When you first run Escape Velocity, the game appears to be a basic arcade style game in which you blast enemy ships. However it is much more than that, and combat doesn't even have to be the main focus of the game if the player chooses.
The game takes place in a future where the human occupied worlds had recently fought a desperate war against a merciless alien enemy. The Confederation which was formed as an alliance against the aliens, has become a dictatorship, resulting in a civil war. Currently the Confederates and the Rebellion are fighting each other, and often as you enter a system you find Confederate and Rebel ships engaged in combat.
You start out in a small shuttlecraft in orbit around the planet Levo. You can land on various planets and buy and sell cargoes, or pick up missions for various governments or corporations. Missions involve carrying cargo, transporting passengers, dumping garbage, rescues, fighting pirates, and many others. Once you manage to raise some money, you can buy new faster, stronger ships, and better weapons, shields, scanners, and many other extras for your ship. As you get stronger you can choose to fight for a cause, or remain neutral. You could be a bounty hunter, a trader, or even a pirate. You can capture other ships, or loot them for their cargoes, cash, and spare ammunition, although this will make you lots of enemies, so it's best to do this to your current enemies. Your actions eventually change the scope of the game, as you forge alliances and create enemies. Eventually, once you're considered a powerful ally by either the Confederates or the Rebellion, they let you buy their warships for your own use, if you wish. Once you get strong enough, you could even become a conqueror yourself, and begin to capture planets to create your own empire.
The game doesn't actually have an ending to it. It's up to the players themselves to set their own goals. Maybe you want to play as a trader, neutral and friendly with everyone. Perhaps you want to ally yourself with one of the two major governments or one of the minor ones, or a corporation, and fight for their cause and carry out missions for them. Or you could be a Bounty Hunter and hunt pirates for a living, my personal favorite. You could even be a pirate, and prey on everyone else. Each choice provides for a very different gaming experience. The game's universe is vast, and contains plenty of worlds and possible adventure situations.
Eventually, as with most games, you will have played it to the point where it's not new and exciting anymore. Well the makers of the game designed it to accept plugins that alter the gaming universe, and provide new worlds, missions, ships and technologies. Players can even write their own plugins if they choose, using a program called EV Edit. A knowledge of ResEdit (Apple's resource editor) really helps, but isn't essential. There are all kinds of plugins available for download from the Escape Velocity website, and some of the better ones have even made it to RedDAUG, and can be found in the New Files conference. One of the most innovative is the Star Wars 2 plugin, which replaces the entire Escape Velocity universe with the Star Wars universe from the movies.
Escape Velocity is shareware, and it costs just $20.00US to register the game. It requires a computer capable of 256 colors, and a 68040 Mac or Power Mac is recommended, although it will run on earlier Macs, a bit slower though.
Escape Velocity was voted best Mac shareware game of 1996.
Ambrosia Software is a great Mac-only software company that sells all their software through the shareware method. They have also brought us such classic games as Apeiron, Chiral, Bubble Trouble, Barrack, Swoop, and many others. Other great products from Ambrosia are Color Switch, a control panel that gives you a menu for changing color depth and volume, and Snapz Pro, a screen capture utility with a lot more features than Apple's version. There are many other fine products as well from Ambrosia.
