Plunderverse Needs a Crew: Playtest the First Haul and Help Us Build It
TLDR
- Play Plunderverse: First Haul in your desktop browser. It is a public work-in-progress with a local guest save, so there is no account setup standing between you and the cockpit.
- I am looking for playtesters who will tell me where the game is fun, confusing, broken, slow, or accidentally trying to launch them into the wrong moon.
- I also want to meet developers, game designers, WebGL builders, UI and accessibility people, writers, audio people, and patient bug hunters who may want to help shape the next slice.
- The Dreadnauts are becoming part of the actual Plunderverse story. Jahri is already the captain, the other three members are separated, and the First Haul points toward getting the crew back together.
- The Dreadnauts' new nine-track album, Cosmic Reggae Sessions, was released August 1, 2026. You can find the verified listening links through DistroKid or open the album on Apple Music.
I have reached the dangerous stage of a side project where it is no longer just an idea, but it is also nowhere near finished enough to stop arguing with me.
That project is Plunderverse, a desktop-first browser space game we are building around ships, salvage, difficult choices, questionable repairs, and a crew with its own music.
The first playable vertical slice is called First Haul. It starts aboard Jahri's worn-but-ready ship in the Earth Debris Field. The job sounds simple: travel to Cinder's Fall, land at Site Alpha, recover three units of ferrite, survive the trip back, and close the contract at Cinder Station.
As anyone who has ever accepted a space-hauling contract knows, “sounds simple” is usually how the problem introduces itself.
Play Plunderverse: First Haul
What You Can Play Right Now
The current build is a real beginning-to-end mission slice, not a trailer pretending to be a game.
You start in Earth orbit with a ship that already has a little wear on it. From the cockpit you can check hull, shields, fuel, cargo space, weapons, flares, power, credits, and the next mission action. The save is stored locally in the browser, and the interface is designed to keep the mission controls available even when the 3D renderer has trouble.
The first route takes you to Cinder's Fall, a ringed iron world. You approach the planet, land at Site Alpha, deploy the mining rig, recover the ferrite, launch back into orbit, and deal with an outlaw raider before heading to the station.
That encounter gives you three different answers:
- Fight and risk your hull, ammunition, and legal heat.
- Evade and survive long enough to break contact.
- Jettison the ferrite, live with that decision, and return to mine the shipment again.
Once you reach Cinder Station, you can repair damage, restore shields, restock ammunition, transfer the haul, and close the First Haul. The current story endpoint opens a new courier packet with a much larger objective: Reassemble the Dreadnauts.
The flight controls are intentionally familiar for desktop players: WASD for thrust and strafe, Q and E for vertical movement, Shift for boost, X for braking, T for targeting, and Space for the primary weapon. The game also includes navigation and first-combat briefings because “just figure it out while someone shoots at you” is not a great onboarding strategy.
This is still a prototype. Balance can move. Controls can change. The renderer may behave differently across machines. That is exactly why I need people outside the build process to play it.
What I Need From Playtesters
I do not need someone to tell me only that it is cool. I will happily accept that, print it out, and place it on the refrigerator—but the useful feedback is more specific.
If you play, please tell me:
- Which browser, operating system, screen size, keyboard, and mouse you used.
- Whether the 3D flight scene started cleanly and stayed smooth.
- How far you got before you stopped, got stuck, or finished the haul.
- Which instruction, control, button, or ship system was hardest to understand.
- Whether the local save survived a refresh and let you continue where you expected.
- Which choice you made when the raider appeared, and why.
- What felt satisfying enough that you wanted more of it.
- What felt slow, repetitive, unfair, invisible, or unfinished.
- The exact text of any error, plus a screenshot if you can capture one.
A short report is perfect. “Safari on a MacBook, made it to mining, could not tell whether the rig was overheating” is far more useful than a three-page review that politely avoids the broken part.
You are also allowed to try to break things. Refresh during travel. Run low on fuel. Fill the cargo hold. Push the landing harder than you should. Pause at awkward moments. Change audio settings. Resize the window. A good playtester is part pilot, part detective, and part person who sees a button labeled “do not press” and responsibly documents what happened after pressing it.
Developers: Help Me Turn the Slice Into a Universe
I am also looking for developers and creative collaborators who see the current slice and immediately start thinking about what could be stronger.
The useful skill areas are broad:
- Browser-game and simulation systems.
