I just got this little game on my phone, and it’s great! You play as the computer in charge of a spaceship with 1000 hibernating humans onboard; you make decisions as you explore space to try and find the best planet for them to settle a new colony. A single playthrough only takes 5 to 10 minutes or so, usually, and every playthrough is different.
I’ve played through about 20 times and I’m still not sick of it. And it’s free!
Hmmm…doesn’t seem to be on iOS. Sounds fun!
Bump… anyone else try it yet?
If I remember to look at this thread later when I’m at the bar, perhaps I’ll give it a shot.
Play it online here (no download needed):
5 to 10 minutes!? More like 2 or 3. At least for me. I played through like 5 times in 13 minutes. Top score of 9267 so far.
Depends on whether you actually read the text, perhaps!
My top score is about 12k, but I’ve played over 50 times now.
Ha!
The explorers trigger a long-dormant defense mechanism, which kills 255 colonists.
Oops.
Cultural guidance for new colonists, records of human history, great paintings, novels, symphonies, videogames—all lost forever in the dark.
One of those things is not like the others.
I’ve never had much use for paintings either.
Downloaded. Will play over the long weekend.
My top score is 14,430; Post Singularity tech with Cosmic Enlightenment. I happened on a really good planet in the third system I visited.
Wow, that’s better than anything I got. I’ve gotten Post-Singularity and Cosmic Enlightenment, but I haven’t gotten much more than 12K – you must have had an integrated society with the native aliens, I think, to get 14K. And that might be the maximum possible!
I have not yet been able to kill everyone no matter how awful a planet I choose. The game will come up with a reason why some people survived no matter what.
Oh, it can happen; I’ve had a colony completely die off several times. Generally it seems to require losing at least some colonists before landing, though. Also a hostile planet and a damaged enough science database seems to result in a die off; they don’t get the “genetic engineering for low gravity” or whatever event and just die.
Second time I played I lost 700 people off the bat and ended up in a futuristic police state. Fun!
What’s the lowest score anyone’s managed while still having a civilization alive? I think I’ve gotten around 4K, something like a medieval slave society.
First try - 11,170 points, living in a “Post-Scarcity Utopia” with friendly aliens nearby and Information Age technology. I only really got dinged cause there’s no water on my planet, but the colonists are extracting it from the rocks just fine.