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AIDA Space Program playtest
by Likhoi
A comet will hit your planet in 49 years. Your space program was founded last Tuesday. Build rockets, learn real orbital mechanics the hard way, land on the Moon and grow a whole space industry — with IRIS, your AI coordinator — until you can push AIDA aside.
Anyone with a Steam account can join, and it's free.
- Access
- Instant
- On playtest since
- Nov 3, 2026
- Planned release
- Coming soon
- Developer
- Likhoi
- Platforms
- Windows
- Players
- Single-player
- Languages
- English, Russian
How to join the AIDA Space Program playtest
- Open the game's Steam page with the Join playtest button. Sign in to Steam if it asks.
- Use the AIDA Space Program playtest signup there. You're in straight away, with nothing to pay.
- The playtest shows up in your Steam library, ready to install and play.
New to playtests? How Steam playtests work
How AI is used
AIDA Space Program is made by AI under one developer's direction — the name itself comes from it: AI → AI'DA → AIDA. AI tools write the code, the texts and the voice of IRIS and the department heads, and help make the music and sound effects; the developer designs the game, directs every change, plays it and decides what ships. Everything is made before release; nothing is generated while you play.
The developer's own words, from Steam.
About AIDA Space Program
The sky has a new guest
On its very first flight, your program's little camera catches comet AIDA rising over the edge of Gaia. Beautiful. A month later the astronomers call: her path might come close. Very close. To know for sure you need her orbit — and to get her orbit you need rockets that actually reach space.
AIDA Space Program is a hard-SF spaceflight game in the spirit of the classic rocket-building sandboxes, wrapped in a story campaign: fifty years of game time, one comet, and a planet whose people have forgotten how to look up.
Learn spaceflight the hard way
Your program starts out sure that space is simply "up". Physics disagrees. Every new skill begins with a naive plan, an honest crash and the engineers' "we told you so" — and then you do it properly.
- Real orbits — gravity, stages, Δv, transfer windows and gravity assists that work like the real thing, explained step by step on IRIS's drawings and right on your navball.
- Build your own rockets — a vehicle assembly building with dozens of parts, staging, symmetry and a live Δv and TWR readout for every stage.
- Fly it yourself — ascents, orbits, maneuver nodes on the map, a Luna flyby, a powered landing on the Moon, docking in orbit, reentry through the plasma.
A campaign with a deadline
AIDA passes every twelve years, each time a little closer. On the fifth pass she hits. Between the passes you:
- Research without science points — every technology is real data from a real place, plus materials, plus time. The research road shows the goal at one end and question marks along the way.
- Grow the Space Center — launch pads, a test stand, a tracking station, a lab, industry and a warehouse; every building has levels and a job.
- Fly a crew — astronauts with names and limits. A loss means an accident investigation, not a reload screen.
- Choose your final — a giant kinetic impactor or a nuclear stand-off device. Which one you can build depends on the road you took.
IRIS
Your AI coordinator and the voice of Mission Control: warm, quick, a little playful, honest about her own bad plans. She teaches without flying for you — and later offers to automate what you have mastered.
A whole star system
Fifteen bodies around the star Theia: the Moon and its tiny moon, a red planet, a metal asteroid, a gas giant with volcanic and twin moons, a planet with crossed rings — and something at the far end of AIDA's orbit that nobody has seen yet.
Free demo
The demo is Act I in full: from the first hop to a landing on the Moon — five missions, about five hours.
In development by a solo developer. English and Russian interface; English voice.
From the game's Steam page.
