Voyager-19

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Search distant stars for a lost expedition from a dying probe.

Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux
Stores: Steam
Price: Paid
Rated: Very Positive on Steam (88% of about 1,000 reviews)
Players: 1
Made by: Miziziziz
Released: 2024

What frightens Sealed inside a hastily built probe, you see space only through a slow, failing camera whose pixels die from radiation while your nuclear battery decays; you photograph planets and record their radio waves to find a missing crew, alone and nearly blind in deep space.

Voyager-19 is a short horror game by Miziziziz in which you pilot a decaying spacecraft through distant star systems. You photograph planets with a slow camera, record their radio signals and ration failing power while you search for a science mission that went silent.

About Voyager-19

Voyager-19 is a short horror game by Miziziziz, published by Deep Root Interactive and released in May 2024 for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Hibernation has made travel to other stars possible, but the first crewed mission, the Magella Science Expedition, has stopped answering. You are put in charge of Voyager-19, a rushed probe with a hibernation pod and an engine that reaches a fraction of light speed, and sent to find them.

You never see outside directly. A basic star map gets you between systems, a slow display camera takes pictures of planets, and a radio records the waves coming off them. Your nuclear battery decays, so you choose which systems get power, and interstellar radiation kills the pixels on your screen one by one until it is hard to see at all.

The fear comes from that blindness and isolation: a tiny craft, a long way from home, reading signals from places no one has been. Players who liked Iron Lung will recognise the idea of a sealed vessel and a camera as your only window, here turned towards deep space.

How to play Voyager-19

Buy it on Steam for Windows, Mac or Linux and wake aboard the probe.
Use the star map to choose a system and travel there.
Point the camera at each planet to take a picture and record its radio waves.
Decide which systems to power as the battery runs down, and follow the trail of the missing expedition.

Screenshots

The probe's orange cockpit screen showing a grey cratered moon, a radio meter recording and the words Picture Good

The navigation screen with a simple star map of a system and a travel button

The camera screen showing a distant planet with the warning Too Far

Tips

Get close enough before taking a picture; the camera tells you when a planet is too far.
Keep power for the systems you need right now; the battery does not come back.
Play with headphones: the radio recordings matter.