A downloadable interactive adventure for Windows, macOS, and Linux

Buy Now$8.00 USD or more

In this interactive sci-fi adventure novel, you are the AI pilot of Earth's last interstellar ship, tasked with finding a home for your crew—the last remnants of humanity. Your choices will determine their fate, and your own.

You are the AI in charge of Earth's final interstellar spaceship, tasked with delivering your human crew to a suitable new home among the stars. The fate of previous ships is unknown--with a set of galactic maps to guide you, it's your job to decide which planets to visit, which crew to send down to the surface, and which choices they should make along the way. You are humanity's last hope.

Your choice matters!
Each of ten possible crew members has a distinct set of attributes, traits and flaws that will impact your chances, so choose wisely! With over 30 planets and stations to visit, over 700 choices to make, and near-infinite randomized sector maps to visit, there are countless paths to take across the galaxy.

A novel's worth of adventure!
Over 120,000 words of text across multiple playthroughs provide a rich storyline full of action, suspense, drama and horror. Can you find your way down all four paths to victory?

Customizable
Lua-based missions and json-based data files make writing and scripting your own missions simple, and creating new characters is a breeze with the in-game character creator. Write yourself into the game, or include your friends and see who survives.

Eat your crew
Food and fuel are hard to come by in deep space. Choose wisely but quickly in charting your course--when supplies run out, tough decisions will be in store, and cannibalism might be the only option...

Underflow Studios
StatusReleased
PlatformsWindows, macOS, Linux
Publisher
Release date Jul 22, 2016
Rating
Rated 4.3 out of 5 stars
(36 total ratings)
AuthorsUnderflow Studios, Cheeseness
GenreInteractive Fiction, Adventure
Made withSFML
TagsManagement, Meaningful Choices, Pixel Art, Procedural Generation, Roadtrip, Sci-fi, Story Rich, Text based
Average sessionA few hours
LanguagesEnglish
InputsMouse
AccessibilityColor-blind friendly, Subtitles, High-contrast, One button
LinksSteam, Homepage, Homepage, Twitter

Purchase

Buy Now$8.00 USD or more

In order to download this interactive adventure you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $8 USD. Your purchase comes with a Steam key. You will get access to the following files:

the-away-team-linux.zip 141 MB
Version v2.13-4-g5e4207ab
the-away-team-mac.zip 146 MB
Version v2.13-4-g5e4207ab
the-away-team-windows.zip 148 MB
Version v2.13-4-g5e4207ab
The Away Team - Soundtrack.7z 706 MB
if you pay $13 USD or more

Download demo

Download
the-away-team-demo_linux.zip 89 MB
Version v2.13-4-g5e4207ab
Download
the-away-team-demo_mac.zip 94 MB
Version v2.13-4-g5e4207ab
Download
the-away-team-demo_windows.zip 87 MB
Version v2.13-4-g5e4207ab

Development log

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Comments

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It's a really interesting game, but a common bug I'm encountering is a very, very long hitch every time I try to move the ship (also, if I tab out and type things when the game is in fullscreen, it still registers as a command in the game (i found this out typing this comment))

Hey Sinreal, 

Ah, good catch on the mouse moving when you type things in game. As for the hitch, we still need more logging on it. If you could use this exe: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1r2Ok79VdEuTtYoh7ZMxG7GNYRgwiTVCl/view?usp=shari... while running the game it then send support@awayteam.space your most recent starlog it will go along way.


Thanks,

Michael Brune

(+2)

Wow! very good game. I never played text based game since the 90’s.

It was 22h when I joined the Away Team first time. 2h at the morning, my eyes was trying to read one more line. To continue the adventure a little bit more. So immersive.

English is not my native language. So I could not imagine to get hooked that fast and that long.

I did my first run. 4 crew members have been safely arrived. The other left us with good memories.

Not sure if I get to another trip. However it was really interesting experience.

Thanks guys.

I see that there was an update 3 days ago, but no dev log to accompany it; may I ask what changed?

This is a really interesting game, but I was confused about the system exploration at first; it'd be nice if there was a reminder popup that said something like, "All locations visited; head to the edge of the map!" when appropriate.

Hey Keron,

We've not updated the game since last October. This might be the reason our Itch.io downloads are in the hundreds a day for no reason. Although I've not seen this bug myself.

That's a good idea, I'll see if that's something we can patch in this year.

