Heiress Software, the interactive fiction label for Wade Clarke, today announced the launch of the Kickstarter campaign for the sci-fi text adventure Andromeda Acolytes. The campaign aims to bring back the long form text adventure genre from the 1980s and early 1990s in the form of a big multi-chapter adult narrative and gaming experience.
Taking place in Marco Innocenti’s Andromeda universe, Andromeda Acolytes explores the self-contained story of four heroines on the planet Monarch. With no idea why or how humanity arrived on this world, four very different heroines find themselves pulled into each others lives after an accident awakens a mysterious power on the planet.
Andromeda Acolytes will show my version of what the four-decade evolution of the text adventure can look like today. A pretty basic part of which is that you don’t get killed every five seconds like in an old Zork. Andromeda Acolytes has four female PCs who are all really different to each other, and you play all four on this planet Monarch that’s got a weird relationship to Earth. The game starts with an underwater mech mission and the finding of something strange in the harbour. I pitch the whole thing as a prose gaming experience offering all the inner-world power of a novel plus the fine-grained puzzle and world engagement of gaming.
Wade Clarke, Heiress Software
Spanning multiple chapters, players will navigate the story using each of the four heroines. Only by typing commands in this text adventure will players be able to interact with the world. Players will need to read what happens and decide the next course of action. The only graphics in game are in the auto map.
There are many activities and experiences spread throughout the story. One may find themselves traveling in underwater mechs, visiting abandoned cities, dealing with crime, making friends, solving puzzles, or finding themselves at an art exhibition. The entirety of the gaming experience comes from prose, offering both a novel-like experience and world engagement found in gaming.
The Kickstarter campaign for Andromeda Acolytes is now live. Pledges start at AU$10 or roughly $7 in US currency. Backer items range from name in the credits all the way up to limited edition framed prints based on the art of the in-game Halica Attanasova, an artist and most chaotic of the four playable characters. Other pledge items include a USB flash drive with engraved artwork, an art of Andromeda digital booklet, signed game poster, and the game itself. The campaign runs until 7:01 AM PDT, August 24, 2022. Currently AU$958 of the AU$14,000 or about $664 of the $9,706 in US currency goal has been achieved.
Andromeda Acolytes is planned for a 2025 release on Windows, Mac, and Linux for PC. The Andromeda Acolytes Steam is available for players to wishlist and follow.
Heiress Software is an interactive fiction label created by Wade Clarke. The label’s first release was the 2015 horror title Leadlight Gamma. Currently the label is focused on the development of Andromeda Acolytes.
Wade Clarke (@aeriae Twitter) is a Sydney, Australia-based game author, visual artist, writer and musician. Clarke, whose musician moniker is Aeriae originally started making computer games as a young child on his then new Apple II+ computer. Since then Clarke has continued to create and help develop games.
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