Orbital Dispatch
A deep-space traffic control roguelite. Route ships, scan contraband, and fight escalating threats—from smugglers to warlords to phase-jumping aliens—while keeping one remote station alive. One bad call and your hull pays the price.
Does this feel indie?
Vote based on whether this game feels indie to you. You can change your vote at any time. Results earn an IGF score after 10 accepted votes.| ContextThe evidence factors used to assess whether this game belongs on IndieGame.Fan. | Status | Notes Latest Contributor: IGF TeamEdit notes |
|---|---|---|
Media
7 itemsAbout the Game
You are the dispatch operator of Orbital Outpost Kepler-4 — humanity's furthest waypoint on the rim trade corridor.
Your job: guide civilian ships to dock, scan suspicious cargo, reject contraband, and keep the station running.
Simple enough — until the pirates show up.
DOCK. SCAN. SURVIVE.
Manage incoming traffic in real time. Civilian ships need routing to the docking ring. Suspicious vessels need deep scans before you let them through. Miss a smuggler and you pay the fine. Reject an innocent trader and you pay worse.
Then the raiders arrive. Pirates fly straight for your station — no negotiation, no mercy.
Dispatch security drones to intercept them before they hit your hull.
ESCALATING THREATS
Each shift brings more ships, more hostiles, and harder decisions.
- Smugglers hide contraband in civilian traffic. Scan them or pay the price.
- EMP Smugglers detonate on scan, blacking out your systems.
- Parasite Carriers infect nearby ships in orbit. Dock an infected vessel and your hull pays for it.
- Juggernauts shrug off a single drone hit. You'll need more firepower.
- Warlords jam nearby callsigns, hiding their escorts from your radar.
- Dreadnoughts bring an entire pirate fleet with them.
- Aliens phase-jump toward the station, teleporting unpredictably past your defenses.
- The Hivemind commands the alien swarm.
UPGRADE YOUR STATION
Between shifts, spend your earnings on upgrades across three categories:
- Operations — Faster scanning, auto-scanners, longer shifts, fuel depots
- Defense — Reinforced hull, hull repair, faster drones, EMP shielding
- Economy — Cheaper drones, cargo manifests, insurance, contraband bounties
Choose carefully. Credits are tight and every upgrade you skip is a risk you take.
A STORY TOLD THROUGH COMMS
Your crew talks between shifts. Commander Kovacs gives orders. Lt. Mira delivers intel. Kestrel-7 reports from patrol. Dr. Voss warns about contagion. And when Sector Fleet Command calls — it's never good news.
The story unfolds across 30 shifts: a pirate warlord consolidating power, a dreadnought assault, and then something no one expected — contact from beyond the system.
FEATURES
- Endless shifts with escalating difficulty
- 3 unique boss encounters: Warlord, Dreadnought, Hivemind
- 15 ship types: civilians, smugglers, pirates, aliens, and bosses
- 21 upgrades across operations, defense, and economy
- 26 Steam achievements
- Real-time ship management — dock, scan, reject, dispatch
- Phase-jumping alien enemies with unique movement
- 7 voiced characters with a full narrative arc
- Shift events: fuel leaks, contraband surges, sensor blackouts, solar flares
- Ship codex tracking all encountered threats
- High score tracking
- Steam Cloud save sync
- Localized in 9 languages
- Retro radar aesthetic with CRT-style visuals
THE STATION DOES NOT FALL.
Endless shifts. One station. Every decision matters.