- WebGL and 3D rendering performance.
- Flight controls, cameras, targeting, and combat feel.
- Mission design, economy, progression, and balancing.
- Frontend UI, responsive layout, keyboard navigation, and accessibility.
- Save-state testing, browser compatibility, automated QA, and debugging.
- Sound design, adaptive music, voice, mixing, and audio performance.
- Narrative design, character scenes, mission dialogue, and lore that does not trap the player in a fictional encyclopedia.
- Visual effects, ship and environment art, animation, and readable HUD design.
If you are interested, send me a note with Plunderverse in the subject, tell me what you work on, and name one small part of the current build you would want to improve first.
I want to start with a conversation and a clearly defined piece of work. Scope, credit, ownership, and compensation should be agreed before anyone commits serious time. “Come build my whole universe for exposure” is not a development plan. It is a distress signal.
How the Dreadnauts Become Part of the Story
Plunderverse is not borrowing The Dreadnauts as a sticker on the side of the ship. The band is becoming part of the campaign structure.
The current game state already begins with Jahri as captain while Zion, Lux, and Pax are separated. First Haul proves the ship can still fly and gives Jahri enough of a foothold to start following the reunion lead. Future chapters can turn finding the band back into the emotional spine of the game.
Each member already owns a clear musical and shipboard identity:
- Jahri carries bass, lead vocals, and command.
- Zion carries keys, synth, samples, dub effects, and signal work.
- Lux carries lead guitar, melodica, and the route melody.
- Pax carries drums, percussion, and the pulse that holds everyone together.
That gives us a way to make the reunion playable and audible. A station broadcast can lead to a missing member. A bounty signal can become a musical code only the old crew recognizes. Each recruited Dreadnaut can add a new layer to the ship's sound and systems. The complete arrangement should not arrive until all four are truly back aboard.
The current ship music archive already includes The Dreadnauts' Waiting in Space and an on-hold variation alongside the Plunderverse score. The next step is to make the music react to missions instead of living only in a playlist.
The working story-and-song plan includes an outlaw-radio chapter, a cautious full-band reunion, a live signal between Zion and Ophira, and a later fight to reopen public transmitters. Songs can come from radios, clubs, rehearsals, ship systems, and intercepted broadcasts so they belong to the place where the player hears them.
The music should deepen the moment without holding the mission hostage. Important objectives and dialogue still need to work for people who mute the soundtrack, use accessibility tools, or want to keep flying instead of waiting for an entire song to finish.
The most interesting version of this idea is not “a game with a band soundtrack.” It is a universe where music is how the crew finds one another, remembers what happened, jams an enemy signal, opens a route, and gives other people a channel to speak through.
That is much closer to what The Dreadnauts are about.
Cosmic Reggae Sessions Is Out Now
This is also a good day to talk about the new Dreadnauts album.
Cosmic Reggae Sessions was released on August 1, 2026. It is a nine-track, 47-minute first voyage through roots reggae, dub, cosmic travel, peace, bass, and rebellion.
The track list is:
- Funky Space Reggae Vibes
- Intergalactic Mind Traveler
- Captain of the Cosmic Tide
- Nebula Meditation
- Solar Wind Surfer
- SpaceRock
- Black Hole Dub
- One Love Across the Universe
- Return to Earth
You can play the album and read the synchronized lyrics on the official Dreadnauts site, choose a listening service through the verified HyperFollow page, or open the album directly on Apple Music.
The album is not separate from the game work. It is the sound and emotional vocabulary we are bringing into Plunderverse: bass that feels like propulsion, dub space that makes a ship feel larger than its hull, and songs about keeping a signal alive when the universe would rather shut it down.
Three Ways to Join This Particular Space Problem
You do not have to write code to help.
You can:
- Play First Haul and send me one specific piece of feedback.
- Reach out as a developer, designer, writer, artist, audio person, or tester and tell me which small part you would like to help improve.
- Listen to Cosmic Reggae Sessions and tell me which track belongs in the first major Dreadnauts story mission.
Plunderverse is playable, but it is not frozen. The flight model can improve. The mission can become clearer. The worlds can get stranger. The Dreadnauts reunion can become something players earn instead of something a cutscene simply announces.
That is the invitation.
Take the ship out. Break something useful. Follow the signal. Then tell me what this universe should become next.
Play Plunderverse: First Haul · Listen to Cosmic Reggae Sessions