https://ikaree.space/news/2026-11-02T12:00:00ZLubomír Budin https://ikaree.space/news/live-mode-your-room-becomes-the-ship/2026-11-02T12:00:00Z

Stand up from your real chair, walk the bridge on your own feet and take the turbolift to eight decks. No teleporting, ever. A first look at Live mode.

<p>Until now you have commanded the IKAREE from the captain's chair. Live mode, which we are building now, lets you get up.</p> <h2>Your room becomes a deck</h2> <p>At the start you sit in your real chair, look forward and press MARK MY CHAIR. The game measures the free space around you and builds a command platform around the chair: 4 × 3 m in a large room, 2.4 × 1.9 m in a compact one. The platform is where you walk, on your own feet. Around it stands the whole ship, three times its size, from the main viewscreen at the bow to the tactical console behind you.</p> <p>Your real chair becomes the captain's chair on every deck. The armrest panels sit where your armrests really are.</p> <h2>No teleporting, ever</h2> <p>IKAREE does not use teleport or artificial locomotion. Seated, the ship moves outside the windows. In Live mode you walk. Between decks you take the turbolift in the corner of the platform: the ride is light and sound only, and the floor never moves under you.</p> <h2>Eight decks</h2> <ul><li><strong>Bridge</strong>, deck 1: the viewscreen ahead, Brooks and Hart at their consoles, Cole at tactical behind you.</li><li><strong>Captain's quarters</strong>, deck 2: a window on the stars and messages from home.</li><li><strong>Transporter room</strong>, deck 4: watch who materialises on the pad.</li><li><strong>Sickbay</strong>, deck 5: biobeds and the surgery behind glass.</li><li><strong>Stellar cartography</strong>, decks 7–8: a walkway over a sphere of stars.</li><li><strong>Crew lounge</strong>, deck 9: the best view on the ship, at the very tip of the bow.</li><li><strong>Engineering</strong>, decks 10–13: the warp core rising from a pit below the railing.</li><li><strong>Shuttle bay</strong>, decks 15–16: the shuttle below you, the bay doors ahead.</li></ul> <h2>Safe by design</h2> <p>If your hand reaches more than 20 cm past the platform edge, a force field flickers and the controller vibrates. If your head leaves the platform, the scene dims and an arrow points back. The game never sends the shape or size of your room anywhere: it stays on the headset.</p> <h2>When</h2> <p>Live mode is in development and not yet in the Early Access build. The images on this page are renders of the new deck models. Seated play stays fully supported, and with a stationary boundary the turbolift simply comes to your chair.</p> https://ikaree.space/news/captains-log-and-crew-journals/2026-10-31T12:00:00Z

Dictate your own captain's log, read the private journals your officers write after a mission, and let your first officer brief you when you come back to the bridge.

<p>Three features in the next build make the IKAREE feel like a ship that keeps living while you are away.</p> <h2>Captain's log</h2> <p>Say &quot;Captain's log&quot; and keep talking. The computer answers &quot;Entry recorded.&quot; and writes down your words. It works in free flight and in the middle of an episode. Your entries are in the LOG tab, newest first.</p> <h2>&quot;Previously on IKAREE&quot;</h2> <p>Come back to the bridge after a break of more than twenty minutes and Commander Reed tells you how long you were away, reads your last log entry and reports where the ship is holding. The crew knows it too, so you can pick the conversation up where you left it.</p> <h2>Crew journals</h2> <p>After an encounter or an episode, one or two officers write a short private journal entry in their own voice, depending on what happened and whom it concerned. What they share depends on how much they trust you. Their first entry is always shared; the rest you earn. Open LOG → JOURNALS to read them, or have the author read the entry aloud.</p> https://ikaree.space/news/early-access-0-9/2026-10-30T12:00:00Z

The bridge, the crew and Season 1 are playable. Version 0.9 brings a living sky, a combat overhaul, recorded sound design and a new survey probe.

<p>IKAREE is in Early Access. The bridge, the crew and Season 1 are playable now, and the game keeps growing with regular updates. Your feedback shapes what comes next.</p> <h2>What's new in 0.9</h2> <ul><li><strong>A living sky.</strong> A layered Milky Way with real star positions, distant nebulae, drifting space dust and a soft lens flare. The background now moves with the ship instead of zooming.</li><li><strong>No more pop-in.</strong> Ships and stations appear in the distance as a faint point of light, then a soft glow, then sharpen into full detail as you close in.</li><li><strong>Combat overhaul.</strong> Phasers and photon torpedoes with trails, shield impacts, evasive manoeuvres that rock the viewscreen, power drops on heavy hits, emergency lighting, smoke, sparks and hissing steam from damaged consoles.</li><li><strong>Recorded sound design.</strong> New weapon, impact, alarm, console and ambience sounds that build tension in combat and quiet wonder in exploration.</li><li><strong>A new survey probe.</strong> Watch it launch from the ship and fly to its target before the feed switches to its camera.</li><li><strong>Ship trails</strong> behind moving vessels.</li><li><strong>Better Czech voice commands.</strong> Number words no longer confuse orders.</li><li><strong>A smoother start.</strong> The bridge fades in, and the first officer welcomes you aboard and introduces the senior staff.</li></ul> <h2>Known issues</h2> <ul><li>Planet visuals and ship motion are still being upgraded and will improve in the next builds.</li><li>Voice commands need an internet connection.</li></ul> <p>Thank you for testing.</p>