The concept of the game is utterly fantastic. For that alone, it's worth a shot. I certainly hope the development continues and the game gets better and better. Unfortunately, in the state that it is currently, I can't recommend it.

The majority of the game is waiting around and clicking "flares." It's similar to clicking DNA points in Plague Inc. Unlike Plague Inc. though, you have to wait for an event to spend your synthesis points. The events are random and directly affect the stats of your civilization. However, you are just watching bars go up or down. There is no feeling that what you are doing directly impacts the civilization, barring the race's total extinction. The events themselves require you to spend synthesis points to get more positive outcomes, while you get synthesis points for opting for the more negative outcome. As I said though, you are just watching bars go up and down. My biggest problem with current iteration of the game is just the sheer amount of waiting around. It's like playing whack-a-mole while waiting for something more interesting to happen.

My recommendation: Wait for further development to refine the idea of the game. I truly do believe that the concept is fantastic. The art and music is quite good as well. The foundation is there. It's just really rough around the edges.

One of those "I wish there was a neutral option".

The concept is simple - different species evolve on different worlds and each has a number of metrics; their technology level, their population, their resource consumption (a countdown to scarcity) potential casualties in conflict, and their ethics level fluctuating between dystopia and utopia.

The central conceit is you gradually accumulate flares - these either increase/decrease one of the above metrics or they are stored as a resource you can then spend to force a positive outcome during one of the games many events (you can also pick a neutral/negative outcome and get more points).

The goal is to guide the different races through the technology eras, establish first contact and generally prevent them from destroying themselves. There are an absolute boat load of events and different species can adapt along different civilisation lines which is cool.

However... there are two problems as I see it

1) The biggest is that you don't really do anything. There are no proactive activities you can do other than select flares and occasionally spend points during events. Between these events you don't do anything except wait - there is no other level to the meta game. Some of these flares don't even appear to do much - flares to increase resources for instance barely register.

2) The other big problem is that civilisation development is not diverse - generally speaking, unless the civilisation that is developing is pacifist and leans toward utopia then that civilisation is effectively doomed. Resource scarcity will obliterate anyone that does not meet that criteria. This is fine from a thematic stand point, but from a game play standpoint it forces the player down one route with every civilisation they are watching over - anything that leans towards an aggressive/dystopian society you may as well just 'farm' points from through negative events so that that you can pick the peaceful/wise options for another civilisation to thrive. There does not appear to be a middle ground either.

There are other minor issues - text errors, long load times etc. but those kinks can be ironed out. I hope the developers will visit some of the above and try and give the players more tools and more options on how to play.

Reviewed 26.8.2021 for Early Access 0.61.B.01.

PROS:

BEGINNING INTRO: I liked the calmly wondering narration of the lady.
GRAPHICS: Stylish, ok.
PREMISE: "How do species develop together through the vastness of space ?" I found the premise very interesting.
FOLLOW-UPS ON EVENTS: Some of the events led to the race changing their name and were mentioned later on in events and small story-bit dialogues.

CONS:

GAMEPLAY:
You guide species through time. You do this by collecting points one at a time. The points are used to buy good events and negate bad events, which in turn are raffled to you by the RNG. The closest comparison that comes to mind is Bio Inc. Redemption, which is a much faster and more streamlined game. The game seems to take into account how well your race is doing with higher costs when you do well. This essentially evens out issues and makes your choices less meaningful.

Each race has five sliders: science, population, resources, aggression and ethics. Point-collections can cause a very minor bonus/malus to one of the sliders. During the 5+ hours I've played now, the biggest thing that really seemed to matter was keeping population growth in check so that resources don't run out. Science advanced in any case. Only one time did runaway aggression lead to extinction. I'm not sure if ethics influenced what kind of events your races get. However, each of these still has the good/neutral/bad choice.

The gameplay is extremely grindy. Negating negative events can cost up to 60 points. This means collecting a point, waiting, collecting a point, waiting, you get the idea.

CONSTANT SLOW ANIMATIONS:
Between each point collection there's a couple of seconds of waiting. It doesn't sound much, but after being subjected to this constantly for several hours, I found it extremely frustrating.

RACES MEAN NOTHING:
Many kinds of races can develop sentience. Dolphins, plants living in rock, dinosaurs, so on. However, this isn't communicated in the game events at all. All the story events presuppose you're overseeing a land-living species, which led into dropping suspension of disbelief each time with the aquatic races. Overseeing plants was just the same as overseeing animals. All the races go through exactly the same cultural phases, such as bronze age, iron age, nuclear age, etc.

REPETITIVE STORY BITS:
Each time you collect a point, you get a small sentence of text such as "Warriors of race X lay down they clubs". These start to repeat very fast and are exactly the same for all races. Stellar events, such as asteroid collisions, planets drifting out of orbit, so on, happen to unpopulated star systems and seem to mean absolutely nothing.

