External Links


Story File (Extended Edition)
Extended Edition (release 2).
Requires a Glulx interpreter. Visit IFWiki for download links.
Feelies (Extended Edition) *
Includes all the IFComp feelies, plus updated ones and the game map.
Story File
Requires a Glulx interpreter. Visit IFWiki for download links.
Feelies *
Music: Black Giant. Cover image. Images: postcard, Ref.​1, Ref.​2, Ref.​3.
Play Online
Play in parchment.
THE SOURCE CODE (YAY!)
Source code for the Extended Version, dated 2012 and previously unreleased.
* Compressed with ZIP. Free Unzip tools are available for most systems at www.info-zip.org.

Have you played this game?

You can rate this game, record that you've played it, or put it on your wish list after you log in.

Playlists and Wishlists

RSS Feeds

New member reviews
Updates to external links
All updates to this page

Andromeda Apocalypse — Extended Edition

by Marco Innocenti profile

Episode 2 of the Andromeda Series
Science Fiction
2012

Web Site

(based on 29 ratings)
5 reviews

About the Story

Floating in space on a strange vessel, sole survivor of a world... and maybe of the entire human race, Ektor Mastiff must find a way through the cosmos, on a voyage that can change the history of mankind forever.


Andromeda Apocalypse is part 2 in the Andromeda Series by Marco Innocenti. The first episode is Andromeda Awakening. Although playing the first game is not required, to better understand the story it is highly recommended.

Andromeda Awakening, Andromeda Apocalypse, Andromeda Legacy and all of the fictional characters and places depicted in the games are by Marco Innocenti, unless stated otherwise. The cover art, as long as all the other graphic bits distributed along with the games, are by Marco Innocenti.

The title song Black Giant was produced by Wade Clarke and is (P) and (C) 2012 Wade Clarke.

The character of Gettare Rinors is by Joey Jones and is used with permission.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, and can be freely copied, distributed or played in public for non-commercial purposes.


Game Details


Awards

1st Place - 18th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition (2012)

Nominee, Best Game; Nominee, Best Implementation - 2012 XYZZY Awards


News

The full 2012 source code of IFComp winner Andromeda Apocalypse is now available, following the "April 1 is Source Code Amnesty Day" in intfiction.org.
May or may not work in Inform7 10.1.

Maybe useful things to look for into:
- The Achievement System
- The Hint System (done by many already)
- Storing possession when swapping between scenes (done by many already).
Reported by Marco Innocenti | History | Edit | Delete
The Extended Edition includes:

• 9 new achievements
• The achievements are now stored to a file
• Better hints for the endgame sequence
• A rehauled Reports to the Council feelie (in your game's package!)
• The game's map (in your game's package!)
• A new section of the ship is now reachable and...
• Finally, by popular demand, an alternate ending with the solution to a previously impossibile quest.
Reported by Marco Innocenti | History | Edit | Delete
Expand all | Add a news item

Tags

- View the most common tags (What's a tag?)

(Log in to add your own tags)
Tags you added are shown below with checkmarks. To remove one of your tags, simply un-check it.

Enter new tags here (use commas to separate tags):

Member Reviews

5 star:
(12)
4 star:
(11)
3 star:
(6)
2 star:
(0)
1 star:
(0)
Average Rating:
Number of Reviews: 5
Write a review


Most Helpful Member Reviews


7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
Excellent game with a great story, March 23, 2015
by Simon Christiansen (Denmark)

This review was previously published on a blog in connection with IFComp 2012.

Andromeda Apocalypse is a science fiction story, which is the sequel to last year’s Andromeda Awakening. It’s an excellent game, and a must-play for any science fiction fan, regardless of whether you’ve played the previous games in the series.

(Spoiler - click to show)Andromeda Apocalypse is the sequel to last year’s Andromeda Awakening, which I haven’t played, but remember being somewhat controversial. There were a lot of complaints about the language of the game being hard to understand, due to the author being Italian, and using weird turns of phrase. The phrase “cyanotic light” in particular seemed to draw people’s ire.

However, the game must have had solid fundamentals because it seems to be pretty well regarded nowadays, and two more games have been written in the same universe, by different authors. This is the first case I am aware of where a shared universe is used by several IF authors. Judging from the quality of this game, I’ll have to go back and play those games, to get the full backstory.

