You are the leader of a space colony threatened by imminent invasion. Can you find a path to survival for your people – as well as yourself? Manage your planet, expand your space fleet, make diplomatic breakthroughs – and do whatever it takes to survive an interstellar invasion by the vastly stronger Sol Empire!
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Dawn of the Sol Empire is a thrilling 35,000-word interactive science fiction novel by Teemu Salminen, where your choices control the story. It’s entirely text-based—without graphics or sound effects—and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.
Choose your gender (male, female or other).Guide a remote space colony to safety – or ruin – in truly dangerous circumstances.
Challenge or appease the mighty mighty Sol Empire.
Control or unleash the advanced AI running your colony.
Navigate the politics, diplomacy, internal affairs, military expansion, industry, economy and scientific research of your colony.
Engage in fast-paced space combat when needed.
Interact with ruthless AIs and cunning politicians, all with their own goals.
Experience around a dozen unique endings – most with a unique branching path leading up to the ending itself!
Show the universe your resourcefulness and unwavering resolve to survive!
Unless I’m seriously misunderstanding something, it seems like there is exactly one possible way to win. So while yes, you can do all of these things, you cannot do most of these things and also be successful. Seems to be mostly a “choose your own bad ending” game, except there’s one good ending mixed in.
@geldar It’s a matter of perspective, I guess. None of the endings are exactly perfect outcomes for the colony. One of the “worst” endings might actually be the best result in the long term (if you look at it from a very specific point of view). The “best” (true?) ending doesn’t even solve the main threat in the game. One of the not-so-good endings is the best ending for the main character personally. Etc. On the other hand, you’re right that some of the endings are just plain bad for everyone in the colony, especially if your military stat is too low.
@TheMogician@AletheiaKnights I’m not exactly sure what the requirements for a Steam release are, but my guess would be that the game would have to be at least 100+k words long / 20+k single playthrough length or something along those lines. If I remember correctly, Steam players are usually especially strict about having longer games.
@geldar Actually, how did you even reach the Discarded ending by the way? I only now noticed that there was a massive bug in the final release version of the game. Currently I don’t think there’s any way to reach the “surrender” branch of the endings, and Discarded is one of those endings… This should be fixed pretty soon though. I think it got messed up when I set up the achievements at the very end and accidentally erased one crucial extra line at that point.
In any case, the threat of the Sol Empire never truly gets solved in any of the endings. The best you could do is basically forced exile (from the perspective of OIS, but not for the colonists) / surrender on good terms (probably the best situation for the colony government) / a temporary defensive victory (the most hopeful situation for the colonists, although still with an uncertain future). I’d say those three are the endings that can be considered “good” in some way. The rest basically include the colony being crushed without any redeeming factors, except perhaps delaying the Sol Empire’s advance or securing the lives of the colonists for a while.
I played a little bit of it, and I’m not really sure why the Empire wants to sterilize everyone. Like, why not just force them to genetically modify their offspring? That’s how the Sol humans came to be, right?
Mainly it’s their own ideology/ego/propaganda, like they’re the chosen people meant to take over the galaxy. Other variants of humanity are just disgusting/unnecessary to them. Like it would be better to simply get rid of the colonies rather than to modify them. However, in one ending (if you surrender on especially good terms) some of the colonists may end up being modified.
Not sure but it might well be the case!
It’s more like a short story than a novel in a way.