Strategy on an intergalactic scale

Developer/ publisher Anomaly Games

Format PC

Origin Germany

Release 2021

The paradox from which this takes its name asks the question: “Where are all the aliens?” In the 1950s, physicist Enrico Fermi suggested a contradiction between the number of stars and probable Earth-like worlds in the universe, and the lack of evidence of any intelligent, spacefaring civilisations other than our own. However, in Anomaly Games’ choicedriven narrative game, you’re given the opportunity to prove Fermi wrong and bring distant civilisations together – even if doing so results in their destruction. It’s essentially a strategy game on a vast scale, where the consequences of decisions echo through aeons. The developer describes your role in The Fermi Paradox as a “galactic gardener”. Your job is to shepherd organic life from its single-celled beginnings to becoming sufficiently technologically advanced to develop space travel. You can guide ten species at once; they include a variety of colourfully designed aliens and, closer to home, fleshy bipedal creatures called humans. True to Fermi’s paradox, you may, through the decisions you make, ensure these species never meet and live in blissful ignorance of each other. Or you can force them into contact, which can result in a harmonious interstellar relationship if things go well – or war, colonisation and extinction if they don’t.