Wayward Cosmos Demo

This is a free demo

This demo is the real game — full flight, planets, on-foot exploration, salvage, crew, stations, and Steam co-op all work exactly as they do in the full release. You start in your home system and can freely jump between four charted star systems for as long as you like. Jumping to a fifth, uncharted system (or diving the galaxy's central wormhole) raises a wishlist wall — turn back any time and keep exploring the systems you've already charted, no dead end.

A galaxy grown from a single seed

Wayward Cosmos generates everything at runtime: the spiral galaxy of ~120 star systems, every ship hull, planet, station, asteroid field, nebula, enemy, weapon, and item icon. Enter a seed and the exact same universe is rebuilt — share it with a friend and you are exploring the same worlds.

You start near home with a small ship and a handful of crew. The farther you fly from home, the higher the threat: pirate wings grow bigger and smarter — but bounties, loot, gear quality, and salvage climb with them. Reaching the deep-space regions where top-tier "Proto" and "Relic" equipment appears is the long game in the full release; surviving the trip is the challenge.

Explore

Jump between star systems on the galaxy map; chart systems with stars, 1–6 planets, stations, belts, nebulas, derelicts, and hostile contacts you can hunt down deliberately.

Dive from orbit to the surface of 20 planet types — terran, ocean, lava, crystal, fungal, storm, eden, full city worlds and more. Surfaces are seamless flyovers of the very continents you saw from orbit.

Each landable planet hides 3–9 discoverable sites drawn from ~30 kinds: shipyards, deep mines, vaults, labs, alien temples, bandit camps, downed freighters…

Leave the cockpit: sites open into procedurally built zones — rooms, caves, camps, wreck hulls — explored on foot with WASD + mouse-aim combat, lootable containers, and dark caves lit only by your suit lamp.

Salvage

Board derelict ships to strip parts and siphon fuel — or scrap them for salvage, or spend repair kits to claim them: claimed hulls visibly self-repair and autopilot to a station to join your fleet.

Run a fleet: 4 hangar bays store ships that keep their own installed systems; inspect, transfer into, or sell them.

Outfit 9 ship part slots — engine, jump drive, weapon, shield, radar, medbay, fuel tank, cargo hold, crew barracks — across five tiers. Parts wear down under fire and degrade with condition; repair kits and station service keep them alive.

Work the economy: mine asteroids, scoop nebula gas, sell at stations, and buy up the gear that ever-more-dangerous regions demand.

Survive

Pirate wings detect your drive signature, share contacts, lead their shots, flank, and fight in formation. Clearing a wing pays a bounty; losing your hull means a rescue into a stored ship — or a reload.

Manage a persistent crew of procedural characters, each with their own vitals, weapons, suits, shields, and packs. Hire replacements at stations. Combat deaths are permanent.

Run out of fuel and an SOS beacon fires — scavenge the rescue pod that answers to get moving again.

Every SFX playback is procedurally varied so weapons, impacts, and explosions stay fresh without ever repeating exactly.

Steam co-op

Play the galaxy with friends over Steam lobbies and invites — no external servers. The host's seed rebuilds the identical universe for every guest, and a peer-to-peer trade system lets pilots exchange goods directly. Co-op works in this demo exactly as it does in the full game.

Wishlist the full game

This demo's four systems are a real slice of a ~120-system galaxy. Wishlist Wayward Cosmos to know the moment the rest of the galaxy — and the deep-space "Proto" and "Relic" tier gear that comes with it — unlocks.