In spacefaring management sim The Banished Vault, no one can hear me scream

When I enter my 23rd solar system, I know it’s the end. My small group of exiles is running out of faith – a mainstay of their monastic identity, as well as an important game mechanic. At a glance, the asteroids in this part of space don’t have the resources or land masses to build critical outposts or craft key items. I don’t have enough stasis – a liquid matrix that allows the exiles to survive the excruciating hibernation process between solar systems. Eventually they will tire and lose the ability to perform actions, which is tantamount to curling up in a ball and waiting for death.

The Banished Vault is essentially a single-player table scenario honed into a particularly intense, sadistic tool of survivability and resource management. Each solar system is a procedurally generated trial with the same spiritual vibes as that math problem involving transporting a group of humans and a hungry lion between two islands in one boat. It is The art of war written for logisticians by a spacegoth Dune mentate. Mentally I refer to the game as The penalized vault. It’s the most grueling thing I’ve played in years, and I love it.

I am in charge of the Auriga Vault, one of the many enigmatic interstellar monastic cities that map the universe. Somewhere at the edge of space, it encountered a planet-eating entity called the Gloom, which decimated its inhabitants. The surviving skeleton crew, now known as Exiles, have devoted their remaining lives to documenting their journey. To complete the game, I must help the exiles complete four Chronicle items in a structure called Scriptorium, which can only be built on a special Hallowed planet.

Each solar system has its own arbitrary conditions, some of which feel like the work of the cosmic devil himself: young systems may have small asteroids with only a single resource, while old, dying systems have extended travel times between planets. Set against an inky abyss studded with tiny stars, I direct my team to gather resources, build outposts, craft items, dig up artifacts to unlock abilities, and, where possible, head to a sacred planet (if there is one) to write the next chronicle.

Fuel and iron are critical, but things like titanium and silica can be a gamble. Sometimes I come across a system that doesn’t have the only resource I need, and no way to progress, meaning I have to restart the entire game. I roll dice to overcome dangers, which increase in comically cruel ways and intensify as my ordeal continues. Inevitably he Gloom will come for us. After 30 turns, it starts to gobble up pieces of the geomantic map; more often than not, it also swallows my exiles.

I spend hours in a mind-melting trance of fuel calculations and reckless maneuvering as the universe constricts around me; my hyper-focused state is aided by a brilliantly atmospheric soundtrack of cavernous reverberations and cosmic choruses. I’m generally bad at math, but for the sake of the Vault, I’m firing every cell in my left hemisphere into action. Every mouse click is a commitment to its consequences, because there’s no undo button – if I screw up, I’ll have to start a new game. Any slightly out of place building or minor miscalculation instills a shudder of fear because I know I will pay dearly for it. With every reboot I wonder if the game has been massively drowned out, or if my exiles are filthy heretics not meant to write their story. My most successful turns are stretched tighter than a tripwire, pumping out as much stasis and faith-supplementing elixir as I can without risking too much.

My frustrations disappear once I accept the harsh, precise reality of survival in space; The Banished Vault isn’t a territorial pee contest or a cozy terraformer where I can settle down and make a home. There is no conquest or diplomacy. I have no armies and silos to store a safety net – I don’t even have a proverbial fat year to harvest from, let alone seven. I just need to scrape together the bare minimum to make it to the next solar system.

With all these perverse hardships, it makes sense to think about who or what I’m suffering for. The 46-page game manual is one click away, allowing me to quickly reference building materials and mechanics, but it also contains highly selective bits of lore. The beautiful black-and-white illustrations evoke the Gothic sensibilities of William Blake’s engravings and the bleak unknowability of these 1906 drawings for War of the worlds. The intricate crosshatching gives the manual a sort of Victorian, almost anthropological quality, as a carefully crafted companion to the exiles’ monastic duty to the Chronicle. The four Chronicle entries themselves offer no concrete answers or details about the people of the exiles – just tantalizingly vague bits and pieces mingled with esoteric religious allegory. Before the Gloom, if the monks of the Auriga believed in a god or a specific higher power, they have forgotten about it.

After completing my first playthrough, I’m both shocked and excited to find two new modes: Hard and Intense. I’ve been playing Normal the whole time, which is a revelation to my internal masochism meter. I may not have signed up for sadistic 4D chess, but I’m not backing down now. Five minutes later, barely two turns into my first Intense game, I’m ready to launch my airlock exiles into the arms of a kinder fate. Each difficulty level gives the same amount of starting resources (fuel, iron, elixir, and so on), but increases the number and intensity of hazards and complications at this level of play – my skull feels like it’s leaking.

After multiple reboots, I spend all 30 turns making barely enough stops for everyone to survive; just as I’m ready to hibernate the crew, I realize we’ve left someone on an outpost. I have no opportunity to gather knowledge to upgrade my exiles and arm them against the atrocities of the next solar system, which will surely be more challenging than this. Intense is not for me, but I enjoy my short time under its oppressive circumstances to concoct dramatic end-of-life revelations for my crew.

If the civilization of the exiles set up this monastic exploration program as a means of colonization (à la the alien engineers), the Auriga Vault is the inevitable result of mortal hubris meeting cosmic entropy. There’s a hint of cunning delight in the reverse dynamic of these would-be settlers fleeing before an all-consuming force wipes them out. There is no point in pondering the flavor of their imperialism or the exact nature of their religion and its viral spread throughout the universe through these vast colony vaults. I’ll never learn anything useful about their home – the place where the Chronicle is supposedly sent. The storytelling is deliberately sparse, but elegant in both form and function: the omissions and negative space here do far more to bond me with the exiles than any knowledge dump.

The Banished Vault If anything, is a masterclass in the economics and brutality of space survival, where every move matters. It is wholeheartedly uncompromising to bend the player to his will and vision, and it is right to do so. I realize that the elusive, interstitial faith that holds my exiles together has become fused with my own confidence in what I do; I don’t care about dissecting the details of their civilization, but about the chutzpah and half-hearted math to get us through.

The Banished Vault will be released on July 25 on Windows PC. The game was reviewed on PC using a pre-release download code from Bithell Games. Vox Media has partnerships. These do not affect editorial content, although Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased through affiliate links. You can find additional information on Polygon’s Ethics Policy here.