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Review
your guide to meaningful community life, post-apocalypse, November 15, 2025standing on the porch in the morning…
wake up
Drift Mine Satellite is a custom choice-based “maintenance text adventure” about preparing for a community member’s birthday- but with a sci-fi twist. You live in a limestone mine located in an asteroid. Sealed off from the outside, the mine contains a community that has, against all odds, flourished. Will it last?
A question for another time. You have a birthday to plan.
Gameplay
We begin by waking up in the protagonist’s home: a repurposed train car. Checking our email reveals a message from a friend named Angela.
subject: IMPORTANT. open asap.
It’s her birthday. Apparently, it’s our job to get everything ready. And so, the gameplay’s main objectives are to arrange cake, music, and decorations for the party. We also complete maintenance tasks along the way. We are, after all, the community’s go-to person for fixing things.
Environment
Drift Mine Satellite takes a fantastic minimalist approach to its gameplay. No room descriptions. Only individual words on the screen that represent objects and people. These can be clicked on for more content and interaction. Even here, the word count is minimal, though still impactful.
The game gives the player free range of movement to explore the setting. To navigate the map, the player clicks on arrows at the side of the screen. Clickable signposts are placed throughout for guidance. All of this gives the impression of a parser in choice-based format.
Puzzles
I was intrigued by the game’s approach to puzzles: It flat-out tells you the solution to every puzzle, eliminating in solution guessing. Instead, the challenge rests on acquiring the item needed for the solution. For example, (Spoiler - click to show)examining your mirror has a link that says, “take a photograph of yourself.” If you do not have a camera in your inventory, the game says, “you need a camera to do this,” indicating that we should be on the lookout for a camera. I liked this! Streamlined and uncomplicated.
And a nice change of pace since puzzles in choice-based games usually involve the player selecting an inventory item and applying it somewhere in the gameplay. In these cases, the player may choose the wrong item or have a difficult time knowing what is needed. Not a problem in Drift Mine Satellite.
Story
More like overarching story. As we wander the limestone tunnels, questions inevitably emerge. How did everyone end up here? Did something happen to Earth? What’s up with the shrine? Will it be possible to leave someday? No one, aside from the astronomer, mentions any of this. It’s up to the player to piece it all together, if they want to.
Library archives
Underground mine. Somewhere in asteroid belt. What else? One of my favorite things about this game is its subtle worldbuilding, particularly with the library archives. The section titled “asteroid (mining)” contains a model of an asteroid:
a tiny model of an asteroid… a cutaway view shows that the inside has been hollowed out. a section has been converted to housing. minuscule models of miners are positioned around the base. some seem to be having a party.
Remind you of anything?
There’s also (Spoiler - click to show)an advertisement for “apocalypse shelters.” We also learn of a debris field orbiting Earth. I think it’s safe to say that an apocalypse of some kind happened on Earth that drove at least part of its population off planet. For the community, this meant taking refuge in a former mining facility.
Astronomer
While the archives tell us about the community’s past, the astronomer is where we get answers for the future.
Their telescope tracks the locations of celestial objects. Except these objects’ positions have shifted, suggesting that the asteroid is drifting from its usual area. We then contact Earth’s navigation satellites for more information. Turns out, the asteroid is not drifting. Rather, the satellites have slowly desynced from each other.
From here, the astronomer tries to connect the dots. The satellites communicate with stations on the ground, but their desynchronization indicates that the ground stations are no longer working and/or being maintained. And if that’s the case…
…any survivors on Earth are dead or lack the means to keep things running. No one is going to arrive for the community. But this reveal lacks the doom and gloom one would typically expect. Earlier in the game, there is mention of the “S.O.S days.” A time when an S.O.S signal was regularly sent to Earth. This stopped years ago, simply because everyone was absorbed in building their community.
Or as the astronomer says, “it got kind of busy down here.” The community is content. This new discovery doesn’t change a thing.
Thoughts/Themes
The author describes Drift Mine Satellite as a “utopian apocalypse fantasy.” Despite the community’s less-than-happy origins, we see nothing but optimism and gratitude. It’s refreshing to see a game with a post-apocalyptic setting take a more positive route.
Repurposed technology and self-sufficiency are frequent themes. Living under a mountain of limestone and sealed from the outside world, community members live in makeshift homes built from disused vehicles. Solar panels became tables. Patched generators are repatched. Scraps of materials are valued. Nothing is ever fully discarded.
Plus, everyone seems happy with what they have. They grow a communal garden, play cards, run a library, and happily celebrate Angela’s birthday.
what little green does make it to dinner plates is well-loved.
There is occasional yearning for life that was. The shrine has unsent letters and the protagonist’s dreams include scenes from their life on Earth. But ultimately, no one expresses any interest in leaving.
(Spoiler - click to show)That said, one cannot help but contemplate the long-term implications for this community. The fertilizer-creating goat will die someday. Every bulb will eventually burn out. Ms. Borowski can only make so many chocolate cakes before she runs out of ingredients. The signs are there.
…running on a dwindling supply of AA's…
…honestly, a lot of outages... probably half the network is offline?...
…continuing failures in the transmission lines…
But for now, everyone lives in the present. The community’s future is not something we need to worry about in the game.
Visuals
I covered part of this in the Gameplay section. The game’s minimalist design also applies to its appearance. Its appearance is of a white background with only a handful of clickable words scattered across the screen. Text is black and may be positioned at different angles to mimic a room’s layout. Occasionally, black-and-white stars and planet symbols will appear on the screen. The astronomer’s map was especially cool.
Final thoughts
Drift Mine Satellite is a game that offers both cozy gameplay and a thoughtful story. But there’s something about it that feels different. The minimal design, for instance. Who knew that a game without room descriptions could be so immersive? I also enjoyed playing a non-Twine choice-based game with parser-like feel.
Its well-roundedness will appeal to most audiences. It’s a maintenance game with simplified gameplay, and an excellent sci-fi option for those who normally dislike science fiction. Much of it leans towards slice of life. And while there’s not a lot of technical challenge, that doesn't mean you won’t enjoy it. Consider giving Drift Mine Satellite a try.
(...one last thing...)
The game was commissioned for Solar Protocol, a network of solar powered servers that connects from whatever server is in the most sunshine.
If you decide to play, it will be a solar-powered experience. According to the game’s website, anyone who plays does so on a solar-powered server. That is so cool.
