The Quiet Dark
A dark nebula shaped like a forest, with one small amber light deep inside it.

A hidden-information space 4X

The Quiet Dark

Everything you build makes you louder. Loud civilizations get found.

Steam page soon Hear when it’s out

Windows2–4 civilizationsHot-seat and AI

The premise

“But where is everybody?”

Enrico Fermi, Los Alamos, 1950 As Emil Konopinski remembered it (Eric M. Jones, “Where Is Everybody?” An Account of Fermi’s Question, LA-10311-MS, 1985)

The universe is 13.8 billion years old. It holds hundreds of billions of galaxies, each with hundreds of billions of stars, and most of those stars have planets. Life should be everywhere. We have listened for seventy years, and heard nothing.

Perhaps space is a dark forest: they are out there, and silent. No civilization can know whether another means it harm, and none can afford to ask: an answer takes centuries to cross the dark. So the wise ones hide. And when they see a light, they put it out.

“If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.”

Stephen Hawking, 2010 Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking, as reported at the time

How it plays

Every light is a risk

Two to four civilizations share a board of hexes and fog. Each grows, researches and arms out of sight of the others. The game is the referee: it rolls in private, and shows each player only what their own pieces have seen.

Your Signature10 How loud you are. Loud civilizations get found.
The game board: a hex map of stars, asteroid fields and a purple nebula. Panels show Your Signature at 10, Exposure at 0 of 14, and two rivals, Lyra and Orion, whose positions are unknown.
Round one. Your homeworld glows amber in G4; your rivals are out there somewhere, marked unknown. Work in progress.
  1. 01

    Growth is noise

    Every colony, every level of development and every fleet adds to your Signature. Expanding is how you get strong, and how you get found.

  2. 02

    The quiet see first

    Detection rolls against the target’s Signature, so the quieter civilization usually finds the louder one first, and picks where the first fight happens.

  3. 03

    Two ways out, pulling apart

    Conquest favours the wide and loud. The Ark favours the tall and quiet, and it burns in public while it’s built. Each kind of player has a reason to hunt the other.

  4. 04

    One die, readable odds

    Combat is a single d6 on a results table. You see every possible outcome before you commit.

  5. 05

    The Forest is listening

    Stay loud for too long and something far older answers. One of your sectors is erased, and nothing in it survives.

    Optional rule

Victory

Four ways to end it

Last Light

Be the only civilization left with a colony.

Ascendance

Finish the Ark and leave the forest before anyone reaches it. Every stage of it can be seen.

Long Night

Last to the turn limit with the highest score. Five points more if no rival ever found you.

Optional rule

The Quiet Dark

Destroy three rival colonies with weapons no one can trace, hold an Apex weapon, and stay unfound for five rounds.

A rock thrown across space strikes a planet's night side; its launch line stretches back into the dark.

The late game

Weapons that leave no trace

A fleet gives you away. Later, there are quieter ways to end a rival, and every one of them has an answer.

  • Mass driversThrow stone across sectors, with no fleet near the target to give you away.
  • The ShroudRefit a fleet for stealth instead of strength. Unseen, it slips past pickets and spots for rocks from next to its target.
  • The LanceA single line of light, fired every five rounds at any hex you can find. Range is unlimited.
  • The Swarm, the Cage, WorldbreakersSeeds that eat worlds, a sun put out, a planet thrown at a whole sector.
  • The SilenceGo dark: emit nothing, and every attempt to find you fails. The hider’s answer to the hunters.

The players

Four civilizations

Each is named for a constellation. On your screen, yours is the only warm light. Everyone else is cold.

  • Vela

    Shown as you

  • Lyra

    Shown as a rival

  • Orion

    Shown as a rival

  • Cygnus

    Shown as a rival

From the opening story

The ones who sang

A comic panel: a coral observatory on an ocean world, turned toward the sky.
On a quiet ocean world, the Ooru learned to listen to the sky.
A comic panel: a fleet of shell-shaped ships among the stars.
They were so glad not to be alone that they sang. Every city, every ship, every night: a song to the stars.
A comic panel: rings of amber sound spread from a small light, while pale eyes watch from between black trees.
Forty light years away, something heard the song.
A comic panel: the ocean world's surface, dead and dry.
It did not answer. The sea is salt now. No one sings.

Four more civilizations tell their stories before the first turn.

Now it is your turn.

In development

Latest releases

  • patch

    0.9.03: the top bar fits again

    A fix for the top bar: with the new ECONOMY button, MENU slid off the right edge of the screen at larger UI scales. ECONOMY is now the first step of the phase strip, and the bar tightens to fit at every UI scale the game allows.

  • update

    0.9.02: ships that go unseen

    Line fleets can now take a Shroud refit and cloak: unseen, they slip past pickets and call down rocks from next to their target. Inhibitor Arrays, buoys and Wake Sensors answer them. Also new: blind rock fire, point defense along a rock's path, cracked planets, capture nets, planned moves, and the Ark as an optional rule.

  • update

    0.9.01: a clearer web, quieter scouts

    The research web now fills the screen without crowded labels, glows green on what you can afford, and pans with W A S D. Corvettes scout less freely. A dark civilization's Ark stages stay hidden unless a rival notices them. Ties are now settled by what each civilization built, never by seat.

All release notes

Grow, and be heard. Hide, and be safe.

Hear when it’s out

A few emails, no more: when the Steam page opens, when there’s a demo, and at launch.