version The game, taking place in the future, on a new
planet, is
open-ended where the player character is a planetary governor who evacuated his
colony after it was hit by a biological weapon by an alien race. Instead of being reprimanded or fired, the governor is lauded for his care of colonists' lives over material gain, and promoted to a series of pioneer worlds to colonize. The objective of the game is to
colonize the new planet, manage the colony and raise the quality of life for the citizen in order to reach
utopia. Initially the player has a few colonists with a lot to do. The player must build everything from scratch. Building takes time and free colonists, in addition to money. Buildings under construction are depicted by
scaffold. Certain buildings require personnel (hospitals, labs, mines, factories, shipyards ...) and therefore the player has to engage in population management. The player must also
micromanage features such as
tax rate,
birth rate and
trade. In addition, each world also has a competing alien race which is trying to colonize the same planet. There is no option to form
alliances, which means that the player's population must come into conflict with the aliens. The player never actually gets to see the alien city, as it is located outside the playable map, but must instead rely on espionage to find out what the aliens and their city look like. It is possible to completely eradicate the alien race, after which the game loses its combat aspect and becomes a pure management simulation.
Scenarios Utopia includes ten scenarios, all with a different planet and a different alien race. The scenarios are named according to the alien races in the Amiga version and according to the planets in the SNES port: • Eldorians (Rhendor IV) • Vroarscans (Alpha Ceti) • Soomanii (Vega III) • Kal-Kriken (Astoria II) • Catalytes (Benezar IV) • Squiz-Quijy (Antares III) • Pascalenes (Rukbat III) • Tilikanthua (Betazan II) • Vanacancia (Merak VI) • Lucratians (Gamma Lucra) A
data disk called
Utopia: The New Worlds was later released by Gremlin. This disk required the original
Utopia and could not be played as a stand-alone game. It included the following scenarios: • Foralbo • Parillatians • Chevanno • Old-Worlders • Sarturians • Sal-Kadeem • Rako-Gorda • Key-Guardians • Darjakr'Ul • Temarkians The "Old-Worlders" were said to be humans, coming from Earth's earlier attempt to colonize the same planet. In practice, they were handled just as another hostile alien race. The terrain of the Sal-Kadeem planet was unique in that it was mostly covered with silver-colored oil that was impossible to build on. Buildings were restricted to tiny patches of habitable land. ==Development==