Honest status
Atomic Tick is in development and it is not playable. This page separates the parts of it that exist as working code from the much larger part that exists only as writing, and names both sets specifically enough that you can hold the studio to them.
Read this before anything else on the site
You cannot play Atomic Tick. There is no deployed server, no public API and no address to connect to. There is no demo, no playtest, no download and no browser client you can open. There are no accounts, so there is nothing to sign in to and nothing to sign up for — and because there is no backend of any kind, there is also no waiting list, no newsletter and no "notify me" box anywhere on this site. There is no date, and this page does not carry one.
What does exist is a large body of written design and a private codebase in which Tick resolution, order queues, maps, movement, combat and the content catalogues are implemented and pass their tests in development. That work runs on a developer's machine. It has never run for a player.
How to read the labels below
Built in code means it is implemented in the private repository and covered by tests that pass in development. It does not mean deployed, hosted, reachable or used by anybody.
In development means it is being actively worked on now and does not work yet. It is the only one of the four that describes work in motion.
Designed, not built means it is written down — often in considerable detail, sometimes with catalogues and decision records behind it — and there is no code doing it.
Not started means no work has begun. Where it appears under Deliberately later it has also been deferred on purpose, and each of those entries gives the reason. Neither case is a promise that it will happen.
Those four words are the whole vocabulary, and every page on this site uses them identically. Every entry states its label as a word. The glyphs and colours repeat the word; they never carry it alone.
Bucket one
Implemented in the private repository, exercised by an automated test suite, and run in development only. Read every heading in this section with the words "on a machine nobody else can reach" attached to it, because that is where all of it lives.
Built in code
Built in code
Built in code
Built in code
Built in code
Built in code
Engage; attributes; equipment on the universal slot set;
Stamina.martial_arts Feature flurry.Built in code
Built in code
Six, out of a vocabulary of roughly fifty
Six player orders resolve, and they are the entire implemented player vocabulary: Move, Hold, Attack, Engage, Collect and Equip. Each one is defined on the order vocabulary, which is also where the designed-but-unbuilt orders are listed. That catalogue runs to something near fifty entries once crafting, markets, magic, social and property orders are counted, and the other forty-odd are writing. The gap between those two numbers is the most useful single fact on this page.
Bucket two
Written down, in most cases in more detail than the built work, and with no code behind it. These are the named gaps in the project's own register, in the order they are queued to be closed.
Designed, not built
Skill ranks are the only proficiency model in this design — there is no character level — but actors cannot yet own changing ranks. Until this exists, nothing else in progression can. It is the first gap for a reason.
Designed, not built
Catalogue requirements exist without competence affecting real actions. A character's Skills currently change what they may attempt, not how well the attempt goes.
Designed, not built
TrainGrant one unit of valid practice to one Skill or track. The progression loop is documented end to end — bands, practice awards, the rule that trivial repetition stops teaching — and it cannot run. Blocked on the two gaps above.
Designed, not built
Rest and ReviveActors can already become Downed. Neither the recovery order nor the revival order exists, so nothing can currently pick them back up.
Designed, not built
Drop and Use ItemItems can be collected and equipped. They cannot be put down as a ground entitlement, and they cannot be consumed or activated.
Designed, not built
Guard, player-directedAutomatic Return Strikes are built. A defensive stance the player actually chooses is not, so defence is currently something that happens to you rather than something you can order.
Designed, not built
Cast, and the whole Magic moduleThree spells are authored. Spellcasting as an action does not exist, and the module behind it is additionally blocked on an unresolved decision about how spells map on to Skills. Every mention of Magic anywhere on this site is design, not code.
Two gaps worth stating separately
Public policy and deletion operations. Draft privacy, terms and support text exists. Drafts do not prove actual retention, deletion, moderation or data-safety behaviour, and no qualified legal review has happened. Account deletion by tombstoning is specified and there are no accounts to delete.
Recovery and service objectives. Backup and security tooling exists without declared recovery-point or recovery-time objectives, without a measured restore on record, and without alert thresholds. Tooling that has never been tested under failure is not an operational commitment.
Bucket three
Deferred on purpose, each with the reason it was deferred. Nothing in this bucket is a commitment that it will be built at all — a deferral that quietly becomes a promise is how roadmaps start lying.
Not started
A native Google Play client, in Godot 4.7.x, considered only after the browser game is complete and operating reliably — and only if discovery, install, re-engagement and notifications justify maintaining a second client. The decision gate on that has not been answered.
Why later: the browser client is the permanent, complete, primary game and the accessibility-complete surface — the only client required for the game to be finished. Android is explicitly not a full-parity client, and long-tail systems may stay browser-only behind an authenticated handoff. Everything that is not Android — desktop, iOS, everything else — uses the browser.
Not started
A separate hex-grid layer for vehicles and ships, treated as its own complete design domain rather than an extension of the character game.
Why later: the character game has to be complete without it. A layer that the base game depends on is not a layer, it is a missing half.
Not started
The expressly marked spaces where players may harm one another, and the Shards where death is permanent and disclosed before entry.
Why later: the overworld is cooperative by default and the exceptions have to be marked. Marked exceptions are only meaningful once the ordinary, unexceptional game works.
Not started
If support is ever offered it is cosmetic or voluntary recognition only. Nothing is on sale, no store exists, there is no payment path, no advertising on any surface, and no in-application purchase in a first Google Play release.
