Epitaph: A Text-Based Game About the Fermi Paradox

In a nutshell, the Fermi Paradox states that assuming the universe contains numerous Earth-like planets circling Sun-like stars, some of those planets would have evolved civilizations capable of space travel. And given how young a planet we are (comparatively), those other civilizations would have been around now for many millions/billions of years.

And if life existed somewhere besides Earth, we should have been contacted by aliens by now.

I had heard the phrase “Fermi Paradox” before today, but hadn’t really known what the exact paradox entailed. It’s a realy interesting problem to noodle around. Here’s a fun primer that goes into greater (and better) detail:

Epitaph is a game by Max Kreminski that allows you to gently guide various civilizations through a small set of discoveries and advancements.

Once you provide some help, a certain amount of time must pass before you can intervene again. If a given civilization progresses to the next stage, you can then aid them once more.

As time passes, new civilizations emerge. But the game will show just how tricky it is for civilizations to advance all the way to interstellar travel and communication. Spoiler: many of them fail due to things like famine or disease, or some other “filter.”

I like this game on a lot of levels. Partly as a programmer, I’m interested in the mechanics of it all. I’m not certain how well my decisions are influencing whether a civilization progresses or not… but the overall arc of the theory behind the games is what I find most fascinating.

On my to-do list is to create some kind of clicker game. And seeing as how this particular game has reminded me of Drowning in Problems, creating a text-based game is also going on that list as well.

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Related:
Drowning in Problems: Minimal, Existential Text Game
A Dark Room: Deceptively Simple, Remarkably Deep Text Game