"And when they knew the Earth was doomed, they built a ship. "
— Opening lines to the game.
Seedship is a text-based web and mobile game created by John Ayliff
where the player takes a role of an AI piloting a Sleeper Ship containing the last of humanity after an unspecified apocalyptic event. The player is faced with events during the course of the game, forcing them to make decisions that can either help or hinder the ultimate goal of finding a new home for humanity.
It can be played in web browsers here or downloaded for Android or iOS devices.
A Fan Remake featuring graphics and new features titled Seedship: Relaunch is currently in progress and is being discussed at a discord here: https://discord.gg/annCaDD along with the Seedship subreddit here You can play the web browser version of the beta here.
This game provides examples of:
- Absolute Xenophobe: If you colonize a inhabited planet with a significantly damaged cultural database but the natives do not have a planet-spanning civilization, your colonists will be this, and will attempt to genocide the natives. If the colonists are less technologically advanced than the natives, the natives will end up successfully doing the same to them.
- All Planets Are Earthlike: Mostly averted. While through certain events you can find a "perfect" planet, most of the worlds you'll find will not be like Earth. The differences can make or break a colony, depending on the status of the mission at the end.
- Alien Abduction: One event can have an alien ship steal colonists from the seedship.
- Apocalypse How: We know that the Earth is doomed, so there has had to 'at least' have been extinction on a planetary scale. That said, if the text referring to the location of Earth being "as silent as any of the other myriad dead stars" means anything, the Sun could be gone as well. Seeing that the creators of the ship didn't point it to Mars or Europa (despite the fact ship has the resources to successfully build a colony on a human unfriendly planet), annihilation on a stellar scale is very likely.
- Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: One possible outcome of the Dyson Sphere event is running into aliens that have done this. Depending on how the event plays out, they will extend the offer to humanity.
- After the End: The game is set after a world destroying event that is never elaborated on.
- Benevolent A.I.: You are this, seeing your role is to ensure the survival of the human race. Of course, you can avert this by intentionally settling on a hostile planet or just playing recklessly.
- Colony Ship: The titular seedship carries 1000 colonists and what they'll need to establish a home on a distant planet. The colonists will have a harder time if your construction module gets damaged.
- The Coup: A random event will have a dictator be found within the colonists. If the player chooses to not remove the dictator, or is unsuccessful in doing so, the dictator will end up taking over the colony at the end of the game.
- Death World: Many of the planets the RNG throws at you will be hideously unsuited for human life, with no water or resources or earthly gravity or even a breathable atmosphere. You can still try to settle the last remnant of humanity there, if your systems are too broken to risk going further — or just for laughs.
- Domed Hometown: Colonizing a planet that isn't conductive to human life will put the human settlements in domes, regardless of final tech level.
- Doomed Hometown: Earth is destroyed at the beginning of the game, forcing humanity to find a home elsewhere.
- Driven to Suicide: One event has a premature revival of some of your colonists. If conditions with the ship's systems are bad enough, the revived colonists may end up killing themselves.
- Dyson Sphere: A very rare random event has finding one of these during the game. One possible outcome of the event is allowing the player to enact the Simulation ending if they accept the alien's offer to take in the ship.
- Fan Remake: Seedship: Relaunch, with graphics and new features. At the time of writing, it's currently in progress with an open beta. Has a fairly active Discord here.
- Faster-Than-Light Travel: Averted. The ship flies at sub-light speeds, and the game describes taking hundreds or even thousands of years to get just to one destination.
- Fling a Light into the Future: The entire premise of the game is you taking control of said light, and guiding it to its new home.
- Final Solution:
- A random event has a rogue program within the ship try to kill colonists with certain racial characteristics (gameplay-wise, this will just kill a random number of colonists). Shutting down the program will save the colonists, but damage a random system.
- The colonists will try to do this to the natives, if the ship's cultural database is sufficiently low enough AND if the natives do not have a planet-spanning society.
- Future Imperfect: Done subtly. If your cultural database is damaged at the end of the game, the colonists will have incomplete history to pass onto their descendants. It will be completely oral history if the database is completely gone.
- Grey Goo: One event has the ship encountering what appears to be nano-robots that can potentially eat the entire ship. The player is given options on how to deal with it.
- Interactive Fiction: The entire game is text-based, although the Fan Remake plans has graphics for the planets.
- Inside a Computer System: One possible ending has the ship and colonists be digitized into an advanced alien computer system within a Dyson Sphere. How nice the simulation is depends on how intact the cultural and scientific databases are.
- Human Popsicle: All the human colonists are frozen until the end of the game. Although one random event can trigger a premature revival.
- Last of His Kind: The ship and the colonists aboard are the last remains of humanity. The remake however has a random event where you can run into derelict Seedship, with a chance of finding colonists aboard.
- Luck-Based Mission: The quality of the planets you find, which events you encounter in between planets, and the outcome of said events is randomized. It's up to you to weigh your colonist's odds on a certain world compared to their odds of safely landing on the next good planet you find.
- No Biochemical Barriers: Averted and played straight with alien flora and fauna. Planet candidates can have plants and animals that can help your colony, hurt it, or have no effect whatsoever. Averted with planetary atmospheres and gravity though; as planets with hostile conditions will require the colonies to have life support built in them. Attempting to settle such a planet with significantly damaged construction equipment and/or a significantly damaged scientific database can result in a Game Over.
- Panspermia: One of the game over dialogues mentions the titular ship crashing into a planet and the bacteria and organic matter from the remains of the colonists leading to the creation of new life.
- Sadistic Choice: These frequently happen throughout the game. Events will pop up where you are often faced with options having to decide between saving colonists on your ship, or risking damage to ship components (which might cause even more colonists to die further down the line).
- Slave Race: Depending on the ships science and cultural database along with the technological level of the natives, colonizing a planet with natives can end up with the natives enslaved by the colonists or vice versa.
- Sleeper Ship: All the colonists are frozen on the ship itself.
- Solar Sail: The ship is described as using solar sails for travel, as these allow for nearly fuel-less (albeit slow) travel between worlds.The ship's solar sails propel it faster and faster into the darkness, and the AI listens as the transmissions from ground control fade and then cease.
- There Is Another: The remake has a rare event where you can run into another seedship orbiting a planet. The other ship can grant you more colonists, repairs to a random system, upgrades, nothing at all, or end up damaging your ship when you find out it wasn't as dead as you thought it was.
- Time Abyss: The ship itself can become this in a long-running game, with one bit of dialogue mentioning the nuclear power plant running the ship "has lasted far longer than the civilization that created it."
- 20 Minutes in the Future: Dialogue in the game suggests that the ship was launched during the Information Age, which is the present age at the time of writing, but the technology on the ship is definitely a few decades out at the very least. After the ship's launch though, the rest of the game takes place in the far future.
- Unspecified Apocalypse: The event that ruined the Earth is never described.
