Moon Traveler Terminal

A routine survey run. A micrometeorite cluster. A dead ship on an alien moon.

You crash-land on Enceladus at 340 km/h. Your ship is wrecked. Your supplies are counting down. The ice is −201°C and it doesn't care about your problems. The only beings who can help — alien creatures with families, grudges, and their own reasons to distrust you — won't talk to a stranger.

Earn their trust. Trade for materials. Survive the storms. Fix the ship — or let the icy winds take you.

Read full transmission →

Gameplay

Explore. Befriend. Escape.

A full TUI game built for the terminal. Not a wall of text — styled panels, live status bars, progress indicators, and tab-autocomplete for every command, location, creature, and item.

Hit TAB and the terminal does the rest

01

Explore

Scan the terrain. Discover locations. Travel the ice — dodging geysers, storms, and crevasses.

02

Befriend

Talk to alien creatures with a local AI. Earn trust. Trade with merchants. Each has a role and a story.

03

Escape

Collect repair materials. Install them bay by bay. Fire the thrusters. Rise from the ice.

Systems

What Makes It Different

LLM Conversations

Talk to 10 alien archetypes with a local AI. Healers, Merchants, Warriors, Hermits — each with a personality and agenda. Every conversation is different.

Trade System

Merchants barter item-for-item. They never give for free. Bring what they want, and they have what you need.

Hostile Environment

Geyser eruptions. Ice storms. Crevasse falls. The environment is your enemy — and late-game weather makes it worse.

Escort & Repair

Befriend creatures and escort them to your ship. Builders install materials. Healers restore your vitals.

Procedural Worlds

Every game is different. Seeded RNG generates unique maps. Three modes from 30-minute sprints to 3-hour campaigns.

Terminal

In Action

TUI crash site with fixed status bar, vitals, and ship progress — **Crash Site** — Textual TUI with fixed status bar and game log

Scanning for nearby locations with drone — **Scan** — drone discovers nearby locations

GPS map view showing all discovered locations — **GPS Map** — all discovered locations with distances

Ship Bays — repair, storage, kitchen, charging, medical

Start

Quick Start

macOS / Linux

Downloads the latest release binary. No Python required.

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/elephantatech/moon_traveler/main/install.sh | bash

Windows (PowerShell)

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/elephantatech/moon_traveler/main/install.ps1 | iex

Or download a pre-built release directly →

AI Models (downloaded on first launch)

Choose one based on your available RAM. The game works without any model using pre-written dialogue.

SmolLM2 1.7B    1.0 GB download    ~1.2 GB RAM    (2-4 GB systems)
Qwen3.5 2B      1.3 GB download    ~2.3 GB RAM    (4+ GB, recommended)
Gemma 4 E2B     3.1 GB download    ~4.4 GB RAM    (8+ GB, best quality)