The UnEarth Initiative is an indie management/strategy game that puts you in command of a small group of humans trying to survive on an alien planet. What’s interesting about it is that the humans suck.
The game has a humorous slant, so instead of giving you an experienced platoon of veteran space marines and engineers, you’ve instead got the dregs of human society, who have been shot off into space on shoddy equipment to help alleviate Earth’s overpopulation.
Every time you start a game it will be different, as the world is procedurally-generated. You’ll need to build a base, grow food, explore and deal with aliens. Peacefully if you like, or with guns, whatever.
Inkling Games are a small team, but they’re made up of some ex-Insomniac developers. And if you like the art as much as I do, that’s because it’s the work of Janice Chu, whose work we featured here not too long ago.
The UnEarth Initiative [Kickstarter]
Comments
12 responses to “Humans Are The Worst, So We’re Sending Them To Die In Space”
Why does sci fi always make humans weak and defenceless. We are basically a warrior race who ingenuity to kill each other knows no bounds. I like the idea of the game itself just wish developers could do something more original, maybe aliens living on a hostile earth?
Well, with the realisation of a short demise, your brain goes into overload and it’s hard to think straight. That, and keep in mind the protagonists are generic everyday people, they’re not trained to be hostile war machines.
Interesting idea, a group of alien scientists studying humans in secret and not for some future conquest but just for scientific curiosity.
Not always. Warhammer 40k is sci-fi and portrays humanity as a powerful xenophobic culture using hi-tech/over-sized versions of modern weaponry to blow holes in anything considered a threat to them. Which is pretty much everything.
Aliens living in a hostile earth does sound like a neat twist on things though.
That’s a good point.
True, but in this case it’s “the dregs of human society, who have been shot off into space on shoddy equipment”. Short of dumping them on the planet naked with no equipment, I imagine this bunch would be pretty easy to kill.
Or read the series by Alen Dean Foster,the damned. Starts with A Call to Arms.
Basically, yeh, humans are regarded as psychotic warriors with built in combat drugs (adrenaline) and a deranged perspective of death in war ( other races lose a single soldier and say the plan failed. Humans rage something like “you killed Johnny” and charge forward. The last remaining soldier throws himself into the trenches with a live grenade and kills the enemy. We call that success). Even our old and unfit are awesome fighters compared to most aliens.
I’ll check that out. Thanks
but the implication that the dregs of society are a match for the aliens shows that we are anything but weak and defenceless – we’re just saying f*ck you, we don’t even need our best and brightest to rule this planet
As much as I like the idea of a game where humans are portrayed as what they are, I think this is a bit too depressing.
Seems interesting, though I don’t really like the artstyle. Oh well, got lots of space-y games backed on kickstarter now, it seems to be super popular with indie devs nowadays.
Reminiscent of a similar game called Maia