If RPGs like Mass Effect or The Outer Worlds don't throw enough Butterfly Effect across the galaxy for you, then The Fermi Paradox is here to stir the pot. I mean, Fermi starts off with jelly boys making cave paintings of sand worms. And your role? You are the "Galactic Gardener." I mean, if that's not the most innocuous name for somebody that's going to decide the fate of entire species, I don't know what is.
Not going to lie, Fermi looks like a game that would run at full speed on my phone and doesn't require a Steam launch. But we've got a Steam Early Access launch, as of today.
Regardless, it's cool seeing history unfold in a way that looks familiar to humans—but executed by lizard folk, or bird/mollusk/platypus folk. Life isn't sci-fi to the jelly boys: it's just dinosaurs and starvation out there for them. Life isn't sci-fi to the lizard folk: they're just discovering the New World during their Age of Sail. And, well, the platypus people just made a mushroom cloud, so stuff's getting real for them, perhaps. But this game is more sci-fi for you than anybody else, Galactic Gardener. You get to make the call as to whether that atomic explosion leads to their complete extinction, left minimal survivors, or perhaps was only a "close call."
By the way, the Fermi paradox, as told to me by Wikipedia, is "the apparent contradiction between the lack of evidence for extraterrestrial civilizations and various high estimates for their probability." You kids that paid attention in astronomy class probably already knew that.
Again, The Fermi Paradox kicked off Early Access on Steam today, July 1.
