Need a good browser game to kill some time? Check out Seedship.
You’re the AI of a ship that fled a dying Earth to find a suitable planet to colonize with the survivors you carry in stasis. It’s just a “text adventure” I guess, making decisions about how to play the odds and prioritize what you try to preserve when things go wrong.
My first game actually went pretty good, but my next several attempts ranged from mediocre colonies to a self-destructing failure of a colony that nuked itself into a wasteland.
By eight attempts, I think I know stastically what my best bet is in any situation, so at this point I’m making the same decisions every time and just hoping for good luck, but it’s still kind of got me hooked.
So my strat in all runs was to upgrade water to long range, take hits to scanners, since surface probes are able to cover if a scanner fails and the rest of the planet looks somewhat acceptable. Settle only if rich resources or if a moon can cover for resources going forward after #3’s example.
Wish the final status screen kept your travel history and all text though, not just the conclusion.
Eden’s alien forests stretch away beneath a blue sky. The colonists live in wandering hunter-gatherer tribes beneath the planet’s open sky, beside rivers that flow into the planet’s oceans. Much of the tribes’ resources are devoted to fighting continual wars with one another. In the ruins of the first city stand monuments to the 515 colonists who did not survive the journey and the seedship AI that guided humanity to its new home.
Score
Planet atmosphere: 500
Planet gravity: 500
Planet temperature: 500
Planet water: 500
Planet resources: 500
Survivors after landing: 485
Survivors after settlement construction: 485
Final technology level (Pre-Stone Age): 0
Final culture (Warring Tribes): 500
Surviving cultural database × 10: 170
Total: 4140
Even though they devolved into warring tribal factions, I still put them on a beautiful planet and hope for the next 10,000 years.
Features:
Edible plants
Animal life
Post-Singularity civilisation
Monumental ruins
Bounty’s ocean stretches to the horizon a pale blue sky. The colonists live in high-tech cities with buildings sealed against the planet’s harsh environment, on platforms floating on the planet-wide ocean. They live lives of peace and spiritual fulfilment beyond the dreams of their ancestors on Earth, guided by a combination of human and alien philosophy. Many of the planet’s native inhabitants live in the human communities, and the colonists’ culture has been enriched by alien influences. In the first city stand monuments to the 133 colonists who did not survive the journey, the 81 more who died building the first settlement, and the seedship AI that guided humanity to its new home.