Screenshots
Watch trailer on Steam ↗Signal Drift
Alcove Research LLC · Published by Alcove Research LLC
Content notice: Signal Drift contains strong language, criminal conspiracy, coercion, blackmail, emotional manipulation, institutional corruption, paranoia, betrayal, drug references, simulated gambling, and implied off-screen violence. Some scripted and locally generated character dialogue can include profanity, threats, charged relationship tension, and suggestive adult themes. The game contains no nudity, explicit sexual depiction, pornographic content, graphic gore, real-money gambling, or online player chat. Several missions depict fictional tampering with records, markets, medical charts, court files, communications systems, surveillance systems, or corporate compliance data. These scenes are presented as self-contained crime-thriller fiction with consequences and do not provide access to real systems.
3 user reviews — 100% positive (3 reviews) · 27 achievements
Last updated 28 Sept 2026
Break into fictional networks with real-feeling shell commands. Scan hosts, crack credentials, trace logs, steal evidence, and survive the fallout in a CRT-noir thriller where Signal Ghost's local AI characters remember what you do - and what you say.
DJCTQ 14
£9.09
Lowest price we've ever recorded
View on SteamPrices can lag the live Steam store — always confirm before buying.
£9.09
Price history
5 Sept 2026Lowest: £9.09 · Highest: £9.0912 Oct 2026
RPG, Simulation · 2026 · More £5 - £15 games
About this game
Every system has an owner. Every owner leaves a weakness.
Signal Drift is a command-driven hacking sim wrapped in a dark, adult CRT-noir thriller.
Take contracts inside SignalOS, a fictional desktop of terminals, files, tools, encrypted mail, volatile markets, and occupied IRC rooms. Clients give you a target, not the truth. To finish the job, you will have to discover hosts, identify services, find credentials, move between machines, reconstruct events from logs, copy evidence, and decide what to do when the briefing stops matching the facts.
The deeper you go, the clearer it becomes: somebody is using your work to build something larger, and every person offering help has a price.
Break in. Find the truth. Choose the damage.
A contract might begin with an address and a rumor. Scan the host. Read its service banners. Crack or recover a password. Enter through SSH. Explore directories. Grep the logs. Follow a strange process. Copy the evidence back to your rig. Then decide whether to expose it, sell it, alter it, or make it disappear.
- Use readable Linux-style commands including ls, cd, cat, grep, find, ssh, scp, ps, netstat, ip, journalctl, dmesg, and sudo.
- Solve objectives through flexible commands, relative paths, copied evidence, pipelines, and alternate routes rather than one magic input.
- Work distinct hosts with their own identities, directory trees, users, services, logs, hardware, and suspicious residue.
- Enter full-screen system interfaces for network switches, state records, court files, medical charts, carrier towers, botnets, surveillance networks, and stranger machines.
- Face rival hackers and active administrators who react while you work.
Signal Ghost remembers you.
Signal Ghost is the built-in, locally run character AI inside Signal Drift.
Contacts inhabit IRC channels and private messages. They remember shared history, react to the current job, change with rapport and betrayal, and talk to one another when a room becomes tense. Ask for a lead. Challenge a lie. Accuse somebody. Flirt. Provoke them. Waste their time. The response comes from that character's voice, motives, relationship, and knowledge of your run - not from a detached assistant.
Scripted scenes anchor the thriller. Signal Ghost gives the dangerous space between those scenes a pulse.
Four masks. Four versions of the truth.
- Independent Operator - Work for yourself, manage debt and leverage, and learn which broker has been pricing your survival.
- Hacker - Hunt compromised operators, strange files, hostile systems, and the machinery turning your fingerprints into evidence.
- Field Specter - Follow deniable orders through a counterintelligence war where your handler may be the threat.
- Corporate Espionage - Weaponize access, compliance, and boardroom secrets while the people above you prepare a scapegoat.
Each role carries its own long-form arc, contacts, betrayals, pressure points, and endings. Trust, heat, evidence, faction standing, and the choices you make under pressure alter how those stories close.
