''Outpost'' is a

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...

developed and published by

Sierra On-Line Sierra Entertainment, Inc. (formerly On-Line Systems and Sierra On-Line, Inc.) was an American video game developer and publisher founded in 1979 by Ken and Roberta Williams. The company is known for pioneering the graphic adventure game genre, ...

in 1994. The game was noteworthy for having a

hard science fiction Hard science fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by concern for scientific accuracy and logic. The term was first used in print in 1957 by P. Schuyler Miller in a review of John W. Campbell's '' Islands of Space'' in the Novem ...

approach, with one of the main designers being a former

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

scientist. ''Outpost'' was released for

Windows 3.1 Windows 3.1 is a major release of Microsoft Windows. It was released to manufacturing on April 6, 1992, as a successor to Windows 3.0. Like its predecessors, the Windows 3.1 series ran as a shell on top of MS-DOS. Codenamed Janus, Windows 3 ...

and the

Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and ...

. It was followed by a loosely related sequel, '' Outpost 2: Divided Destiny''.

Story

A massive

asteroid An asteroid is a minor planet of the inner Solar System. Sizes and shapes of asteroids vary significantly, ranging from 1-meter rocks to a dwarf planet almost 1000 km in diameter; they are rocky, metallic or icy bodies with no atmosphere. ...

named Vulcan's Hammer is detected to be on a collision course with

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surfa ...

, and all attempts to divert it from this path have failed. The last attempt, firing a large nuclear warhead at the asteroid, actually ended up splitting it not into five chunks (which would have averted disaster) as humanity hoped, but rather two asteroids. Now, instead of destroying the earth, it will simply wipe out nearly all life on Earth's surface.

Extinction Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...

is not an option, and so a mission is organized to create a

colony In modern parlance, a colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule. Though dominated by the foreign colonizers, colonies remain separate from the administration of the original country of the colonizers, the ''metropole, metropolit ...

on a world elsewhere in the

galaxy A galaxy is a system of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar gas, dust, dark matter, bound together by gravity. The word is derived from the Greek ' (), literally 'milky', a reference to the Milky Way galaxy that contains the Solar System. ...

as the last hope for mankind's survival. The player is in charge of that mission.

Reception

Initial reviews of ''Outpost'' were enthusiastic about the game. The American version of

PC Gamer ''PC Gamer'' is a magazine and website founded in the United Kingdom in 1993 devoted to PC gaming and published monthly by Future plc. The magazine has several regional editions, with the UK and US editions becoming the best selling PC games ma ...

rated the game at 93%, one of its highest ratings ever for the time. It was later made known that the reviewers had in fact played beta versions of the game, and had been promised certain features would be implemented, but never were. Indeed, many of the features described in the game's own documentation simply did not exist in the game at all. These included the ability to enter diplomatic relations with the rebel colony and the ability to build roads, orbital colonies, or the mass driver. Many of these gameplay aspects were later patched in, though in appearance only, as many of them failed to have any meaningful effect on gameplay. Following the release of the game, the game's general bugginess and perceived mediocre gameplay, along with the lack of features described in most of the game's reviews and the game's own documentation led to a minor backlash against the computer game magazines of the time by consumers who bought the game based on their reviews. In 1996, ''Computer Gaming World'' declared ''Outpost'' the worst computer game ever released.

References

External links

Outpost Universe
- The Outpost Universe is a community for the Outpost series games by Sierra/Dynamix. *
IE PC game review - Outpost (1994)
Interactive Entertainment, hosted on

YouTube YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...

, uploaded: 11 April 2010, Retrieved: 1 April 2011. {{Authority control 1994 video games Windows games Classic Mac OS games Outpost Fiction about near-Earth asteroids Video games with isometric graphics City-building games Video games about impact events Sierra Entertainment games Single-player video games Video games developed in the United States

Story

Reception

See also

References

External links