Luckily, playing the previous games wasn’t necessary to appreciate this one, as it does a pretty good job of establishing what is going on. You are the last survivor of the planet Monarch in the Andromeda galaxy. The ABOUT menu contains a helpful summary of the backstory: The planet has been destroyed by a mysterious race of black spheres, called Hyerotropes, which has lain dormant beneath the surface for millennia. These go around destroying solar systems and galaxies for unknown reasons, and also have the ability to convert matter to “cold, azure light”. I can only assume this must be the infamous “cyanotic light” I’ve heard so much about.

As the game begins, the main character has escaped the destruction aboard a Hyerotrope, which can luckily also be used as a spaceship. For some reason I didn’t quite understand, the Hyerotrope also contains the Voyager probe, along with its famous golden disc. The only thing the main character has managed to bring with him is a single expired railway ticket, a melancholy reminder of his loss. The game uses feelies to great effect, by including pictures of the disc, the ticket and a postcard from the planet Monarch, to set the mood. I wish there had been an option to display these pictures in-game, but the game itself is entirely text based. Perhaps this choice was made to ensure compatibility with browser based interpreters, who don’t seem to be able to handle pictures very well yet.

uring the game there are frequent flashbacks to the late planet Monarch, where you get to have conversations with your uncle and best friend, while watching the approaching storm in the distance. Both the descriptions of Monarch, and the conversations themselves are well written, and did a great job of making me feel nostalgic for the place, even though I had only the faintest idea of what it was supposed to be like. Unfortunately, they also suffer from being almost entirely non-interactive: The only thing you can do is type TALK TO X over and over, until the conversation is over. Attempting to ask about a specific topic tells you that you prefer to follow the flow of the conversation. Worse, when you later need to talk to the main NPC of the game, you do need to talk about specific topics to proceed. By this time, I had resigned myself to the fact that the game would use TALK TO conversation, so I had to check the hints to figure this out.

After a while, you crash into a huge space station, and it is here that the bulk of the game takes place. The station turns out to be an ancient ark that a previous civilisation used to escape the destruction of their home galaxy by the Hyerotropes. The station is very large for a Comp game, with lots of places to explore, and controls to fiddle with. The exploration is helped by the fact that all the exits are listed in the status bar, something I really wish more IF games would do. I’m terrible at visualising how locations are connected, and too lazy to draw a map, so I always end up getting lost in most non-trivial environments.

Soon enough, you manage to activate the station’s AI, which provides conversation and hints throughout the rest of the game. You can talk to the AI from any location, and receive location based comments and backstory. The conversation is topic based with the syntax conveniently implemented as “NAME, TOPIC” in addition to the usual ASK/TELL syntax. This is something I would like to see done more often since hardly anyone seems to implement separate responses to ASK and TELL these days.

The topics you can talk about are highlighted in the text, which helps avoid “guess-the-topic” problems, but also means that the conversation system is really no different than a menu system, except you have to type in the options rather than selecting them from a menu. You end up just lawnmowering through all available options without much thought. I think I prefer having to figure out what topics are available myself, even if it means occasional frustration. In spite of this, I really did enjoy talking to this AI throughout the game, and felt kind of attached to it at the end.

The puzzles in the game are generally very good, and I was impressed by how intuitive the solutions felt. The necessary actions almost always felt completely natural, and on the few occasions where I got stuck it was usually because I hadn’t been paying attention, or had typed something blatantly wrong.

The hint systems is also very good: The game uses the usual menu based “invisiclues” type of hints, but makes them context sensitive, so you can only see hints for currently active puzzles. This neatly solves the usual problem with menu based hints, where the menu options spoil events that have not yet happened.

The only time the hints let me down, was at one of the late game puzzles, where you are chased through the station by a ravenous beast. The hints only mention one way of defeating the beast, but I had unwittingly closed off that option earlier in the game. Just as I was about to give up, I managed to find an alternative solution. It’s a testament to the excellent puzzle design in the game that I found this solution with no hinting, but if I hadn’t found it in time, I would have assumed that I had put the game in an unwinnable state, and probably rated it lower. Authors should take care to mention all the possible puzzle solutions in the hints, and maybe even include an in-game walkthrough. Sometimes I just want to get to the end of a game, without having to wade through 20 gradually more explicit hints to figure out how.

I greatly enjoyed playing this game and can recommend to pretty much everyone, especially people who enjoy science fiction. The ending of the game strongly implies that there will be a sequel – at least I hope that’s the intention since I am not quite sure I understood what was going on. Did someone else escape the apocalypse? Is that presence in the distance the Hyerotrope king or something? Will there be cyanotic light where we are going?

Hopefully I’ll get to find out in the next game in the series. Perhaps I’ll even find a use for that expired railway ticket I’ve apparently been carrying with me since the first game. I’ll definitely have to play the previous installments while I wait.

