If enough people have it / are interested in it, it could be fun to run a succession game of some sort, although I'm not sure how it would best operate. It seems like the type of game which is popular on these boards. So yeah, if you haven't experienced the series before I encourage you to give it a look. And because all games deserve their own wiki, here's Nova's. I personally haven't tried NAEV yet (waiting for it to move out of beta testing), but you can find it here. The first two games in the series have been released free as TC plug-ins for Nova by the developer. Ambrosia still sells Escape Velocity Nova here, and there's a free demo-play option. My personal favourite game in the series is Override, due to its multiple large interlocking campaigns and massive galaxy, but all of them are pretty great. Since player deaths are very common, especially early on in a file when your ship has a life expectancy of about half-a-second in serious combat, it's a considerable (but definitely doable) challenge to beat any of the main campaigns using that mode. The game also has an optional "strict play" setting, where if you die your pilot file is deleted and you have to start all over again. The AI isn't brilliant, but some of the combat-oriented missions can be quite difficult. The series is famous for being extremely modable, with literally thousands of different user-made plug-ins, ranging from game-changing Total Conversion (TC) mods, to new individual ships, weapons, and planets added to the main game. If you're able to build up enough of a reputation for yourself in combat, you can even declare war on entire planets and dominate them to become a galactic overlord (which indeed is the inevitable conclusion of many a game =) ) The games are great about allowing the player incredible freedom to play as they want to, although the main Nova storylines do railroad the player a bit at various points. You could simply buy a fast ship with a lot of fuel and spend hours exploring the hundreds of different systems. 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: Has anyone here ever heard of / played it?
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