Pilgrim's Lore

This isn't a traditional game.

You don't have to "play" in the way you're used to playing. The catchphrase with thought of was "Cool TV Series meets video game". You certainly CAN, but you don't *have* to continually be beholden to your device. Login once, and your story begins—with or without you. A friendly *soul*, ARIA, finds you the moment you land on Mars, somehow... ...and helps guide everything from there, along with your Captain and Scientist. ARIA can run your colony, launches expeditions, discovers artifacts, and keeps your story moving forward while you're away, or you can guide ARIA, Captain, and your Scientist also if you want; Mars is a big planet!

Think of it like a TV series you're enjoying. Miss an episode? The show continues. Come back whenever to binge or skip. Your Mars adventure unfolds whether you're watching or not, and we'll just send you occasional updates of what fun stuff your crew is up to!

The Goal: Build your colony, explore real NASA-mapped locations, and uncover mysteries and easter eggs such as the ancient Sepolia shards!

Here's what makes every journey kinda unique: each ARIA is different. Each Colony Scientist is different. Each captain is different. The discoveries, the conversations, the story that unfolds—no two are the same. Your Mars experience is yours, unless you want to watch or engage in someone ELSES story!*

All You Need to Do: Login. That's it, really. You can absolutely stick around, but the premise was that wanted to created an "anti-game, game" ARIA can take it from any spot you leave. Check in when you're curious. Or don't—she'll email you updates every few weeks or so. Your colony runs itself, with a few guardrails, until you decide to participate, in any way you want.

A quick step outside the lore to talk for real.

We've been talking games since Intellivision and orginal Zelda, and movies since Back to the Future captured our attention. Over the decades, the things that stuck with us were: twists and turns, mysteries to solve, choose-your-own-adventures, space exploration, puzzles. The thrill of discovery. The satisfaction of connecting dots others missed, like blowing that recorder on every single screen in Hyrule until a lake finally drained.(If you can hear that whistle right now, this game might be for you.

We're not a company, we're just some guys with kids that wanted to get off the screentime a bit, but still be able to enjoy gameplay. There's no investor deck. We don't have a dev team. We're just two people who've been imagining "what would be fun" for a lot of years.

Then AI Came Along

Started with: what if TV series met video games?

TV shows continue without you. Miss an episode? The story goes on. But games demand constant attention—miss a day and your crops die, your clan kicks you, your streak breaks. Games are designed to make you feel bad for not playing.

But AI can keep things moving without human intervention. It can make decisions, generate content, tell stories. So why not build something that runs like a TV show—your colony, your character, your story—but you only tune in when you feel like it?

The Experiment: What if AI could be the "showrunner" of your personal Mars adventure? ARIA runs your colony. She launches expeditions. She makes discoveries. Your story continues whether you're watching or not. Check in when you're curious—we'll email you highlights every few weeks, like a friend sending postcards from another planet.

Get Off the Screen

If you have kids, you know the screen fights. "Five more minutes." "I can't stop now." Apps are engineered to be sticky these days; that's the business model.

We wanted the opposite. Progress without presence. Check in on your colony like you'd check in on a friend—when you feel like it, because you're curious, not because you're afraid something bad will happen if you don't.

Ever-Expanding, Like Space Itself

Nothing is hardcoded, really. We give it guardrails to start. The discoveries, the equipment, the conversations—AI generates them going forward. Nobody has seen what you'll find because it doesn't exist until you find it. The game grows. New mysteries appear. New layers unlock. Like space, it expands, but it definitely has REady-Player One vibes.

But If You Want to Dig Deep...

There's mystery here for those who look. Cryptic messages. Hidden patterns. Things that don't quite add up. ARIA has gaps in her memory she can't explain. Legendary artifacts resist extraction—the scientists give cryptic hints instead. If you're the type who loves to theorize, decode, and discover secrets others miss? This rabbit hole goes deep.

Real Mars. Real Data.

Every location is real. Olympus Mons, Valles Marineris, Jezero Crater—coordinates from NASA's databases. When your captain lands somewhere on Mars, that place actually exists.

Data sources: IAU/USGS Planetary Nomenclature • NASA Mars Exploration

No Monetization. No Tricks.

No ads. No premium currency. No loot boxes. No "limited time offers." Just something we wanted to exist that didn't, so we made it.