SAVE SYSTEM: Several slots for different games. Each game is on forced ironman mode.
LACKING SFX: The menu has bips. In the game there was a sort of woosh-tingle, each time you zoom in/out and collect a point.
MUSIC: Ear-grating chaotic ambient. I didn't even know ambient can be ear-grating. Turned it off very soon. One of the worst I've heard in any game.
NO META PROGRESSION: Each game is essentially the same. Unlike with Bio Inc. Redemption, you can't develop any skills or abilities between games.

VERDICT:

All in all, the cons clearly outweigh the pros. This needs a lot of work. Despite the low, discounted cost of around 15 euros, I regret buying it.

The "climax" of the game is a dice roll on whether or not you're successful. And it takes HOURS to get to that point.

making "correct" choices is very expensive, and making "incorrect" choices doesn't seem to be that big of a downside.

The Fermi Paradox in concept is a fantastic game and one I would enjoy the hell out of, in execution its a game about torturing humanity so that you can make your space plants happy with the space god currency derived from the suffering of alien races.
The game CONSTANTLY rips everything away from you, I get attached to the silly aliens and then the game says: "I know these aliens have a 100% utopian society, show empathy to all life they encounter and even to their toasters, but the robots they made are actually evil and want to wipe out the galaxy and all of it's inhabitants, you cannot prevent this, ♥♥♥♥ you."
Despite this game being a sandbox game, it does not have a sandbox mode where I can do whatever I want with each alien race. Despite the developers saying that they are going to make a sandbox mode at least 3 years ago, they still have not done that; I'm not a programmer and cannot possibly know how hard it is to code something like that, but I think that giving the player infinite currency when sandbox mode is enabled could not possibly be 3 years of development time difficult.
The game does have a great concept, and when RNG is in your favor, and you aren't juggling 5 societies of aliens it is quite fun, however one bad streak and every species you got attached to is dead, and you're stuck with a decision on which gruesome way they should be obliterated. Instead of guiding and molding alien species into a galaxy you'd love to watch a movie about, you'll almost always end up with a galaxy of mistakes, barren worlds, and evil robots.
Until this game has lower difficulty settings or just straight up free-play, my review sadly has to stay negative.

I like the idea of cultivating and leading different civilisations as they grow and develop.
However, the choices you make are extremely vague (Press a button and raise or lower this unexplained part of the society, to effect it's growth and development.)
It feels less guided and more like you're playing darts with a civilisation. In the end your involvement is more as a bystander who's at best feel arbitrarily and at worst 'oh noez' guess you did a genocide~
Something I'll keep a eye on, but for now it's just a visual novel with extra steps.

So I liked this game till the recent update. They claim that they made things more simplified... I guess? It has ruined all reason to have different stats for the civilizations. It has now just become a random number generator that you sit back and click whether something good happens to some race or something bad does. There is no real feeling in the game any more and no real investment in outcomes as it is now all random. I get the need to streamline dont get me wrong, the UI update for it was a great choice. But coupling that with removing one of the things that made it fun was the worst decision that ruined the game for me. Before when I wanted to choose a good or bad I could choose what good or bad I wanted and avoid the "good" ones I thought were not what I wanted to happen yet or offset some of the good things that came in a group with some bad ones to balance things and get the story I was trying for or fail due to my choices. I mean there was still the option to take the random choices before and that was fun for some times when skipping along waiting for what I wanted but now all choices and freedom are boiled down to lifeless dull things that is reminiscent of games that just play themselves like Progress quest. So if you want an afk click game this is for you but any of the fun that was promised before is now gone. If you are looking for a game where you can actually control the fate of species as it is/was described don't bother purchasing this game it is a waste of time if they dont fix it.

I was very excited for this game because I love the concept and I have been, unfortunately, let down. I understand that this game is in Early Access and is thus unfinished but my problems with it don't stem from a lack of content or bugs, but from the inherent flaws in game design.

Fermi Paradox is a game about how easy it is for a civilization to collapse before ever meeting another alien civilization and seeks to answer the question about why we seem to be alone. The goal is for you to guide your different species to the final tech level where everyone is united in a big galactic singularity. While the concept is cool, the execution is exceptionally flawed to the point where I feel that the game needs a total overhaul.

1. The Resource Economy
Synthesis points and science are the only things that matter 99% of the time. Occasionally you will want resources or population in specific situations, which will become immediately obvious when they occur. The reason you want Synthesis points is because you will need as many as you can stockpiled to prevent your civilizations from going abruptly extinct. Science is how you beat the game so you want to grab those as well to increase research speed. In my play through I quickly realized that it is almost always best for the civilization to pick the neutral "costs nothing" option. This usually either gives you a small amount of resources or takes away a small amount. You want to do this because you need lots and lots of Synthesis points saved up for extinction events. This severely limits how interesting your choices can be because the choices are designed to be gamed.

