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Alien Legacy

Review
Also known as
Alien Legacy: Decide the Fate of Humanity

This 1994 space strategy sim challenges you to colonize a hostile star system using global management, colony building, and planetary exploration.

Alien Legacy was developed by Ybarra Productions and published by Sierra On-Line for DOS in 1994; this is the original platform and earliest commercial release.


							Alien Legacy cover
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Platform
MS-DOS
Released
1994
Size
9.75 MB
Version
al.exe
Rating
0 votes

About Alien Legacy

Alien Legacy is a real time strategy and colony management simulation set in a future where humanity has dispatched massive seedships to preserve the species. The player commands the UNS Calypso, arriving at the Beta Caeli system after a predecessor ship that has mysteriously vanished. The core challenge involves establishing a foothold with limited initial assets: several thousand colonists, historical transmissions, and a small advisory staff.

Gameplay integrates three primary modes that feed into one another. Planetary exploration is a prerequisite for settlement, conducted by scanning sectors in a three dimensional view to locate resources, clues, or biological samples. These discoveries yield the research points and raw materials necessary for technological advancement and colony construction. Research unlocks improvements across various scientific fields, directly affecting industrial output and spacecraft capabilities.

Resource management is continuous, with colonies requiring a balanced population of humans and robots alongside material inputs to function. From a top down perspective, players build and maintain structures to produce ships and gather ore and energy, the two fundamental resources. The passage of time is constant, measured in rounds, though its speed can be adjusted. The initial phase of development eventually gives way to a challenging military conflict against an unidentified enemy.

Alien Legacy Screenshots

10 images
Title screen (Floppy Disk version)
Introduction (Floppy Disk version)
The CD-ROM version has a CGI intro.
Introduction (CD-ROM version)
Title from Introduction (CD-ROM version)
The Bridge of the UNS Calypso
Options screen
The UNS Tantalus
Get advice from your officers
Manage your colonies