The Fermi Paradox
Strategy on an intergalactic scale
PC
The paradox from which this takes its name asks the question: “Where are all the aliens?” In the 1950s, physicist Enrico Fermi suggested a contradiction between the number of stars and probable Earth-like worlds in the universe, and the lack of evidence of any intelligent, spacefaring civilisations other than our own. However, in Anomaly Games’ choicedriven narrative game, you’re given the opportunity to prove Fermi wrong and bring distant civilisations together – even if doing so results in their destruction. It’s essentially a strategy game on a vast scale, where the consequences of decisions echo through aeons.
The developer describes your role in The Fermi Paradox as a “galactic gardener”. Your job is to shepherd organic life from its single-celled beginnings to becoming sufficiently technologically advanced to develop space travel. You can guide ten species at once; they include a variety of colourfully designed aliens and, closer to home, fleshy bipedal creatures called humans. True to Fermi’s paradox, you may, through the decisions you make, ensure these species never meet and live in blissful ignorance of each other. Or you can force them into contact, which can result in a harmonious interstellar relationship if things go well – or war, colonisation and extinction if they don’t.
It sounds like a lot to oversee, but a minimalist, text-based interface keeps things manageable. As time passes in the universe, you gather a resource called ‘synthesis’ that can be used to make decisions in random events. These appear as brief, interactive stories, whose outcomes can dramatically affect your civilisation. If a rebellion breaks out on a planet, dealing with it peacefully will limit casualties, but cost a lot of synthesis. If you don’t have enough, you might have no choice but to instigate a planet-wide war, which can have a devastating domino effect on your civilisation.
An early build gives us a sense of how distant civilisations can impact each other, and how choices in the game are interconnected. On Earth, things are looking bad: political unrest, overpopulation and a desperate climate crisis grip the planet. Meanwhile, an advanced alien race called the Prun has mastered interstellar travel. We send members of it on a mission to Earth, to make contact and find a new home. These two civilisations are on a collision course, but how they’ll interact is unclear, determined by random events and the choices you make along the way.
On Earth, we’re given the opportunity to turn things around and develop new ways of living to save the planet – but we don’t have enough synthesis to access them. We can only watch in horror as the climate disaster spirals out of control and the sea levels rise. When the Prun finally arrive in our galaxy, humanity is extinct, and the sunken ruins of our cities are the only evidence we ever existed. For us, it’s a tragedy. But for the Prun it means they can settle on our former homeworld without any conflict, and the planet soon becomes a lucrative mining colony, eventually growing into a fledgling civilisation of its own.
This is just one of countless possible interactions. Earth could have weathered the climate storm and become a progressive utopia, and the Prun arriving would have had a different outcome. And when you consider that you’ll be guiding up to ten species, the breadth and scope of the game become excitingly clear. Keeping a civilisation alive and prosperous is something you’ll find yourself doing, but it’s just as entertaining to make bad choices on purpose and watch chaos unfold. You never feel like you’re being punished for doing the ‘wrong’ thing in The Fermi Paradox, which makes for dynamic storytelling – however your galactic garden grows.
It’s strategy on a vast scale, where the consequences of decisions echo through aeons