Humanity: First Year
Real-time space expedition in the HFY genre: humanity's old tech against species armed with energy weapons. Previously announced as Sector Prime, then briefly as HFY Human Space Chronicles. HFY is the fan-fiction genre where humanity is the underdog; the title's initials are a nod to it.
Facts
| Subtitle | An HFY Story |
|---|---|
| Developer | Binary Helix (Linh Ngo) |
| Genre | HFY science fiction. Short-session space expedition, real-time tactical combat, one voiced main story line |
| Platforms | Browser demo (now), Android (Google Play testing, not publicly released), Steam page planned. No release date announced. |
| Price | Browser demo free. Store prices to be announced. |
| Session | A full expedition in about fifteen minutes; longer if you go looking |
| Input | Mouse and keyboard, or touch. No gamepad yet. |
| Languages | English |
| Engine | TypeScript, Canvas 2D, no runtime dependencies; about 84,000 lines; deterministic 60 Hz simulation; 1,076 automated tests |
| Contact | linh@ai-hacker.com |
Things that are true
- Humans fight with projectiles, warheads, antimatter and drone swarms; the older species use energy weapons, and their shields have no answer to mass.
- Any module fits any slot; one of each type. A second shield displaces the first into the hold.
- Weapons take hardpoints because a mount is a physical place on the hull.
- Named pilots are rescued mid-fight or not at all; berths cap at four, so you never get them all.
- Stealth is a signature, not a switch: firing, burning and colliding all raise it.
- A collision always blooms a cloak, so ramming is the counter to a cloaked ship.
- The Veil Projector wraps any ship, yours or theirs, in a field nothing shoots through, and makes its holder the loudest thing on the field.
- The Skarn hive is quiet for 420 days, then takes worlds, and each one shortens the wait for the next.
- Every arrival asks two questions in order: is anything shooting, and then, what is here.
- 1,875 voice lines: captains, story scenes and the ship's AI.
- A sector seed replays identically, so a bug report with a seed and a day count reproduces exactly.
Images and video
Right-click to save. All images are captured from an earlier build at 1920 x 1080 or phone resolution; the trailer is 1080p H.264.
Trailer, MP4, 55 seconds · Phone screenshot, 1080 x 1920
Asset provenance
All art, music, sound effects and voice lines were generated with AI tools: most with Asset Yard, the asset tool the developer built, and 16 early ship hulls and 30 icons with ChatGPT; the code was written with Claude Code under the developer's direction; the design, tuning and tests are the developer's own. Nothing is generated while the game runs. No third-party characters, art, logos or other copyrighted works were used as prompts or references.
| Asset class | Count | Made with |
|---|---|---|
| Early ship hulls | 16 | ChatGPT |
| Module and item icons | 30 | ChatGPT |
| Other images: newer ship hulls, scene art, pilot portraits | about 145 | Asset Yard (newer hulls with FLUX.1 Krea dev, whose licence permits commercial use of outputs) |
| Music | 38 tracks | Asset Yard |
| Sound effects | 29 | Asset Yard |
| Voice lines | 1,875 | Asset Yard text-to-speech (532 captain, 474 story, 80 voice bank, and others) |
| Code | about 84,000 lines of TypeScript | Written with Claude Code under the developer's direction; 1,076 automated tests |
| Design, rules, names, text, balance | The developer |
Development: first commit 27 August 2026, 453 commits and 135 numbered builds as of 14 September 2026. Asset Yard: assetyard.dev.
The developer
Linh Ngo founded Binary Helix and shipped Dangerous, a 3D open-world space RPG, on iOS, Android and Amazon in 2011 and 2012 and on Steam in December 2014. Steam rates Dangerous Mostly Negative. Its soundtrack, with Sean Beeson, won an iFanzine Outstanding Original Soundtrack award. Version 2.6.1 returned to Google Play in 2026. This game is the answer to those reviews: short, readable, and built to be tested.