Sputnik-1

Lore

You are Four, the engineer aboard the servicer MANTIS-4, and the tracking station ZARYA calls in the jobs. Every satellite you bring back gives people on the ground something they lost: a village can call the town again, ships get their ice warnings, the far north gets its TV lessons back.

Not easy, but very absorbing. You can do it.

This is a systems game. A satellite rarely has one fault: it's a chain (a cut feeder, a tripped fuse, a task hung in a queue), and you follow it link by link until the thing wakes up. That moment is worth it.

The game is on your side:

- Quick start: a gentle walk through every core mechanic, one at a time. Start there: TRAINING → QUICK START.
- The checklist says what, never how.
- A NEXT line names the next step. Want to work it out alone? Switch HINTS off.
- No mission timer. Time only counts toward your grade. The few jobs with a real deadline tell you up front.
- Pause, slow time down, restart any time.
- The Field Guide (?) and module MANUALs explain the rules on the spot.

The work

Match orbits with PROGRADE and RETRO burns, press Rendezvous, match the satellite's spin. Then open it up and find out why it died.

- Power: battery packs with + and − ends, series and parallel, fuses, cables you lay cell by cell.
- Heat: pumps, radiators, heaters and probes that lie until you calibrate them.
- Fuel and data: hoses between ships, receivers to tune, files to pull from old memory.
- Salvage: cut, pack and weld parts from wrecks; scan a ship to see what's left of it.
- Computers: 1980s CPUs with loops, queues and real assembly code.
- HANDS or NETWORK: work alongside, or over the radio once it can answer.

What's inside

- 18 jobs in four chapters, with comics between them.
- Grades from S to D against par time and fuel. Come back and do it cleaner.
- Random shift: a familiar satellite with a random, solvable set of faults.
- 1-bit pixel art: old satellites talk through CRT terminals, MANTIS-4 through clean modern screens.
- [AI Translated​] ​English and Russian.

Controls

- LMB: click modules, drag windows and debris
- LMB drag in a POWER / FUEL / COOLANT / DATA layer: lay a cable · RMB: cut one
- RMB drag: move the view · Wheel: zoom
- R / RMB: rotate a held piece
- Hand / antenna icons: HANDS or NETWORK
- Esc: pause

Windows · Linux · Web

Game design, story, code, art and sound: kitmani (yawae) · Studio Tiny Rift

*Four, this is Zarya. Welcome above the belt.*

Screenshots