Regards,

Michael Brune

Is this Lost Exodus or is that some sort of separate entry? I'm seeing two different titles here: https://isthereanydeal.com/search/?q=away+team#/

(+1)

They are the same game. Lost Exodus is a free update to the base game.

(+1)

I'm getting crashes every time I try to warp to a new sector.  (but it's worked in the past, I'm several sectors in now)  There's also a weird symbol on the map that causes a crash every time I mouse over it.

(+1)

Hey Uzra47, Could you email support@awayteam.space with an image of the symbol, any logs (which you can access the log folder via the options menu) and any dmp files within the root of the install directory. This will give us a lot more information in order to track this issue down.

This reminds me of a little Android game "Seedship" except grander. The story is really great and I love the randomness of the game. 

Just one gripe - I seem to be visiting the same planets and scenarios over and over again on each play through. I am staying on the same difficulty level though - is it meant to follow the same storyline (at least for the first 10 jumps?)

(1 edit)

Very awesome I certainly will check it out. Thank you for the kind words.

The main story is static planets. So the overarching story is the same, but we have side missions that change every time as well as in game events that you might not see every time.

I’m really enjoying this game! I especially appreciate how the descriptions of things are precise/detailed. I can always clearly picture what I’m supposed to be making choices about, which I’m aware doesn’t necessarily sound like high praise, but I mean it to be. That’s hard to do! Anyway, I was wondering if there’s a way to make the font size larger. Being able to switch the fonts helps but it’s still a little bit of a strain for me.

👋 Thank you so much for your kind words. It's certainly a hard to make sure the player knows what to do and feel the agency to do it. As for font size I think the best you could is play the game in windowed mode and use the magnifier tool to enlarge it. We've been looking into what it'd take the make font sizes bigger with the game and even buttons and etc. Not much progress and it's looking like a large task but a very requested one.

seems fun so far and love the way story presents the options to problems and how the crew reacts. but when i navigate through space the game freezes and takes a long time for it to come back and show the ship in a new position. any ideas?

That's where it's processing and generating a new sector. What sort of CPU do you have?

Intel i7-8705G

it's not just jumping to a new sector. moving two inches through the blackness of space will cause the program to freeze for 30 seconds or longer.

CUK Intel Hades Canyon NUC Mini Compact Gamer PC (Intel i7-8705G, 16GB DDR4 RAM, 500GB NVMe SSD, AMD Radeon RX Vega M GL, Windows 10 Home) Tiny Gaming Desktop Computer - Thunderbolt 3, 4K Support

win 10 

I'm having this same issue, the program seems to be running very heavy. I have a AMD Ryzen 3700 so I feel like I shouldn't be running into issues.

try adding --no-shader to the launch arguments/options.

(1 edit)

I'm having the same problem, but I don't know what you mean by the launch arguments/options. I looked in the options menu and didn't see anything


Edit: I looked up how to do it via making a shortcut, and it didn't help the problem at all.

(1 edit)

Interesting. I am testing on a Ryzen 3900x and am not seeing any issues at all. Can you open your resource monitor through the task manager in windows, is there something there that is maxing out? I guess I am trying to figure out if it's an IO issue or not. Would you happen to have an HDD? Or are you on SSDs?

When I opened up the game today, the issue didn't occur right away like it had been doing before. This time, it proceeded just fine until I got to an encounter, and then afterwards, the game would just freeze when I tried to move. I opened up the resource monitor, and it said that the game was using 73% of the CPU, but it dropped to 40% while I was watching. When I clicked back over to the game, my computer sent me an alert saying that the game wasn't responding. When I closed the game and reopened it, I was again able to play just fine until I got to a new encounter, and then afterwards the same thing happened.

I have a SSD.

For those having performance issues I would like to direct you to https://drive.google.com/file/d/1r2Ok79VdEuTtYoh7ZMxG7GNYRgwiTVCl/view which is an exe only of the game (it must be placed in the game install folder.) which will add logging. This logging will automatically be added to version 2.13 (it may be under a program argument, see future changelog for more info.). You will not see this logging if for some reason you do not clear 100 Milliseconds of wait time.

So after buying the game in a bundle some time ago I finally got to the point where I wanted to test it out. Sadly I am unable to even start the game. Using the Archive without the Itch Launcher I always get an error that this application could not be started (0x000007b). I have read trough the comments here and tried both installing openal or using the Itch Launcher. Neither one fixed the Problem and the Itch launcher does not give me an error but it also does not even start the game.

