Lost Vessel pairs idle progression with meaningful combat encounters on a hostile alien planet. You develop five core skills while engaging in melee, ranged, and void magic battles against procedural threats and a persistent world boss that challenges entire factions. The game rewards both active play and offline grinding, supporting solo exploration or cooperative raids without requiring purchases for competitive advantage.
About this game
Idle sci-fi RPG where combat actually matters. Crash-landed on an alien world, you rebuild through five skills, melee/ranged/void-magic combat, and a server-wide world boss. Progress keeps going while you're AFK. Solo, co-op, or faction raids. No pay-to-win.
Players, last 37 days
Peak 90 · Low 43
Daily peak concurrent players, sampled once a night from Steam.
What players are saying
▲ Recommended145 hrs
Lost Vessel is an incremental game. There are many in the field, so what sets this one apart? Well...
• It's free to play, and not pay-to-win (purchases are cosmetic.)
• The dev is active and regularly updates (sometimes with spamming frequency)
• It has a cute little bot mascot (who requires 'shine to keep fueled)
• There's still stuff to do after completing all the base game content (end/post-game material)
• It has an in-game chat (with active players)
The chat is the best part, imo. These kind of games can get mind numbing in short order, but having something to read while the idling to craft/collect resources makes a big difference.
Normally I'd check out of game like this in 2-3 days, but here I am a month later and still enjoying it. Maybe you will too!
I've played a lot on the web version, so my play time here isn't exactly accurate.
It's definitely one of the better idle games. Early on you need to micromanage what you do to craft items to help you progress, and later you'll be getting resources for permanent upgrades and to craft legendary items (1% chance). The fact resources are always useful (except analysis... although there is a use for it that's in beta) makes it quite fun, since you never really waste time as long as you're doing something.
The game is also completely free, which is honestly cool. There are supporter packs with some cosmetics (pretty much just for your profile and chat visuals) but they are there mainly to support the dev.
Fixed a rare sign-in issue on the desktop client: if Steam took a moment to respond, launching the game could drop you into a temporary blank session instead of your real save. That case is now caught properly, with a clear retry message instead. A brand new install still always gets you into the game, even if Steam is briefly unreachable. If this ever happened to you: your original save was never touched or lost. Open Settings, log out of the temporary session, then sign in through Steam again.
SEPTEMBER 25, 2026 There is a third construction on the settlement map. The Reliquary is a bench, and the pitch on it is honest about what it is for: units keep coming out of the ground and out of the wrecks that still hum, and nobody on this station can make one run. Build the bench and you work out how. It rises through four stages you can watch on the map, bench frame, power rails, cradle, first wake, and it is priced the way the Survey was, by tier and processing depth, so a pile of scrap and a handful of quantum cores both count for exactly what they are worth. What the bench opens is already built and sitting behind it. The one thing I will say is that it fills the slot on your equipment panel that has been locked since the day you found it, and that everyone who has been asking what the Relic slot is for will get an answer the moment the last point lands. The station decides the date. Tiny Vessel is going up on Steam. The page is with Valve for review and should be live during this week. Once it is, wishlists open and the Tiny Vessel button in the topbar takes you straight there; the trailer is already behind it. It is my next game, a tiny crew from the crashed Vessel living right above your taskbar, a companion idle ARPG that plays along the edge of your screen while you work. The free demo comes first and the release is further out. If you like what I build here, a wishlist over there is the single most useful thing you can do for it. To mark the listing, the support shop is running its first sale. Wishlist Week: everything in the shop is a quarter off for one week, packs, shelf, gifts, the lot, on the web and on Steam alike. It starts on its own, it ends on its own, and the shop shows the countdown while it runs. One thing the sale does not touch: your Support Ladder. A pack bought at a quarter off counts toward your standing at its full price, so nobody loses a rung for buying at the right moment. The Tiny Vessel drop landed on the shelf with it, four cos...
{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/46096882/f0bfebe323dc12c99b0e72204787f267ac7ab5e6.jpg I was going to build a pub. Instead, one got found. The Cantina There is a new tab under Signals from Survivor 8: the Cantina. A stray signal, a pub much older than it has any right to be, crystal growing through the hull, bottles still full, nobody home. And in the corner stands an arcade cabinet that has no business still running. It does anyway. I.D.L.E. DEFENSE The cabinet plays I.D.L.E. DEFENSE, and I want to be clear about the size of this thing: it is a full idle tower defense game living inside Lost Vessel. Seven regions that mirror the descent you already know, Crash Site Perimeter down to the Hollow. Turret tiers with evolutions at the top, a skill tree, and a mine that keeps digging while the turrets hold the line. I.D.L.E. runs the tutorial, and he has opinions about your performance. Standalone progression, saved to your account, on any device. The Offering The machine does not take coins. One offering, a big pile of metal scrap or research accelerators of any tier, lights it for an hour, and the hour counts whether you play or let it idle inside the window. If it burns out mid-session, the machine goes dark right where you stand and takes another. Seven new achievements went up for it, titles included. Also in 1.8.0 Three new background music tracks. Full phone support for the cantina; the cabinet plays in landscape. Global chat now celebrates full seven-rift clears and completed Rift Feat sets. A stack of fixes, including the Galaxy chat ghost that congratulated people for forging Legendaries they had owned for weeks. Full notes are on the transmission board in the game. The machine is waiting. Bring scrap.
Posts come from Steam's official announcements feed.