The Fermi Paradox: Try to nurture a galaxy (or at least a really small star cluster) into a 4+ planet federation by making decisions that'll foster growth. Or maybe use some as sacrificial lambs so that the next civilization can develop enough that they can survive. It sounds interesting on paper, kind of like a The Last Federation, with more of a narrative bent.
It basically feels like a multithreaded Reigns, except only two of the stats can end a civilization, and only if they get too low. The narrative elements don't particularly feel united, and you'll see a lot of the same flavor text over and over. A good chunk of the time is spent on the second-ish delay switching from planet to planet. And for a fun splash of facepalminess, once a civilization becomes interplanetary, it inherits some of the stats of its origin (most notably, tech level) but is classified as a different civilization. Which meant that my federation was just four planets of the same species.
Sure, it's an early access title right now... but I don't think it even has the bones to get somewhere without some serious work.
I gave it a try, and my experience was similar - It seems like an excellent story generator, but I don't know if the game is there. For instance, in my game, Humanity almost immediately ran out of all their minerals, had a war that killed most of them, ran out of minerals again, had an even bigger war, and was just about on the verge of extinction when a revolution in cloning allowed their population numbers to finally stabilize.
Meanwhile, the next system over, that race put all their resources into a massive starship, which headed out towards Sol (without realizing there was anyone there). Once the starship was several decades out, all the automation in the homeworld went berserk, genociding the race, leaving only the couple hundred thousand souls in the ships. My new wandering race ended up going to Sol, spied on the Humans without making official contact, then left for a new system, where they were able to get a new colony started by finding native plants that could be farmed, and ended up having a scientific revolution.
I also got a third race that popped up about 2/3s of the way through my playthrough, which made it up to the iron age before the game ended. They actually got the signals of a Human televangelist passing through their system, but had no radio to pick up the signals, so remained ignorant of other species.
Again - great stories, but I didn't really feel like I was... playing a game. It's all about making 1/3 choices to various random events, which either give points (usually bad things), take points away (usually good things), or cost nothing (usually somewhat negative things). Otherwise you're literally just watching the galaxy evolve and occasionally clicking on shiny objects (gives a small number of points.)
The game actually has a timed ending? That feels kind of weird.
Running out of resources appears to be the only 'practical' way to actually lose, far as I can tell, and even that can usually be escaped if you're prepared... the Warfare and Society meters are effectively dumpstats, as the latter only comes into play when something goes catastrophically wrong, and... I don't think I've ever triggered the former. A few of my planets had like 600% fatality levels, with no ill effect. Just keep population growth positive (at 20% or so, you can take the extinction penalty with impunity) and pick resources/science every time and they're okay for the most part.
My galaxy started off with sentient seaweed which... immediately imploded on themselves due to a resource shortage (planet started with enough for like 200 years...) and a lack of understanding of the mechanics. Second civilization was a set of dogs that eventually spread to 5 planets and was the one that formed the federation. After becoming an interplanetary civilization, they opted to go cybernetic. They ended up undergoing two extinction-level events collectively... one of them involved them building self-reproducing cloud cities that got too voracious and cannibalized the planet (resource shortage). Something like 9.5 billion deaths from that one, but they recovered. The other one was disease, that they miraculously found a cure for after a ton of influence points.
The third civilization, which became interstellar but not advanced enough to join the federation, formed on... Earth. Dolphins. And boy did they have a rough time of it, starting with around -14% population. Their lack-of-breeding lead to an extinction event that they somehow managed to survive with about 600 individuals remaining. Then they had a plague. And a volcanic eruption (resource shortage). Then another plague. Their first interstellar ship, I didn't have enough points for a good landing, so they crashed with almost no survivors. Then
another plague. Followed by
yet another one just as the dogs were finishing the victory conditions. I really have no idea what was causing the same type of extinction over and over, since their stats are all solidly positive at that point.
I had a fourth civilization of monkeys that... uh... acted as a point battery. Something like 60% Dystopian and massive fatality levels. Nothing bad ever happened to them, all the way up through nuclear tech.
...I'm not sure how to feel about it that recounting what happened was more enjoyable than actually playing it (if 'playing is the right word...). It mostly got tedious halfway through.
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Topic: Blurb on Games that probably don't deserve their own threads. (Read 326654 times)