Basic Questions

Q: What is The Away Team?

A: The Away Team is a text-based "interactive fiction" game where you play an AI in charge of the last surviving humans to leave Earth. You will select crew, deploy them on missions, and make choices that will determine their fate.

Q: What is the story about?

A: The Away Team tries to strike a balance between classic sci-fi space adventures and a more realistic view of human space travel and interaction with artificial intelligences. It's meant to raise some interesting questions and explore some of what it means to be human, rather than being just another random roguelike "alien of the week" type experience. There are some laughs, some tears, and plenty of thoughtful moments along the way.

Q: How long is the game?

A: There are over 80,000 words of text to read across all available missions (about the length of a novel). Depending on your choices, how fast you read, and how far you get, a single playthrough from start to a "victory" ending will likely take several hours. There are four possible endings and 10 achievements to collect, plus you can write your own missions and add new characters, so how long it takes to fully complete the game is up in the air!

Q: Who made the game?

A: Underflow Studios is the studio behind the game. Click here to see the full list of credits.

Q: What do I need to play?

A: If you own a PC made in the current century running Windows, Mac or Linux, you should have no problem playing The Away Team. The full list of requirements can be found on our Steam page.

Q: Where can I buy it?

A: Visit our Steam page.

Q: Where can I talk about it?

A: Visit our subreddit, Steam Community Hub, Discord channel, or chat with us on Twitter.

Gameplay Questions

Q: How do I start?

A: Select New Game. Select a Difficulty level using the buttons on the right, then select a crew by double-clicking or dragging them from the left to the right. Once you have a crew, click Deploy. Then read carefully!

Q: How do I move around?

A: Using your mouse pointer, click anywhere on the sector map to move your ship to the new location. Moving towards an edge will let you spin up the FTL drive and move to another sector using the button at the top of the screen. Moving towards a green square will reveal hidden planets and stations to visit; moving your ship on top of one of these will let you deploy an away team. Keep an eye on your food and fuel meters as you move--if either one runs out you'll face some tough decisions.

Q: How do away teams work?

A: When you visit a planet or station for the first time, you'll have to select a crew to send down. Move crew members from left to right to select them until you have enough, then click Deploy. Read mission text carefully, and select the best options by clicking on the colored text. The crew you have with you plays a major role in your chances of success or failure, but luck and your difficulty setting also matter.

Q: How do I win the game?

A: By navigating through the available missions and making the right choices, your goal is to get some or all of your crew to one of two final homes, where they can rejoin their brethren and help humanity survive. While there are many possible fates for your crew, there are only four paths to victory.

Q: How can I report a bug?

A: Send an email to our team at support(at)awayteam.space

Modding Questions

Q: How does modding work?

A: Many aspects of the Away Team can be modified rather easily--including adding and changing graphics and sound--but the primary method of modification is adding new crew members or adding new missions.

Q: How do I add more characters?

A: Navigate to The Away Team assets directory and look for the subdirectory named "char". Inside here you'll find a series of json files, one per character. The simplest way to add a new character is to clone one of these files and change the picture, name, description, attributes and traits. Images available for use are in general/character_related/characters. More details to follow.

Q: How do I add more missions?

A: Navigate to The Away Team assets directory and look for the subdirectory named "missions". Inside here are two important subdirectories named "json" and "lua". The json files contain the mission information and control whether the mission appears on the map. The lua files contain the actual mission text and code. Check out the "demo.lua" file for sample code snippets that show the basic elements of a mission. More details to follow.

Expansion Questions

Q: Are there any plans for Steam Workshop integration?

A: We will be releasing workshop support for characters shortly and full mission workshop support may come later but unlikely.

Q: Are there any plans for Mac/Linux support?

A: We have released a Linux version of the game and a macOS version.

Q: Are there any plans for Localization?

A: Not at the present time.

Q: Are there any plans for a mobile port?

A: Not at the present time.