Was this review helpful to you?   Yes   No   Remove vote  
More Options

 | Add a comment 

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
Mid-length sci-fi game with a real cinematic vibe and superb implementation, July 19, 2020
by MathBrush
Related reviews: about 2 hours

Andromeda Apocalypse is one of the best-crafted games I have seen. In this mid-length sci-fi game, you explore an abandoned station that is part Sphere, part 2001: A Space Odyssey, and a little part Alien.

The game features a compelling main NPC, a map that flows well in your mind, and puzzles that lead the player on from piece to piece in a natural way.

Instead of traditional scoring, the game includes achievements. At first, I thought this would make the game worse, but the achievements became a puzzle themselves. ('How do I get the 'Ellen Ripley' achievement?', I found myself asking.)

I would recommend playing Andromeda Awakening first, because this game is a sequel. Awakening is a good game, in and of itself, but Apocalpyse is the better of the two.

I recommend this game for everyone.

Was this review helpful to you?   Yes   No   Remove vote  
More Options

 | Add a comment 

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
A fantastic sequel! Marvelous!, January 7, 2015
by Chai Hai (Kansas City KS)

Following the events from the first game, you are now a lonely scientific refugee. Your escape pod crashes on an unknown space station, and you have to explore and find a way out of your exploding galaxy.

I enjoyed this game tremendously. The station was intriguing. I loved exploring, and figuring your way around was fun. Having directions at the top of the screen helped, and before too long I knew my away around port!

The puzzles were straightforward, and of good difficulty. I only had to use the walkthrough a couple of times (mainly at the end because I panicked) but overall it was clear what needed to be done. This was a step up from the first game, as sometimes it wasn't clear that you needed to put the disc with the cylinder.

I absolutely love who you "meet" in the ship! Really adds backstory and knowledge, and it was fun getting an insider's take on the rooms I had just been exploring. My favorite part of the game. Well developed too for a character of that sort.

I really liked the use for the ticket, ingenious! Wonderful way to make something so useless useful!

(Spoiler - click to show)I found being able to keep the countdown going amusing. It was helpful as I wandered around at the end though.

The list of achievements was fun, and although I didn't get them all, it was satisfying seeing I earned another one, even if it was the death ones.

This story just adds on to the feeling of loss you felt throughout the first game. As you delve deeper into the story, it intensifies. Flashbacks and meeting your "companion" add to it. But if a story makes you feel, that means it's great and doing its job! And this one does it well. Bravo!

Was this review helpful to you?   Yes   No   Remove vote  
More Options

 | Add a comment 

See All 5 Member Reviews

Andromeda Apocalypse — Extended Edition on IFDB

Recommended Lists

Andromeda Apocalypse — Extended Edition appears in the following Recommended Lists:

Great games set in space by MathBrush
My list for best sci-fi games has grown too large again, and so I'm splitting it off again. This list only includes games whose primary action is off-planet, or which feature exploring an unfamiliar planet, or which feature...

Andromeda Series by Infinite999
This is a list for all of the games in the Andromeda Series in this recommended playing order: 1. Andromeda Awakening - The Final Cut 2. Andromeda Dreaming 3. Andromeda Apocalypse - Extended Edition 4. Andromeda Ascending

Benevolent Computers by Kinetic Mouse Car
Sometimes it is the AI characters who leave the strongest impression whether they are the villain or your closest friend. This list will focus on the latter. This is a mix of AI PCs and NPCs. You either play as an AI with a noble purpose...

See all lists mentioning this game

Polls

The following polls include votes for Andromeda Apocalypse — Extended Edition:

Multi-Part Games by Bloodsong
I was wondering just how many games out there, either completely text based, or text-adventure hybrids, are out there that involve a story line over the course of several games. I know for sure of the Sorcerer trilogy from Infocom...any...

Achievements, catch them all and other stuff. by Xionix
Looking for some IF with achievements, like, collect the 50 golden coins, or if you type 20 wrong commands you get the newbie achievement, or if you type "use hat in head" you get the "IF hater-to-be" achievement, well you get the idea.

Best sci-fi games by Ant-Fan
I'm looking for games from the sci-fi genre. I would prefer classic-style games, even if they're not classics (such as 'Across The Stars') because one of my all-time favorites is Planetfall, but really, anything goes.

See all polls with votes for this game




This is version 11 of this page, edited by JTN on 15 July 2023 at 12:05am. - View Update History - Edit This Page - Add a News Item - Delete This Page