Millenia: Altered Destinies

[Jasede]

I'd like to know if anyone of you knows this game or has played it. It's very, very rare. I can't even find a scan of its manual on the Internet anymore.

I came to this game about ten years ago or so, but never managed to finish it; now I found an .iso on an Abandonware site but even there they don't have the manual. There's no walkthrough to it, there's no fansite, there's no mention of this game anywhere on the internet.

Maybe someone here knows it?

I find it odd this game is so little-known.


Here's what it is about:

In Millenia: Altered Destinies you are a human who has a time-travelling and space-travelling craft, the XTM. You have also four seeds for four species. Your XTM is broken and you can't flee the galaxy. The goal: seed the species on suitable planets, travel in time to help them develop until a point where they can fix the broken parts of your XTM.

This is done by advancing time, manipulating time, solving various problems in the future of a species. You can also give them inventions before their time to speed their growth, or you can take them from them. Say a species invents an awful drug that makes them, in the next 500 years, become useless sloths. You just travel to the time where they invent it, take it away, and alter the course of history. Problems are usually solved by talking. Some problems have no solutions. Others make the future worse when solved. You must always consider the nature of the species you are dealing with - some respond better to militant actions, others to logic, others to contemplationg and the fourth to sympathy and empathy.

Once all species have reached an IQ of 300 they can repair the broken parts of your ship and you see one of the two endings of the game. This is easier said then done - the species will fight each other, and there's also the evil Hoods, Microids and the evil-timeline version of yourself that try to interfere.

I never won this game.

Maybe a few of you know it or have any tips?

Fighting bogeys.

Checking the timeline.

Comm-link.

 

[Destroid]

Never heard of it, sounds interesting, but your images are broken.

 

[Shoelip]

Just reload the page. They looked broken the first time for me too.

 

[Zyrxil]

They're not broken, it's just some kind of anti-hotlinking thing. Copy image location and view them directly.

 

[Trash]

Played it quite extensively back then. Very interesting premises, allthough the game wasn't that good (in my memory that it) I remember it being almost impossible to get through though and I played everything for a very long time in those days.

Anyway, what's the abandonware site? I'm kinda curious to see how well I remembered it.

 

[Jasede]

I misremembered. I got it from Megaupload; it's not Abandonware yet.

I wouldn't exactly call it a good game - but what an interesting premise! Never been done again as far as I know. And the game is difficult. I'm wrestling to find a walkthrough. I know that not all problems are supposed to be solvable; some just want you to manipulate the timeline at random so it doesn't happen, all butterfly-effect like.

Right now, I can't figure out how to get the to repair the devices on my ship. I know a species needs to reach IQ 300, then you transfer the schematics to their temple. What then? I did it with the Slothoids, where do I get the finished device?

I don't remember having this problem ten years ago, but even there, I never got more than one repaired device.

 

[*frumple*]

I love this game. Ine of the tips I can offer is that removing an invention from the timeline, then returning it to the timeline a fe hindred years earlier gives you more time to get hte species ready to fight the croid and it sometimes prevents certain crisis from taking place.