The run continues after the plan fails.
Failure is not always a reload screen. A blown operation can open damage-control work, blackmail, cleanup contracts, locked relationships, identity reconstruction, or an offer from somebody who knows you are desperate.
Trade recovered intel in bitcoin-denominated markets. Buy tools and rig upgrades. Build toward stealth, cracking, evidence, or market-focused play. Carry mastery and unlocks into future runs, then return under another mask to find routes, records, conversations, and endings you missed.
What waits inside SignalOS
- A guided, skippable onboarding that teaches the desktop and a complete starter intrusion.
- Branching contract chains with setup, escalation, betrayal, bosses, and payoff.
- Interactive password cracking, malware triage, packet analysis, log reconstruction, phishing detection, route planning, and market play.
- Encrypted mail, suspicious attachments, live records, changing audit trails, cinematic reveals, and mission reports.
- Persistent relationships, evidence, heat, faction pressure, tools, role mastery, rig modules, collections, endings, and 27 Steam achievements.
- Steam Cloud saves, multiple save slots, accessibility controls, reduced motion, scalable text, and keyboard-focused play.
All networks, organizations, records, identities, commands, and intrusion scenarios in Signal Drift are fictional and self-contained. The game does not connect to or provide access to real external systems.
Signal Drift runs its character AI locally on your machine. Although the visual presentation is intentionally minimalist, local AI inference requires more system memory and processing power than a typical 2D game.
System Requirements
Will my PC run this? →Minimum
Minimum:
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Storage: 4 GB available space
Recommended
Recommended:
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- Memory: 16 GB RAM
- Storage: 4 GB available space
Supported Languages
English
Latest news
AnnouncementsOfficial
Lantern Chain & Dangerous Connections — v1.4.0
Lantern Chain & Dangerous Connections — v1.4.0 The lights are still on. That is the problem. Lantern Chain is a new three-contract Living Operation beginning with Dead Letter Return. Your route changes the machines, the evidence, and what Moth tries next. Returning operators get a save-grounded recap that marks missing legacy details as unknown, while completed operators can enter the Lantern Afterimage remix with Moth already prepared for their prior route. Dangerous Connections gives ACIDBURN, Handler, and Ms. Vale distinct favors with visible debt. Their optional repayment requests now respond to real machines, evidence, and threats in the current contract. Refusing never blocks the mission, and the debrief shows the benefit taken, request outcome, debt movement, relationship change, and what remains due. High-Risk Deep Dive lets you press beyond safely completed proof for up to three escalating rewards. The next payout and trace pressure are always visible, you can cash out at any tier, and a forced extraction loses only the optional haul. Persistent Mysteries now carry clues across contracts. Follow The Quiet Fourth, Friday Is Not a Day, The Courtesy Copy, and Nine Minutes Missing to uncover tactical discoveries, rare routes, contact scenes, archive artifacts, and world callbacks. Clearer Moth telegraphs: what changed, your window, the counter family, and the stakes. Interruption choices show their command, method, tradeoff, and concrete effects before you commit. Signal Chain adds operator hunches, visible combination progress, and completion receipts. Post-contract choice callbacks and three personalized What Pulls You Back In? recommendations. Machines remember meaningful route outcomes, rival interference, and operator handling without storing raw command text. Distinct contact operating styles and disclosed cross-contact tensions. New Dead Letter Relay and Lantern Gateway identities, histories, and lightly funny MOTDs. Expanded authored dialogue and a dedi...Read full article on Community Announcements (john)Patch NotesOfficial
v1.3.2: Minor Visual Improvements
Minor Visual Improvements This update tidies up two presentation issues: Role selection: Text now stays inside its cards at smaller window sizes and when using larger text. Signal Drift intro: The opening video now displays its full frame instead of appearing slightly cropped.Read full article on Community Announcements (john)Patch NotesOfficial
Hotfix v1.3.1: Second-Launch Crash Fixed
