The Fermi Paradox is not just an interesting paradox that makes you question whether the sol system is just an intergalactic zoo, it’s also a cool indie game experience. Despite not being a finished product, I have thoroughly enjoyed the game. Though calling it a game is somewhat a strange statement as it’s more of a simulation you can interact with than an actual game.
You play the role of an intergalactic gardener yearning to seed the cosmos with sapience, which means the game developers know more about science fiction than all those hacks who throw the word sentient around like cinema hot dogs at a lager party. Time runs relentlessly in the background as you click on flares to increase your resource pool known as synthesis. Eventually, somewhere, sapient life will grow, and you can choose the dominant species that will end up forming civilisations that need to be micromanaged somewhat for success.
Clicking on flares can be positive or negative, so it’s important to be careful when cultivating a species, because one or two bad clicks can drive a species to total extinction if you aren’t paying attention. Building synthesis will usually enable you to avoid negative impacts at a cost of synthesis, or increase their negative effects for additional synthesis. As the intergalactic gardener, these species’ existence is in your hands, and if one of your species is a weed, it might need to be pruned so other, more visually appealing species may survive.
Whilst species choices seem somewhat limited at this point based on the star system of origin, this is a small indie game and despite this, you can get a lot of enjoyment out of the Fermi paradox, and it feels like the team is much larger than they are.
When spawning a species, you can choose to spend or gain synthesis to make a great or awful species, or just go with the safe all rounder option to get something useless and easily discarded like humanity.
Oddly, the thing I like most about the game is the colour palette. Everything looks soothingly beautiful and the artwork reminded me a lot of out of this world for some reason. The colours are relaxing and you can sink many hours into cultivating and destroying races for your own enjoyment. Though I still can’t get anything to spawn at Frogstar!
Sometimes races send transport ships to other worlds to colonize, make contact with or eradicate sapient occupants. These worlds will then grow their own sub species that may well have it in for their original species, so you have to be careful with space programs, sometimes it’s better that an arc fleet doesn’t make it to their destination… Occasionally species will also send out signals to see if there is other intelligent life out there among the stars.
The Fermi Paradox is a fun game that I’ve very much enjoyed but I know not everyone will feel the same way. I may be being a little too generous with giving it a solid 7/10, it is both an indie game and it’s unfinished currently. I cannot wait until it’s complete, because it’s already a great game. I will say that this is likely to go to either a 6 or 8 based on updates and how they impact the game. I will probably do another review when the game is finished and I for one am looking forward to it!