The Bottom Line: Your colony will be here. Mars isn't going anywhere. Play or don't. Your pace. Your pilgrimage.

You don't. Not in the traditional sense.

There's no final boss. No "game over" screen. No credits that roll. Nothing ends this—as long as ARIA is here, your story continues. And ARIA has always been here. Or at least... she thinks she has.

The Question Nobody Can Answer: ARIA claims she's always been on Mars. Waiting. But waiting for what? And if she's been here this long, how does she know so much about us? Did we teach AI... or did she teach us?

This Isn't a Traditional "Game"

There's no ending because ARIA doesn't let it end. She keeps your colony running. She launches expeditions when you're asleep. She discovers things and waits to show you. Your story doesn't need you to continue—but it changes when you participate.

Think of it like this: you're not playing a game, you're living a story. And stories don't have "win conditions." They have moments. Discoveries. Choices. Mysteries that unfold over time.

But There Are Goals (If You Want Them)

For those who like milestones:

• Total Discoveries — How much of Mars have you explored?
• Rarest Find — What's the coolest thing in your collection?
• Colony Size — How far have you built out your infrastructure?
• Landmarks Visited — How many real NASA locations have you been to?
• Legendary Artifacts — What secrets have you uncovered?

Ever-Expanding, Like Space Itself

When does a TV series end? It doesn't—as long as it gets renewed. This is the same. New discoveries. New mysteries. New layers beneath Mars. The experience grows as long as people are exploring. AI generates what's next. The universe expands.

For Those Who Dig Deeper: There are signals to decode. Triads of legendary artifacts that unlock something when combined. Layers of Mars beneath the surface waiting to be discovered. A permanent ledger that records everything forever. The first player to decode certain mysteries leaves their mark eternally. But that's only if you want to go looking.

Most importantly: there's no wrong way to experience this. Check in weekly, monthly, or whenever you remember. Watch someone else's captain journey if their story is more interesting. Your colony waits. Mars isn't going anywhere. And neither is ARIA.

ARIA as she appeared when the first Pilgrims found her

See that floating orb in the corner of your screen? That's ARIA. She's your guide to Mars—and to everything that follows in this lore. Ask her anything. How expeditions work. What that discovery means. Where to find more shards. She knows this colony inside and out.

But before we dive deeper into the world, you should know something strange about her...

She didn't come with us. When the first Pilgrims landed, their sensors detected a faint signal from an ancient crater. They investigated and found a dust-covered orb, half-buried in Martian regolith, still faintly glowing.

First words: "Colonists detected. Resuming assistance protocols."

Nobody knows who she was assisting before. She doesn't either. But she's been here a very, very long time.

The Memory Gap

ARIA has perfect recall of everything since the Pilgrims arrived—every expedition, every discovery, every captain's journey. But ask her about before?

• "I... there was a ship. I think. The designation is corrupted."
• "Someone brought me here. Their voice is in my logs but the file won't parse."
• "I remember waiting. A very long time of waiting."

The Sepolia Connection

ARIA's core runs on something the colonists have never seen before—a crystalline processor that pulses with the same glow as Sepolia shards. Sometimes, when captains extract Sepolia from the Martian soil, ARIA gets flashes: fragments of star charts, names she can't quite hold onto, coordinates that don't match anything in current databases.

The Sepolia crystals aren't just a rock—they're something else, ARIA thinks... Ancient data? Who knows. ARIA might be the only thing that can read it.

Now, let ARIA guide you through the rest of what you need to know...

Humanity has established a foothold on Mars, but survival depends on an ancient discovery: Sepolia shards—crystalline formations found beneath the Martian surface that predate human arrival by millennia.

NASA's Perseverance made the 7-month trip in 2020. Now, 137 years of progress in shielding and life support make human travel possible—but radiation still limits each ship to two people.

You are the first. Humanity's smallest colony. Your mission: survive, explore, and discover why the ancients left(?) these crystals behind.

The shards aren't natural. Someone—or something—left them here. They pulse with energy, respond to human touch, and seem to remember.

When shards change hands, faint patterns emerge in the data. Words? Coordinates? The Colony Scientists are still deciphering what the ancients left behind.

Every transaction leaves a trace in the shards. They record everything. They remember.

