You could follow one (or several) of the many faction mission strings, some of which form entire campaigns spanning dozens of individual missions and eventually changing the nature of the galaxy itself (and unlocking a lot of goodies along the way). You can turn to piracy, stealing credits, cargo, and even the ships from other captains. You can mine asteroids for precious materials. You can buy commodities at one planet to sell at others, as an interstellar broker. The possibilities for what you can do with your pilot are myriad. You start off with a shuttlecraft, typically the weakest ship in the game, a handful of credits, and an enormous galaxy to explore. The games are incredibly open-ended, and are some of the earliest examples of the "wide-open sandbox" gameplay structure. Almost all will contain a number of AI ships belonging to various factions, usually randomly spawned upon entering the system, as well as at least one planet / port where the player can land, pick up missions, buy outfits to upgrade their ship, buy a brand new ship, or do numerous other activities.Ī picture of part of the original Escape Velocity's map: The game universes consist of a number of linked star systems which players hyperjump between and explore. The combat is similar to that in Star Control II, although it plays much more smoothly in EV. As the excellent TvTropes page for the series notes, the game "Looks like Asteroids, plays like Elite". It's hard to summarize the games easily in one post, but they are essentially top-down space shooters with a number of rpg and rougelike elements. There's also a free fan-made clone currently in beta testing called NAEV. The Escape Velocity series was created by Ambrosia Software originally for the Mac (but has been since ported to PC), and consists of three games, the original Escape Velocity (1996), Escape Velocity Override (1998), and Escape Velocity Nova (2002). If you haven't, here's a (brief) introduction: Bonus shout out to this poster who recovered Frozen Heart.Has anyone here ever heard of / played it? Much of the leg work done by: This reddit poster. Star Fleet Adventures Standalone ColosseumĪ combat focused TC pretty well documented at the evn wikiĪ focused TC that goes for depth over breadth.Ī TC that doubles down on the "fighting a race of aliens" trope, and makes good use of Meowx's graphics.Ī consolidation of some of the 'Empire' series of Plugins for Classic.īrotherhood of the Kestrel The Frozen HeartĪ well regarded plugin for Override which includes a novel on which it is based. Star Fleet Adventures is a Star Trek TOS-themed TC. Realm of Prey Standalone Starfleet Adventures Makes good use of Grand Novice and (I think?) Canarveron Sation graphics. Originally a TC for Classic, ported to Nova. One of the more celebrated big plugins for Nova, ARPIA II has graphics from members of the original ATMOS team, and ended up with a spinoff novel. Perhaps the most successful TC effort, Polycon is a rich, detailed, and alien universe presented as a Nova plugin. In addition to the official games, I've taken the liberty of packaging up a few of the biggest fan-made mods which weren't picked up for official distributions. Six storylines (though with a few shared elements between them) and many new additions to the engine such as inertialess ships. Peter Cartwright's larger sequel (which, like Nova, started as a TC mod) featuring numerous factions.Ī classic in its own right, EVN is the gold standard for EV games with tons of glowing prose and graphics that still hold up. Partially inspired by (believe it or not) the manual to Elite. Launched the series and a vibrant online community. The registration server is long gone, so these downloads include a cracked Nova binary. Older games (EV and EVO) can be played on emulators or on Nova's engine (which you can run under WINE). Top down Asteroids style action with spaceship customization. An awesome space RPG series from the 90s and early 00s.
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