Second-launch crash fixed We've released a hotfix for the error: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'biddingStyle') This issue could affect certain saves when starting or continuing the game after the first launch. Signal Drift now safely repairs the affected career data or, when the saved role is ambiguous, asks you to confirm your career before continuing. Your existing save is preserved Campaign progress, currency, evidence, relationships, missions, tools, and botnet state are preserved during recovery. You should not need to reinstall the game or delete your save. Thank you to the player who reported this issue and included the exact error message. If you still encounter trouble after updating, please send us the error text and where it occurred.Read full article on Community Announcements (john)AnnouncementsOfficial
Signal Drift v1.3.0 — Living Operations
Living Operations Signal Drift v1.3.0 makes the network remember how you work—and makes the people on the wire feel more present while you do it. Two connected operations bring six new contracts, persistent consequences, rival interference, machine relationships, failure recovery, deterministic remixes, and a major conversation-system pass for Signal Ghost. Two Operations, Six Connected Contracts Follow Rook through The Night Ledger, a three-stage fight over the record that three machines have been taught to accept as official. Challenge Glass Saint in The Glass Index, where a quote mirror, pricing oracle, and custody desk keep citing the same buyer who never existed. Choose Archive, Mesh, Breach, or Adaptive methods. Each route has its own cost, risk, reward, and effect on the stages that follow. Prepare, Commit, Improvise Stage one of four preparations before an operation. Its benefit—and its cost—carries through the full chain. Turn supported Caseboard deductions into real advantages during the next contract. Respond to live interruptions that can freeze credentials, restart services, relocate evidence, or put a rival on the host. Counter interference with ordinary terminal tools, or recover after the move lands. Route-aware debriefs compare what you intended with what you actually did, then show what carries into the next stage. The Machines Remember Recurring machines remember your visits, discoveries, tools, pressure, and how carefully you treated them. Their posture can shift from hostile to guarded to cooperative. Relationships can change MOTDs, optional files, shortcuts, and the occasional running joke. Earn a machine’s trust and it may offer an authored favor during a later visit. Signal Ghost Feels More Alive Address a contact directly and the conversation now stays with the intended speaker—even when other replies are waiting. Public channels can develop into paced, two-character exchanges instead of every answer feeling like a private prompt. Establishe...Read full article on Community Announcements (john)AnnouncementsOfficial
Operator Instinct
Operator Instinct The latest Signal Drift update is built around one idea: you should be able to read an operation, form a plan, and improvise without asking for the next exact command. Read The Room A persistent Intent Compass keeps the current goal, reason, location, and completion signal visible without revealing the answer. Machine Leads turn visible hosts, services, files, and odd system behavior into optional investigative landmarks. Shell errors now teach the underlying idea — wrong host, missing path, permissions, credentials, or a broken pipeline — and keep secrets out of saved output. Terminal completion, safe command history, saved drafts, and shortcut hints make experimentation faster. Make A Case The Caseboard now surfaces actions you can take: focus a theory, inspect a live-system lead, corroborate with an independent source, dismiss a weak accusation, or promote strong proof into a precision route. Corroborated routes are one-use advantages tied to the operation that produced them. Proof from one contract cannot be spent on an unrelated close. Mission approaches now explain their strengths, costs, risks, and evidence requirements. Track an approach, build it through play, and see how well your final decision matches your method. Make Your Rival Blink Moth, Rook, and Glass Saint have readable habits, distinct manipulation plays, and counter-windows that use ordinary shell tools. Successful counterplay earns leverage. Spend it to bait a predicted rival move, extend the response window, or force them into a lane you prepared for. Missed counters create recoverable complications instead of dead runs. The World Remembers Contracts now leave persistent facts and open or resolved threads that can surface in later briefings, the lattice command, and debriefs. Operator Lessons explain what worked, the tradeoff you accepted, the principle behind it, and another route worth trying next time. Machines remember visits, discoveries, pressure, and prior outcomes. Th...Read full article on Community Announcements (john)
