectives before your first launch.