Terminus (2000 video game)
| Terminus | |
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North American box art
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| Developer(s) | Vicarious Visions Inc. |
| Publisher(s) | Vatical Entertainment LLC |
| Designer(s) | Terminus Team |
| Composer(s) | Todd Masten |
| Platform(s) | Microsoft Windows Macintosh Linux |
| Release | June 29, 2000 |
| Genre(s) | Role-playing, space flight simulator |
| Mode(s) | Single-player, multiplayer |
Terminus is a space-flight role-playing action video game by Vicarious Visions. It was released in 2000 for Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Apple Macintosh. Terminus won awards in the 1999 Independent Games Festival for "Technical Excellence" and "Innovation in Audio".
In Story mode, the player chooses one of four careers (United Earth League military, Mars Consortium militia, Marauder Pirate Clan, mercenary) and follows Terminus's single-player storyline, set in the year 2197. In 2000, Terminus was unusual among RPGs in that the player's actions can affect the ending of the storyline. Failing a mission, for example, may lead to a different ending than would have occurred if the mission had succeeded. One unique feature of Terminus is the story would progress with or without the player. The player could begin the game in story mode, then go off and do something else and the story missions/battles would still take place, reaching an outcome depending on which side eventually wins.
In Free mode, the player chooses a career and does the same as in Story mode, except there will be no storyline missions. In Gauntlet mode, the player outfits a ship with near-infinite money at their disposal, and faces several waves of attackers, with the object of staying alive for as long as possible.
Terminus was our passion project. It was huge and complex. We really didn’t know how to make a game of that size. It was incredibly innovative and took four years to make. In 1999, we entered the first Independent Games Festival at GDC. Terminus won two awards – Best Programming and Best Audio. It "put us on the map" and gave us visibility amongst the big game publishers. But getting anyone to publish such a risky & ambitious title proved to be very difficult. We had to get some other paying gigs to keep Terminus alive and get it published!
Polygon explained that Vicarious Visions' first major game "following the publishing debacle during college" , was the space combat RPG Terminus. President Karthik Bala said "We ended up getting a personal bank loan for a million dollars. We knew if we didn't figure this out and make it work, we'd be screwed for the rest of our lives." The duo of developers had been left with a mountain of debt from development costs on Synnergist due to the publishers not giving them royalties for the game, and began work on this project on 1996.
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