Escape Velocity
Escape Velocity is a Macintosh space game in which you start with a shuttle and a few credits and are then left alone with an entire galaxy. You can haul cargo between systems, take missions from spaceport bars, hunt pirates, become one, or join a side in a war and help decide how it ends. There are three games in the series, all published as shareware by Ambrosia Software, and two of them run on this page with nothing to install.
Which one to play
Escape Velocity (1996) is the original, written by Matt Burch. The galaxy is smaller and the story is a civil war between the Confederation and the Rebellion. It is the gentlest place to learn how the game works, and it is quick to get into: New Pilot, name yourself and your ship, and you are on the ground with 10,000 credits.
EV Override (1998) is the one most people mean when they say they played Escape Velocity. Burch, Chris West and Peter Cartwright built it on an improved engine, with a universe Ambrosia's own FAQ put at five times the size of the first and more than 250 missions. If you have time for only one, play this.
EV Nova (2002) is the third and largest, and the one with the most devoted following today. It is not playable here yet; the section below explains why.
How to get started in either game
Choose New Pilot from the main menu. Override first shows Ambrosia's shareware notice: wait for the Not Yet button to become clickable, then click it. You will be offered Strict Play: with it on, a dead pilot stays dead, so be quick with the escape pod. Leave it off on your first run.
On the ground, the spaceport is where everything happens: the trade centre for cargo, the bar for missions, the outfitter for weapons and the shipyard for a better hull. In space, press L to ask for clearance and L again to land. To jump to another system, open the map, choose a neighbouring system, and fly far enough from the planet before you engage the hyperdrive. The game tells you when you are too close, going too fast, or out of fuel.
Your pilot is saved when you land, and those saves live in your own browser, so you can close the tab and continue later on the same device.
Why the series still has a following
Every Escape Velocity game keeps its ships, planets, missions and governments in data files, and Ambrosia shipped the tools and documentation for changing them. Players took that invitation seriously. Plug-ins added ships and weapons, then entire new storylines, then complete replacement universes, and trading them became the centre of a community that outlived the company.
The design has also aged well. Trading, missions and combat all feed each other, the galaxy changes as you take sides, and nothing forces you to follow the story at all. It is the same open structure that later space games built on, and it still plays well today.
What about EV Nova?
EV Nova came out in 2002, with its engine by Matt Burch and its scenario by a team called ATMOS. It has several major storylines, each tied to a different faction. It is a Carbon application, built for late Mac OS 9 and early Mac OS X rather than the older Mac OS this site runs Escape Velocity on.
We tried it. The 1.0.8 release from Ambrosia's 2002 CD starts on the emulated Mac OS 8.6 machine used here, with CarbonLib installed, and then hangs before its first screen. It hangs with or without the intro movies, and at thousands or millions of colours. Getting it running needs a newer Mac OS than this site currently offers, and until that exists, it would be dishonest to put a Play button on it.
There is also the question of its licence. Ambrosia's terms for Escape Velocity and Override say, in writing, that non-profit redistribution is allowed if nothing is modified and the whole package travels together, and this site hosts them under those terms. The Nova documentation says only that it is distributed as shareware. Until that is clearer, Nova is not hosted here, and this page is its guide. Owners today usually run it in SheepShaver with Mac OS 9 on their own computer.
Meanwhile, Override is the closest thing to it that runs in a browser tab, and it is right here.