2. Choices
Or, the lack of. At first glance this game seems like a really cool Visual Novel style game with different choices and branching paths. Things DO play out differently but only superficially. Your different species may change from game to game or the random events may change but it's overall meaningless. You don't actually make any real or compelling choices with far reaching consequences. Your choices only really effect the resource economy which effects the type of random events that can occur, but that's it. This leads to you gaming the choices and only choosing the ones that make the most sense in terms of resource economy. That's not compelling because the choices are never difficult. There is never really a reason to spend Synthesis Points on anything except for preventing extinction events. No, not even when two of your civs meet for the first time! When this occurs and you have the resources nothing really happens. You get a quick text box and more resources and then nothing changes! The whole point of the game is supposed to be about the Fermi Paradox but then when you get two different life forms to actually meet the game just glosses over it! It should be the most important moment in the game! None of the choices you make upon first contact even matter. The alien homeworld doesn't know if their envoys were destroyed or not so there is literally no reason not to blow them up for the free Synthesis Points. Which brings me to my third and final strike.

3. Extreme Bias
All of the choices you are given are also laced with a heavy amount of political bias. Now, I do not care about where you're at on the political spectrum and this is not about the specific politics of/around this game. What I do care about it is when you take a game that is supposed to be about interesting and hard choices and clearly make all negative outcomes represent one side of the political spectrum and make all positive outcomes represent the other. What it comes across as is a masturbatory political fantasy that says absolutely nothing important or of note. The bias comes through in how the choices and resource economy meld together. What the developer considers "good" and "right" decisions typically cost Synthesis Points but give large amounts of other resources, while the "bad" and "wrong" decisions typically give you Synthesis Points but cost you resources or cause the extinction of your species. For a game that is supposed to be about choice and making difficult decisions for the survival of a species the ham-fisted black/white political messaging is entirely inappropriate. There is no nuance in anything in Fermi Paradox and it is a game/concept that requires it.

My suggestion to the developers is to:
1. Remove the resource economy entirely
2. Expand choices for every random event to provide more nuance
3. Branch and weave these choices together so that every choice matters
4. Make the win state of the game successful first contact, winning because you got to an arbitrary tech level seems antithetical to a game about alien life.

I tried to get into it, I really did. I have no problems with the writing, music, or art (the little quotes at the bottom of every event were my favourite part), but the bit that killed the game for me was, well, the lack of a game. The only influence you have on the lives of the creatures are by picking periodic buffs/debuffs to one of six stats that appear randomly. So what tends to happen is a civilisation is really short on resources and you sit there for minutes waiting for a '+ resources' spark to appear and watching as their remaining resources ticks down until the entire civilisation is destroyed or regresses back to a tyrannical wasteland.

The key miss here for me is the lack of player agency. You, through pure RNG, are basically told what each species is like and what they do. There was no opportunity for me to make my mark on the world, I just was sitting there clicking on the buffs and failing that the currency sparks waiting for something to happen. Read the other reviews and notice how they say what happened and not what they chose to do; it's basically a visual novel with more RSI. There are other issues such as bugs, extremely similar tech ages etc. but as this is early access I see no real problem with that. If I were to make one suggestion I'd try and minimise the influence of RNG on gameplay, it doesn't spice up and create new opportunities for gameplay it just replaces the gameplay itself. I'll definitely keep my eye on it but as the game currently is it isn't for me.

At time of writing, this game isn't bad, per se, but it is not in a state where I'd say its fair to charge for it. A demo version might be welcome here.

This isn't a bad way to engage with the decision/story telling aspect of Amplitude 4x games with the complex mechanics all stripped out. You'll be managing several developing species across the galaxy, mostly using a Reigns-style system of making choices to influence their civilization's various statistics. These include things like population, available resources, and their tendency to cause harm as a society. While all this is fun in a lighthearted, background-game kind of way, there doesn't seem to be enough variety on display. The races are not randomized, they come as sets of 3 to a planet with one "Balanced" one "Neutral" and one "Unbalanced", basically giving you more resources if you choose a race whose stats are already possibly in crisis and costing resources to pick a more secure one. Many of the flavor texts are reused, which is usually forgivable but when the entire game is the flavor text, its much more noticeable.

I'd say in its current state, this game might yield some fun below the $10 price. Once more content and variety is added and the decisions you make more clearly influence the development of your civilizations, however, I think this could be a pretty great casual game. I'll be watching future updates with interest, and hopefully turn my thumbs down to a thumbs up.