Games & Simulations
Active development

2089

A minimalist survival game where one repaired drone expands a sealed shelter into surface exploration, radio contact, and a fragile remote society.

Category: Games & Simulations
Platform: iPhone + iPad · iOS 17+
Status: Active development

How do you prove a human is present when every action is remote?

Progressive shelter actions, deterministic missions, local resources, distant cooperation, and machine conflict turn remote survival into a question about presence.

User value

Build a shelter network through one repaired drone.

Restore power, explore the surface, help distant shelters, and make consequential choices in a deterministic offline game.

Start with one clear action

Restore a powerless shelter, inspect storage, repair the drone, and unlock new systems as capability returns.

Play in focused sessions

Use concise status screens and direct choices without accounts, live services, fast reactions, or constant connectivity.

See decisions accumulate

Resource use, aid, trust, defense, and final choices advance through explicit rules and locally saved state.

Current 2089 shelter screen showing a sealed hatch, inactive power system, empty activity log, and one restore power action. — **Current opening**The current SwiftUI build begins with one available action: restore power. Captured from the implemented iPhone interface.

Features

A survival story built from explicit choices.

The current build implements the path from the sealed shelter through both ending branches.

01
Progressive shelter restoration
Bring power, storage, maintenance, and the first drone online through a small sequence of state-backed actions.
02
Surface missions
Spend battery, accept hazards and wear, recover resources, and discover locations or signals through the drone.
03
Radio-linked society
Answer distant shelters, deliver aid, build trust, and form a limited alliance without controlling their people or machines.
04
Deterministic conflict
Choose combat orders, defend the shelter network, investigate disputed evidence, and prepare a final operation.
05
Two implemented conclusions
Reach a final test of physical presence and choose between an irreversible ending or a continuing conflict loop.
06
Local resilient saves
Store progress in versioned JSON with atomic writes, a local backup, and recovery when the primary save cannot load.

How it works

Restore, reach, connect, decide.

Each stage grows from the capability and information recovered in the previous one.

01
Restore the shelter
Bring power online, inspect storage, and recover the damaged machine that can act outside.
02
Repair and charge
Prepare the drone, manage its battery and integrity, and unlock the first surface destination.
03
Explore remotely
Choose missions that trade battery and risk for materials, knowledge, and contact.
04
Build trust by action
Respond to signals, deliver aid, and connect shelters that remain physically separate.
05
Defend the network
Coordinate limited support, handle attacks, and investigate evidence of machine control.
06
Face the final demand
Reach a decision that remote action cannot complete on the player's behalf.

Current interface

A sparse presentation that grows with the system.

These current-build captures cover the title and the opening shelter loop. Midgame and ending media remain to be captured.

Title screen

A minimal entry point presents New Game when no local save exists.

Current 2089 shelter screen showing a repaired drone, three units of power, and a charge drone action. — Current opening sequence after the first drone repair.

Drone preparation

After repair, charging becomes the next resource-backed action and the drone's condition is visible.

Product concept

Distance creates safety and doubt.

The same machines that extend human reach also make the person behind every action harder to verify.

Mechanics carry the premise

Drones are the player's hands, radio is the basis of society, and the late conflict grows from those same forms of mediation.

Connection stays incomplete

Aid and coordination can establish trust, but remote evidence cannot provide physical certainty about who remains.

Mystery does not require opaque rules

Uncertainty comes from limited information and disputed motives while the underlying game transitions remain deterministic.

Architecture

Deterministic rules behind a sparse native interface.

SwiftUI presents available choices while a separate pure Swift core validates and reduces every accepted action into authoritative state.

01SwiftUI presents current state
02Player chooses an available action
03GameSession dispatches typed intent
04GameCore validates availability
05Reducer produces state and effects
06Local persistence writes the save

GameCore owns the truth

Resources, progression, missions, combat, trust, threats, and endings remain independent from SwiftUI presentation code.

Runs can be reproduced

The same initial state, seed, and action sequence are intended to produce the same transitions and state fingerprints.

Analysis stays outside the app

PlayabilityLab reuses production rules for personas, search, replays, balance checks, and screen contracts without linking into the shipping target.

Core play stays local

The implemented runtime has no backend, account, multiplayer, analytics, advertising, or generative-model dependency.

Technology

A native, local, deterministic game stack.

Application

Swift
SwiftUI
Foundation
iPhone and iPad
iOS and iPadOS 17+

Game rules

Pure Swift GameCore
Typed actions
Deterministic reducer
Seeded state transitions

Persistence

Versioned local JSON
Atomic primary save
Local backup recovery
No cloud dependency

Validation

XCTest
Deterministic replays
Bounded search
Simulated personas
Presentation oracles

Runtime boundary

Offline-first
No account
No backend
No analytics or ads
No generative AI

Development

The full arc exists. Playability is still under review.

A native build reaches both ending branches, but one reproducible nonterminal deadlock remains open. Real-interface coverage, manual playtesting, device and accessibility validation, visual approval, and release decisions are incomplete.

Stage: Active development
Implemented arc: Opening to both endings
Historic Phase 8 run: 617 passing tests
Open playability finding: 1 preserved deadlock

Implemented

Native SwiftUI application shell for iPhone and iPad with Shelter, Surface, Radio, Combat, Ending, and Credits destinations
Progressive restoration, drone maintenance, surface resources and hazards, aid, trust, alliance, conflict, and final-operation systems
Two ending branches, including one terminal credits path and one repeatable deterministic conflict loop
Typed actions, explicit availability and validation, deterministic reduction, seeded state, and reproducible replays
Versioned local JSON saves with atomic writes, local backup, recovery, and compatibility decoding
Unit, integration, persistence, determinism, UI, persona, search, balance, replay-corpus, and presentation-contract infrastructure

Release evidence

Resolve or formally review the preserved deadlock, expand real-interface replay beyond the opening, conduct full manual and physical-device playtests, validate accessibility, approve the visual presentation, and complete business-model and App Store decisions.

2089 lab notes

The project, over time.

Notes about the thinking, architecture, development, and decisions behind this work.

Build a shelter network through one repaired drone.

Start with one clear action

Play in focused sessions

See decisions accumulate

A survival story built from explicit choices.

Progressive shelter restoration

Surface missions

Radio-linked society

Deterministic conflict

Two implemented conclusions

Local resilient saves