Why later: core access and progression are free by binding decision, and what may never be sold is written down as a law rather than a preference. That list is worth more made now, before there is any money involved, than afterwards.
The gate
Five things stand between the codebase and a person taking their first Tick. None of them is stood up. They are listed in the order they gate each other, and no date is attached to any of them.
In development
The active product focus, and the largest single piece of remaining work. What
exists is this static site and a visual reference that renders fixed sample data
against no server at all. What is missing
is the game itself: sign-in, Shard and character selection, the Map, the Queue
editor and Tick reports, and then Character, Skills, inventory, equipment and
settings. The rule the client is being written under is that missing actions must be
shown honestly rather than simulated — an interface that pretends to have
Train would be worse than one that says it does not.
Not started
The API boundary is written and the schema carries the design invariants, but nothing is hosted. No server has been provisioned, no domain points at one, and there is no address a client could call. This is the step that turns a codebase into a service, and it has not been taken.
Not started
The resolver is exercised on demand by tests. No Shard is holding UTC boundaries continuously anywhere, which means no Tick has ever resolved for anybody but the developer. A persistent world that nobody is keeping the clock for is not a persistent world.
Not started
Sign-in is designed as a six-digit code sent to an email address and exchanged for a session token, with no password stored anywhere and an email address as the only personal data collected. None of that is operating. There are no accounts, nothing to sign in to, and no list to join in the meantime.
Not started
Backups that have been restored from, alert thresholds somebody answers, moderation and support that a person is actually behind, and legal text that a qualified reviewer has read. Running a persistent world is an ongoing obligation to the people in it, and taking it on before it can be met would be the least honest thing this project could do.
To be completely plain about it
Not one of those five is finished, and the last four have not been begun. There is no date on this page for when they will be, no estimate, no target, no countdown and no "coming soon", because the studio does not know and would rather say so than guess in public. If a schedule ever appears here it will be because something is genuinely being scheduled.
The project's own assessment
The main risk is no longer architectural uncertainty. It is depth mismatch: several broad catalogues and design chapters sit above a narrower implemented action set.
From the project's own risk register
That sentence is the most useful thing written about this project, and it was written by the person building it rather than by anybody reviewing it. Put concretely: twenty-eight Classes and thirty-two Specializations are authored, and no character can hold one in a way that changes an outcome. Twenty-five Races are authored across six substrates. Sixteen Jobs are authored and none of them can be worked. A large Skill roster exists across five scopes, and no actor can own a rank in any of it. Meanwhile six orders resolve.
This is the characteristic failure shape of a one-person project, and naming it is cheaper than pretending otherwise. Writing is fast and code is slow, so the design runs ahead; the danger is not that the writing is wrong but that a website starts describing the written half in the present tense. That is precisely what this page exists to prevent, which is why it is linked from the primary navigation rather than buried, and why the home page states the same thing in its opening block rather than at the bottom.
The reason the risk is described as no longer architectural is worth keeping too: the hard part — a deterministic, replayable, explainable resolver that commits a Tick atomically or not at all — is the part that already works. What is left is a very large amount of ordinary building.
Verification
Space Junk Industries is one person. This page is written and maintained by hand: there is no pipeline that reads the repository and regenerates it, so it is exactly as current as the last time somebody sat down and revised it, and no more.
The codebase is private, which means you cannot verify any of the "built in code" claims yourself. That is a real limitation and it is not going to be solved by this page insisting harder. What you can do is watch whether the claims change in the right direction, and whether the things that get announced are the things that were listed as next.
The day-to-day progress is on Discord, not here — commits, screenshots, dead ends, things that turned out harder than expected, and the occasional thing that got deleted. A status page updated by hand every few weeks is a summary. The Discord is the working record, and it is where a claim on this page can be checked against what was actually happening.
If you find something on this site described as working when it is not, that is a bug in the writing and worth reporting the same way you would report a bug in the game. The email address below reaches one person directly.
Where to ask, and what you will get
The Discord is where development is posted and where a direct question gets a direct answer. For anything that does not suit a public channel, [email protected] is the only address that reaches anybody — there are no mailboxes at this domain, so any address you see ending in the site's own name would be wrong.
What you will not be offered in return is a signup, an early-access slot, a place in a queue or a mailing list, because none of those things exist and this project would rather have nothing to give you than something fake.
Something you can play today
If you came here wanting to play something rather than read about something, Astral Sovereignty is live and playable in alpha right now. It is by the same one person, built on the same scheduled-tick skeleton, and it is a genuinely different game.
| What is being compared | Astral Sovereignty | Atomic Tick |
|---|---|---|
| Can you play it | Yes — alpha, playable now | No — in development, nothing deployed |
| Scale | An empire across a galaxy. | A person standing on one square. |
| Orders per tick | An empire issues many orders each tick. | A character receives at most one action — and that constraint is the entire game. |
| What persists | An empire is a position you build. | A character is someone you become, and ordinary defeat is meant to be survivable. |
| Conflict | Space is competitive by default. | The overworld is cooperative by default; competition is confined to expressly marked spaces. |
What the two share is the skeleton: scheduled ticks, orders as editable intent, reports you can actually read, no advantage for being awake, and rules that apply identically to everyone.
It is an alpha and it is described that way on its own site. Playing it is also the closest thing available to trying the idea underneath Atomic Tick: orders you commit to, a clock you do not control, and a report afterwards that explains what happened. If that rhythm suits you, the FAQ is the next thing to read here.