Professor Prometheus
Inventor, explorer, and questionable businessman. He believes every impossible idea becomes possible if enough levers are attached to it, and he has brought an alarming number of levers.
Professor Prometheus Expedition Ledger
Steam Punk Star Killer
In a universe where electronics never arrived, humanity simply kept improving steam until brass engines crossed the stars. Professor Prometheus has heard of a neutron star worth an impossible fortune, and he has mistaken that rumor for a business plan.
Launch the Game
A Terrible Idea, Properly Funded
History records that someone once asked whether a starship could be powered by boilers, gears, vacuum pistons, and a sufficiently persuasive amount of brass. History also records that this was a terrible idea. Unfortunately for history, Professor Prometheus considered that a challenge.
The rumor begins in the Outer Rim: a rare unstable neutron star, dense with unimaginable energy and wealth, sits beyond the charted routes. Many expeditions have tried to harvest it. None have returned. This, according to Prometheus, means the market is underdeveloped.
Cogsworth checks the pressure valves. Ledger checks the debt exposure. The Professor checks neither, because he is already naming the expedition.
Expedition Crew
Inventor, Engineer, Accountant
Cogsworth
Steam automaton, engineer, navigator, and loyal voice of reason. Cogsworth is usually correct, frequently ignored, and increasingly certain the ship should have had one more inspection.
Ledger
Ship accountant and professional pessimist. Ledger joined for profit, stayed because leaving would damage the balance sheet, and narrates every near-death experience as a cost center.
The Backdrops Tell The Journey
Every 100 levels, the expedition moves forward. The early stages begin in rain, taverns, investor offices, and dry docks. The middle chapters cross asteroid belts, deep-space failures, and one steam-warp experiment that proves velocity is not navigation. The final chapters bring the neutron star closer until the crew stabilizes orbit, builds the harvesting rig, and discovers that the universe occasionally rewards irresponsibility.
The game stays readable first: the brass scenery stays dark, the bright details stay localized, and the play lane remains clear enough for hull plates, balls, neutron fuel, cash, explosions, and score effects.
Comic Strip
Twelve Panels To Legend
1. Tavern Recruitment
Professor Prometheus: We are making history. Cogsworth: We are making a pressure hazard. Ledger: We are making history's most expensive pressure hazard.
2. Crew Assembly
The crew gathers at the dock: one inventor, one automaton engineer, one accountant, and enough support droids to make the safety forms look optimistic.
3. Funding Secured
The investors agree the expedition is reckless, impossible, and unlikely to survive. Then Prometheus says "exclusive neutron rights," and the room becomes very interested.
4. Ship Construction
Cogsworth builds a ship. Prometheus adds more brass. Ledger asks whether "decorative explosion shielding" is a real budget category. The answer is filed under optimism.
5. Launch Day
Cogsworth requests one final inspection. Prometheus hears applause. Ledger calculates that the launch has already exceeded the insurance value of the launch tower.
6. Asteroid Belt Survival
The Outer Belt turns navigation into billiards with consequences. Prometheus calls it field research. Ledger calls it unpaid collision testing.
7. Warp Accident
The prototype steam-warp drive works, technically. The ship moves faster than reason, briefly outruns its own paperwork, and arrives somewhere nobody meant to finance.
8. Wrong Destination
Professor Prometheus: We have discovered a new system. Cogsworth: We have lost the old one. Ledger: I fail to see how these statements differ.
9. Neutron Star Discovery
The neutron star is real: tiny, terrible, beautiful, and financially persuasive. Even Ledger pauses before calculating the cost of dying near it.
10. Orbit Chaos
Gravity wins the first orbit. The engines object to the second. Cogsworth invents six repairs in a row while Prometheus describes the incident as "useful data."
11. Successful Harvest
The plan works. Energy flows into brass reservoirs, the boilers hold, and Ledger smiles for one-eighth of a second before adding depreciation.
12. Return As Legends
The crew returns rich, famous, exhausted, and only slightly traumatized. Prometheus proposes another expedition. Cogsworth requests a holiday. Ledger requests a lawyer.
The Universe Rewards Explorers. Sometimes.
On very rare occasions, after several catastrophic mistakes, an irresponsible expedition survives long enough to be called genius. Prime the boiler, keep the playfield clear, and see how far the Star Killer can go.
Play Steam Punk Star Killer