Descriptions:
Archipelagos is a real-time puzzle and strategy game with an unconventional premise and equally unconventional gameplay.
In the future, man carelessly poisons the earth with nuclear waste. The polar ice caps have melted, turning the surface of the earth into many islands of decaying land masses, known as Archipelagos. Man then built systems to try to clean up the pollution, but these failed. The only life left were genetically-altered plants made in an effort to clean up the waste -- these also turned hostile. It is up to you to clean up the earth, island by island.
Controlling a hoversphere, it is up to you to make Earth's many islands of land habitable. To do this, you need to knock out the radiation generators on each island, which can be done by knocking out each generator's power sources (there are several per island). Once these are knocked out, you have 90 seconds to get back to the generator and disable it before it melts down, taking you with it.
Obstacles, unfortunately for you, are plentiful: You can't knock out a power source unless it is connected by a "land bridge" to the generator. You have the ability to create land where needed, but this takes up energy, and you have a limited supply. Also a hindrance are the many genetically-altered entities left behind on the islands: Viral trees that poison the ground; necromancers (former hoverspheres) that now erode land instead of creating it; eco eggs that explode on touch; and aircleaners, who are ruthlessly efficient in cleaning up the air -- and everything else, including you.
The entire game plays from a 3D first-person viewpoint. A movable cursor selects where to move or what to manipulate.
There are 10,000 islands on Earth to purify. If you can make it past Archipelago #100, you are then free to select any of them.
Contributed by
Trixter 
(8865) on Mar 27, 2002. [
revised by :
Indra was here... (13177)].
The original release of Archipelagos in Europe had a very different premise from the USA release, although the gameplay (see primary description) is the same. The European release premise follows; see if you can spot the story differences:
In Archipelagos you are floating just a metre above the ground, as if disembodied, amongst a group of islands known as an Archipelago. Scattered around the Archipelago are stones, and somewhere there is one special stone - the Obelisk. Embodied in the Obelisk, is the power that cleansed the Archipelago of humans in Ancient Times. And the blood of the ancient peoples still comes to stain the land surface. To remove the power you must destroy the Obelisk. The Obelisk receives its power from the stones of the Archipelago, so each of the stones needs to be destroyed in turn by being drained of it's energy. Before you can absorb the energy from a stone however, you must first join it by a continuous land path (not necessarily a straight one!) to the Obelisk sometimes you will even have to build vast land bridges from island to island and only then can you absorb the energy of a stone. Once the energy from all of the stones has been successfully absorbed, the Obelisk will become vulnerable for ninety seconds. During this time, you must return to the Obelisk and absorb it's energy. Failing to do this in time will result in the Obelisk destroying you.
...
The necromancer first appears on Archipelago Thirteen. A ghost of the twisted and mutilated bodies of the Ancients, the Necromancer rises from the ground and wanders along the shores of islands, taking with him the land of the Ancients piece by piece. Beware that a Necromancer does not claim a piece of land near you for then the land that you rest upon will turn to sand and you will sink and join the mutated Necromancer.
The Eggs of Blood first appear on Archipelago twenty. When an egg is ready to hatch, the sky will grow darker and with a mighty clap of thunder and lightning an Egg will hatch. Eggs can spawn one of two monstrosities. From the first kind of egg will pour forth the poisoned blood of the Ancients, spreading like fire until it has covered the whole of an island. The other kind of egg will eat away at the island itself, spreading outwards until it has consumed the whole of an island.
The Lost Souls first appear on Archipelago twenty-five. The Lost Souls of the Ancients manifest themselves in the form of a whirlwind and roam the archipelago in search of nourishment your soul! Any kind of contact with one will result in your soul being pulled into the Lost Soul for all eternity.
Contributed by
Trixter (8865) on Mar 27, 2002.
