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DRIFTWORKS
Chain timber into planks, iron into gears and crystal into aether cells across nine floating islands, then fly the goods between their stores by airship.
What it is
a rotten dock, nine islands
A 3D industry tycoon above a sea of cloud. Extractors stand on their deposits and fill their island's store; processors draw from that store and put their goods back, up to a cap per good. Houses fill with Deckhands, Artisans and Engineers, who work only on their own island, want water, fish or bread, cider, furniture, lanterns, chronometers and cells, and pay taxes by how content they are. Sell on the Drift Exchange, where selling moves the price; fill faction contracts; spend Insight on a five-tier research tree; buy the deeds to eight more islands and connect their stores with airship routes. Five chapters of the Charter lead to The Crown, and the sixth raises the Lantern of the Drift there in five stages; lighting it wins, Charter Stars carry favors into the next archipelago, and a winner can write that one under harder Charter Terms for more stars.
How to play
Controls, then the numbers that matter
An extractor of three tiles or more runs at 70% with one matching deposit tile under it and gains 15% for each further one, up to 100%; the smaller Spring Well and Cloud Trawler reach 100% with a deposit under every tile. Processors run 10% faster beside each building they like (a Sawmill beside a Lumber Camp), up to three.
A building whose store is full stops and says so on a vellum tag. Raise the cap with Warehouses, sell the surplus, or set an auto-sell threshold per good in the Exchange: every five seconds each island sells anything above it.
Workers go to an island's buildings in the order they were placed, oldest first. Pause a building to send its workers to the next one.
Only airships move goods between islands. A quick route in Fleet & Routes carries whatever one island has spare and the other uses, both ways; edit the orders afterwards.
Choice events wait for you: a pending decision holds the next event back until it is answered.
Speed is a control on the clock and is always free; the books also run for up to four hours while you are away.
After a first win, a New Charter can be written under Charter Terms: Squall Season (storms weigh three times as much in the weather draw), Thin Markets (every unit sold or bought moves its Exchange price half as far again), Headwinds (airships fly 25% slower) and Short Pay (the Company pays half the marks of each chapter's reward). Each term adds one Charter Star when that charter's Lantern is lit.
From a second charter on, the Charter sets each chapter's close against the Company's record for it, and the win card sets the Lantern against your quickest; the Ledger keeps the Company's record over every charter.
Trophies
53 trophies
Sign in and the ones you earn light up here and on your account.
The Charter
- Opened Charter II: Bread and Brick
- Opened Charter III: Guild Work
- Opened Charter IV: Steam and Glass
- Opened Charter V: The Aether
- Opened Charter VI: the Lantern
- Lit the Lantern of the Drift
- Beat your quickest Lantern
- Before Supper: lit in five sim hours
- Begin Again: a New Charter
- Constellation: ten Charter Stars
- Storm Charter: lit under Squall Season
- Hard Bargains: lit under Thin Markets
- Against the Wind: lit under Headwinds
- Lean Years: lit under Short Pay
- Hard Terms: lit under all four terms
Works
- First Stone: a first building
- A Proper Works: fifty buildings
- Company Town: 150 buildings
- Brass Trim: level 3 in every category
- Deep Racks: 500 of one good held
- Garden Island: the full beauty bonus
- Steam Age: 100 engines
- Bottled Light: 100 Aether Cells
Trade
- Open for Trade: a first sale
- The First Million in one charter
- Ten Million in one charter
- Ten Thousand Crates sold
- Counting House: 10,000 mk a minute
- A Seat at Every Table: three Halls
- Paid in Full: a patron's loan
- Good for It: a first contract
- Reliable Supplier: twenty contracts
Fleet and islands
- Second Island: a first deed
- The Whole Drift: all nine islands
- Cast Off: a first airship
- A Little Fleet: five airships at once
- An Air Navy: twelve airships at once
- Leviathan launched
- Regular Service: a first stop
- The Grand Circuit: a six-stop lap
- Weathered: every route through a storm
People
- Two Hundred and Fifty residents
- A Thousand Souls housed
- Guild Quarter: 50 settled Artisans
- Drawing Office: 100 settled Engineers
- Content: an island fully satisfied
Research and factions
- Chalk and Slate: a first node
- Complete Works: all 32 nodes
- Favoured: level 5 with a faction
- Friend of the Drift: every faction at 5
The sky
- Ten Days Out on one charter
- For the Album: a photograph
- Almanac: every kind of weather
What players say
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From the changelog
What changed
StuStudios 2.2
- After your first Lantern, DRIFTWORKS lets you write a New Charter under Charter Terms, from Squall Season to Short Pay, for Charter Stars, and every Seal now shows in your trophy case.
DRIFTWORKS went up on the arcade
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