Buy, sell, trade. Survive. All in your terminal — no graphics, just depth.
Last week a Show HN post about a Rust + Bevy space economy simulator hit 77 points and 24 comments in under 4 hours. Developers are hungry for deep, systemic simulations — but the original project requires months of graphics work. The signal is clear: the appetite for thoughtful resource management in a sci-fi setting is real, but the barrier to entry (game engines, art assets) is too high for most tinkerers.
Existing solutions like Stellaris or the upcoming SpaceProjectSim are either 4X grand strategy (hundreds of hours) or graphical indie games. There's no lightweight, terminal-native option that respects a developer's workflow: SSH into a server, type a command, and start trading. Meanwhile, the ASCII/terminal game renaissance (think Dwarf Fortress, Caves of Qud) proves that depth beats graphics every time.
Now is the perfect moment: the HN thread shows a concentrated spike of interest, and no one has yet shipped a "terminal-first" space economy sim. By stripping away the visual overhead, we can deliver the core loop — buy, sell, travel, survive — in a package that takes 30 minutes to learn and a lifetime to master.
Download the single-file Python executable, open your terminal, and run spacecmd. No installers, no dependencies — just a binary that starts the simulation instantly.
Type buy food 100, sell ore 50, or travel Alpha Centauri. Each command updates your fleet's fuel, food, crew morale, and credits. Dynamic prices shift every turn.
Random events — pirate raids, trade winds, mechanical failures — force you to adapt. Every session tells a unique story. No two games play the same.
No graphics, no animations — just a rich economic simulation with supply chains, price elasticity, and crew management. The terminal is your canvas, and every character matters.
SSH into a server, open a tmux session, or run it locally. The game state is a single JSON file — copy it between machines, share it with friends, or fork it to mod the economy.
Procedural events, dynamic markets, and hidden alien artifacts ensure that no two playthroughs are alike. You might be a peaceful trader in one game, a ruthless pirate in the next.