Do you like sci-fi? How about making tough decisions based on limited resources and risking the fate of the human race? How about a game that takes a few minutes to play but has a butt-load of endings?

It’s also free. You can play it in your browser right here.

Seedship is a text game made in Twyne, an engine used to make text games with branching paths. You can make your own game today.

The premise is classic sci-fi. The human race sends an AI-helmed ship full of cryo-frozen humans to choose a suitable planet and continue the species.

The game loop revolves around making tough decisions (do you sacrifice the cultural or tech database to survive?) and choosing whether to settle on a planet that is lacking in a key area, or push on for something better at the risk of losing all humans on board.

Once you’ve chosen a planet, the game ends with the story of how the humans move forward based on the decisions you made getting there. If you sacrificed the tech database earlier, they might live a much simpler life. But the consequences can also be unexpectedly dire in fascinating ways I won’t spoil.

Seedship succeeds at conveying the best part of sci-fi: Exploring how humans are affected by fantastical scenarios. It also succeeds as a fantastic captain simulator, forcing you to constantly sacrifice for the greater good. It’s not all negative survivalism either, as you’ll get a chance to make upgrades that increase your chances of finding a hospitable home.

The game is free, you can play it in a browser, and it only takes a few minutes to complete a game. If you have any interest whatsoever, I can’t recommend it any higher.

If you’d like to support the author, he has a Patreon (on a per-game model). He’s a published sci-fi author and this is his first Twyne game under the Patreon model.