Hey everyone,
The Fermi Paradox has been live for a month. We collected a lot of feedback from the community and want to provide you with a roadmap on what we are working on during the Early Access phase.
In general, we will continue fixing bugs, balancing the gameplay and adding more variety to the game. We try to have major updates every month but will upload bug fixes or small content patches in shorter intervals.
We plan to stay in Early Access for around a year and these are the main topics that we want to tackle.
- More Alien Species : At the moment only 12 different aliens are available in the game. We will bring you at least 30 alien species to play around with and will release them with regular updates. Since each planet will have 3 different evolvable species, we will unlock them per planet. Also, we would like to add more outfit variations to the existing species.
- More Technology Levels : What comes after the Singularity? The current game ends when enough civilizations have reached the Singularity Age. But we will go further and explore science fiction themes of Faster Than Light travel, Advanced Nanotechnology, Matter Replication and Technological Ascension.
- More Endings : We will add more good and bad endings to the game and will give more details to the endgame. Stay tuned for more ways to bring harmony to the galaxy and more ways to bring galactic civilizations to catastrophe.
- Species Specific Evolution and Development : Civilizations created by sentient plants should evolve differently than human mammals, and species born on an ice planet will have different challenges to overcome than creatures from Earth. This is a request we get a lot from the community and we aim to create a diverse range of events that are less similar to human history.
- Full Utopia / Full Dystopia : The behaviour and gameplay of utopian and dystopian societies will change. Maybe they will isolate themselves in happy bliss or will they turn the galaxy into a dark forest and try to annihilate every other civilization?
- Interstellar Contact and Alien Invasions : We want to add more depth to the contact events about alien visitors or distant travellers from their own species. Interspecies diplomacy and warfare will be more detailed and have more long lasting effects.
- Generation Ships and Starship Armadas : We want to flesh out more the life aboard starships drifting through space for countless years and the developments and conflicts of these galaxy crossing journeys.
- Radio Signals and Interstellar Communication : The sending out of signals from the industrial age on is a major part of the Fermi Paradox gameplay. We want to add follow up reactions and communication possibilities between far away star systems, be they from alien lifeforms or estranged colonies of the same species.
- Xeno-Archaeology and Progenitor Technology : We want to add the possibility to explore the ruins of long gone civilizations and rediscover their technological marvels. Will spacefaring archaeologists trigger ancient doomsday devices, start to worship alien artefacts as gods or learn from the mistakes of the extinct species?
- Second Chance Evolution : If on a planet a species becomes extinct, on rare occasions, another species on the same planet will evolve and become sapient and rise from the ashes of a long gone civilization.
- Galactic Dominance : Is only one species colonizing the stars? Beware! Maybe they will start forming a galactic empire with the aim to overpower and dominate all other species.
- Synthetic Lifeforms : Some civilizations may only leave their robotic servants behind, or worse, might get destroyed by their own sentient war machines. How will these artificial beings evolve and will they be a threat to the other biological species?
- Devolved and Fallen Societies : Civilizations that regressed to an earlier technology level or collapsed because of war or catastrophes will get more detailed post-apocalyptic or scarcity themed events.
- Crossing the Species Boundaries : Advanced technology will allow alien civilizations to grow beyond the limits of their species and even merge with other sapient lifeforms.
- Storyteller Mode : A game mode focused on playing around with the story elements and not the gameplay challenges.
- Detailed History of the Galaxy : We will add a summary of the entire playthrough and an overview of the development of all civilizations at the end of the game.
In addition, there are some more technological features we want to add during Early Access:
- User Interface Improvements for better overview and explanation of the game features
- Achievements and Unlockable Planets/Species
- Difficulty Settings
- Accessibility Features
- Separate available soundtrack
- Twitch Integration
- Keyboard and Controller Support
We are also evaluating these suggestions from the community and are a bit on the fence, if we should add them to the game and/or if it is something that could come in later updates after the Early Access phase:
- Multi Species Planets : We want to make the species to species interaction more meaningful. But having a permanent population of many different species in the same star system is quite complex and we are still not sure if we will add this feature to the game.
- Dynamic Planet Appearance : With evolving technology the appearance of a planet will also change. For now we only describe these changes in our description texts and are not sure if we should also change the visual appearance of our planets.
- Custom Campaigns and Special Game Modes : We have a lot of ideas for campaigns ( like we had in our demo version ) or game modes with very different starting conditions. These features will take a lot of balancing work so we may do them later.
- Psionic Abilities and other Fantastic Elements : Even if mental powers are a staple of many science fiction stories, we think that these elements don't fit well into the stories that we want to tell in the Fermi Paradox. But it might fit to a separate game mode or add on.
We’d love to read your comments on the above and further discussions on it!
We will not start to work on following topics during the Early Access phase:
- Languages : It only makes sense for us to finish the English text of the main game and then decide if we will translate “The Fermi Paradox” into other languages. We are always happy to hear what languages the community would like us to support, but we can't make promises right now if the game will be translated into those.
- Platforms : We will focus on making the PC version great and then decide if we create a version for platforms like Switch, Mac, Linux, Mobile, Xbox or Playstation after we finish Early Access.
- Other Shops : We want the game to be accessible to as many people as possible so with time we will make Fermi Paradox available on other places than Steam.
- Modding : Since we will add and change features constantly during Early Access it does not make sense to add a modding system before we finish with the Early Access version.
Also, there are some things that are out of our scope for a small indie team or don't fit with the vision that we have for our game:
- Multiplayer ( cooperative or competitive )
- Very detailed customization of characters
- Classic strategy games elements like moveable units or base building.
- Detailed grand strategy elements with the micromanagement of a lot of resources / values.
I hope this gave you a good overview on what we planned for the next year.
Game development is not an accurate science, so in the end something may turn out a bit different from what we thought. We are interacting constantly with our players to understand what is important for you and what you find really interesting about our game and plan accordingly.
Finally, I want to give a big thank you to all the people supporting the Early Access version, writing reviews and feedback, providing us with ideas and suggestions on our Discord, the Steam Forums or other social media and sharing and streaming our game. That really helps a lot.
Thank you and see you up in the stars, voyager.
Jörg from Anomaly Games
Join our Discord server: https://discord.gg/n5bDJ7pRVM
Follow us on Twitter: @FermiGame