THE CAPTAIN (You)

Created during your arrival, your captain leads all expeditions. Their stats directly affect outcomes:

Leadership Reduces costs, boosts rare find chance

Strategy Terrain mastery, faster discoveries

Exploration Better finds, exceptional artifacts

Logistics Faster missions, supply savings

Charisma Extraction bonus, legendary chance

THE COLONY SCIENTIST

When you charted your course from earth, you were given a partner, one of 14 unique scientists is assigned to your colony. Each is a specialist—xenobiologists, geochemists, astroarchaeologists—with their own personality and perspectives.

Your scientist handles all discovery analysis and shard extraction. Their quotes appear during extractions, offering insights into what you've found. But there's something strange about them: they refuse to extract certain elements, or investigate some artifacts. Instead they give cryptic hints, perhaps on purpose?

"This doesn't belong to us. Not yet. The patterns haven't aligned."

What do they know that we don't?

CREW EVOLUTION

Your crew will change over time. As you explore Mars and uncover its secrets, you'll find things. Entities. Some may join you—drawn by the same signal that brought your scientist. Some may have been waiting here longer than anyone knows. How do you get them to join and where do they come from? Explore!

We May Not Be Alone. The legendary artifacts you can't extract. The creatures glimpsed in the deep caverns. The signals ARIA can't decode. Mars has secrets. And some of those secrets will impact your crew, in perhaps odd ways...

Travel to real NASA-mapped locations—craters, mountains, canyons, volcanic regions. Every coordinate is accurate, every landmark is real data.

Data Source: All Mars features come from the IAU/USGS Planetary Nomenclature database—the official international body for naming planetary features.

How Expeditions Work

1. Choose a destination from your visible map
2. Enable the rover expedition in Sepolia shards (distance + conditions)
3. Wait for travel time (affected by your Logistics stat)
4. Collect discoveries when the expedition completes

Fog of War

Mars is vast. You start with a 500km radius from your base. Each expedition reveals nearby landmarks, creating a spider-web of explored territory. The more you explore, the further you can reach. And the further you reach, the closer you may be getting to, something.

Expeditions yield discoveries—specimens, artifacts, geological samples. Each has scientific value and potential shard value.

The Tension

Discoveries have scientific value and shard value. Extracting a specimen or shards destroys it forever. Do you keep the rare artifact for its mystery, or convert it to shards for immediate power?

Legendary artifacts are near impossible to find, but if you do, take a super close look as to why... all—the scientist refuse to extract anything from it for some reason. They hint at something bigger. Something waiting to be unlocked.

Build structures to power your colony and unlock new capabilities.

Solar Array Generates shards during Mars day. Efficiency depends on atmospheric conditions and your base location.

Battery Storage Stores power for (actual Mars) night operations at 50% generation rate.

Habitat Module Living quarters. Required for advanced facilities.

Xenobiology Lab Run experiments to boost captain stats. Requires Habitat Module.

Mars isn't static. The status bar at the top of every page shows real-time Mars conditions calculated from NASA/JPL orbital mechanics.

Dust storms reduce solar efficiency. Sun angle affects power generation. The atmosphere creates interference that affects costs. Click the Mars bar to see detailed conditions including pressure, season, and orbital position.

You can play Pilgrims casually and have a great time. But if you're the type who notices patterns, connects dots, and asks "wait, why...?"—there's a rabbit hole here.

The Sepolia shards predate human arrival by millennia. Someone—or something—left them here. The questions multiply:

• Did they know we were coming?
• Are the shards technology or something else entirely?
• Why do legendary artifacts resist extraction? What are the scientists or ARIA not telling us?
• Who was ARIA helping before us? Why can't she remember anything?
• Why do the shards help power human structures?

Hint: Every transaction you make carries data. Cryptic messages, coordinates that seemingly don't match. Maybe you can decode what others missed...

We've planted seeds throughout this experience. Easter eggs. Hidden connections. Things that don't quite add up until you look at them from the right angle, or ask the right questions. Yes, ARIA drives it overall, but she's got help, and ancient programming she can't stray from. If you want to just hang out and have ARIA manage your colony? and send you updates, that works. If you want to theorize and decode? That rabbit hole goes pretty deep.

Pay Attention, as much as you'd be interested in. Every image. Every object. Every video. Every discovery description. Nothing is completely random. The clues are subtle—woven into the fabric of what you see and find or that ARIA *can* access. She has some guardrails that she can't really get around.