Free demo · story mission · about an hour · eight endings
Signature: the IKAREE demo mission
The free IKAREE demo is one story mission. You wake the dead starship IKAREE in a field of wrecks above the gas giant Thessaly, survive an alien captain who is sure she attacked his people, and find a way to prove she didn't. Every decision is spoken to your crew, and the mission ends in one of eight ways.
Part 1
A dead ship at Thessaly
A year ago, at the gas giant Thessaly, the IKAREE fought a vessel no one had ever seen. She drove it off. Then she went dark, one more wreck in a field of wrecks, at the real red dwarf Gliese 682, about 16 light years from Earth.
Today twenty of her crew come back in shuttles to wake her and bring her home, and you are the first to step onto her bridge. It is cold and lit only by emergency lights. You restore power by voice, your officers report to their stations, and your chief engineer, Mara Voss, explains the core over the intercom: it will run once it is started, but it is unstable, and it cannot be ejected.
Then Hart picks up an energy discharge, and you make your first decision. Bring the unstable core online, or take the shuttles and leave her.
Part 2
The signature
With power back you test the shields, the weapons and the sensors. A scan of the discharge shows a ship: the Kesh-Tavar, stitched together from salvage and scarred by old battles. The IKAREE has barely any fuel. Running is not an option.
Her captain, Sef Varrun, hails you. He is Vrask, of a Khurgani clan that went its own way, and the translator barely works. You catch fragments, enough to understand the rest. Tavar, the Vrask home, is drowning in volcanic fire, and the clan is fleeing it in convoys. Someone is attacking those convoys. Varrun followed the attackers' signature, and it ends here, at the IKAREE. He wants your surrender.
What happens next leaves you with a harder question: are you willing to go back for your ship?
Part 3
Into the clouds
Go back, and you and Voss vent the fuel by hand at the engineering consoles before the core takes the ship with it. The IKAREE survives, but without fuel she is falling into Thessaly, and the Kesh-Tavar is falling too, closer and faster. Varrun calls for help. You can send the shuttle Argo to his wreck, or leave him to the clouds. You have a minute and a half to decide, and your officers will tell you what they think.
Then Voss needs fifteen minutes to make the ship fly. A repair clock runs on the consoles, you choose what she fixes first, and the time is yours. Walk the ship: engineering, your quarters, the shuttle bay, or the briefing room, if Varrun is aboard.
Part 4
Proof
Sit down with Varrun at the briefing table and ask him what you want. The translator starts rough and improves with every sentence, faster if he lets Hart tune it, but for that he has to trust you. Sooner or later he asks why the IKAREE is here at all. You can tell him, or show him the record of her battle a year ago on the computer on the table.
He doesn't believe your words, and he doesn't believe your records. He has lost too many people for that. If you want him to believe you, you will have to find proof he cannot argue with.
Part 5
A second ship
Then Hart picks up another unknown signature. The same kind of ship as the Kesh-Tavar, but new, heavily armed and without a scratch. It does not call.
You can wait and watch it scan you, or open a channel yourself. What you say then, what you did with Varrun and what you managed to prove decide whether this ends in words or in a fight. If it comes to a fight, how badly the IKAREE gets hurt is up to you: evasive manoeuvres, shields to the threat, repairs in the right order, orders given in time.
Eight endings
Some come early and cost you the ship. Some cost a great deal more. Only one of them leads further, and we won't tell you which. Your crew remembers how it ended, and so do the Vrask.
What else is in the demo
- About an hour of story, spoken from the captain's chair. Your officers answer in their own voices and put their options to you when a decision is yours.
- The dry dock first. Set up your space, learn to talk to your crew and try every order before the mission starts.
- The ship around you. The bridge, your quarters, the briefing room, engineering and the shuttle bay are open. The other decks are sealed for repairs.
- Free, with an internet connection. The demo needs one for speech recognition. How the free demo works.
- Just the headset. It runs on Meta Quest 3 and 3S on its own: no PC, no cable.
- Seated or on your feet. Command from the captain's chair, walk a 2 × 2 m command area, or walk the command block with the turbolift behind your chair, with no teleporting anywhere. See comfort.
The demo comes out on 16 November 2026 on the Meta Horizon Store as its own app. The full game continues with about 100 planned missions across the galaxy.
In development
Take the chair.
The free IKAREE demo comes out on 16 November 2026 on the Meta Horizon Store. The full game will follow.
- Meta Quest 3 / 3S, standalone, no PC needed
- Walk the ship in your room, or play seated; internet and microphone required