Hey Cy-Res, have you tried to download and install msvc++ 2015: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=48145 it also might fix the issue with 0x000007b

Sadly enough, I also did that but to no avail. I also used the "All In One Runtimes" just to be sure. Then I thought maybe trying the Demo would work but it also did not. Normaly I can fix most of such problems myself through researching (did others have this problem/how did they solve it/what If i tried *random thing*) But this time I am at a dead End.

Can you email support@awayteam.space If you can open %appdata%/theawayteam and email all the logs to us this might help us understand what's going on further. Also can you let us know your PC specs and OS?

(1 edit)

Seems like the newest Windows Version of the game "Version v2.10-36-gdf025a92-dirty" fixed whatever was causing problems for me.

edit: but it seems I have no sound ingame. XD

(+5)

I absolutely love this. This interactive fiction adventure tries to mix a very text heavy sci fi story that is seriously well written and has me hooked with a bit of crew management and risk/reward mechanics for exploration/progression. You are the last known ship of humanity (literally, because you are the AI of the ship), trying to find a new home. You choose a band of survivors or create your own and venture out into the unknown. The clear highlights are the well written scenarios. I dont want to spoil anything here, but they do a great job introducing interesting setups, allowing you to make some tough choices and even giving you some challenges to replay it based on what your "AI goal" might be. It could do with more event randomization as they are relatively static if you come in with the same group on a future playthrough, but this is a great text based adventure and original concept.  4,5/5

More Racial Justice bundle impressions and ranking:
https://itch.io/c/915453/quick-impressions-bundle-for-racial-justice

You need to install https://openal.org/downloads/oalinst.zip to run it.

(+3)

Many thanks for your kind words <3

(+1)

For some reason, I'm getting a crash when trying to create a new character and typing a capital K...! Only seems to be an issue with that letter!

That is unique... That's a new bug :D

So could you help us by emailing support@awayteam.space with logs from %appdata%/TheAwayTeam/Logs as well as any DMP files in the game's root folder? located typically at %appdata%/itch/apps/the-away-team

Thanks,

Michael Brune

Hi, on the latest build when I hit "Launch" in the itch.io client, it claims it is running for ~1s and then goes back to "Launch". Any help would be great.

Interesting, can you email support@awayteam.space your operating system and if you are on windows and logs from %appdata%/TheAwayTeam/Logs

I am trying to run this program but I keep on getting an error messafe that states "The application was unable to start correctly (0xc000007b)." I am using a windows computer. Does anyone have tips to fix this?

(+1)

Download and install: https://openal.org/downloads/oalinst.zip

(+1)

It's working now, thanks! :)

very happy to hear that. :D let me know if you have any more issues.

(+1)

This is more of a question than an issue actualy. I just finished a full playthough today and I think the story was really well written and the ending I got made me really emotional. I'm a bit confused though. Avoiding spoilers, I ended my story on Ellison but I didn't get one of the ending challenges for that planet. Did I get a bad ending by mistake? My team didn't die there and it didn't seem bad to me.

Oh sorry, I didn't see this until now. I believe you got a non-challenge ending. There are only 4 endings to get a challenge unlocked at the end. (two per planet)

Hi hi! When this was reported, we went through and tested each ending with challenges to make sure that they were activating properly. They were, so our best guess was that you had found a non-challenge ending.

Recently, we discovered a bug where ending challenge states were not being saved if an ending was previously seen during the same play session (without closing the game), and we're wondering if maybe that was responsible for what you've experienced.

v2.11 has a fix if you'd like to try again!

Hello! The game stops working after that initial text when I deploy the ship. Not exactly sure what's going on?

Can you email support@awayteam.space any logs in %appdata%/TheAwayTeam/ as well as any files in saved/ and any dmp files found in the root of the game? I'm not entirely sure why it'd crash there, that's a new one for us.

I've been struggling with the exact same, did you manage to figure it out?

I believe a recent patch should have fixed it. What version of the game are you experiencing this on?

Missing a dll in my version too..api-ms-win-crt-runtime-I1-1-0.dll.

Are you downloading the game directly or installing it through the itch client? if through the itch client itch should attempt to install https://aka.ms/vs/15/release/VC_redist.x86.exe which is seen on microsoft's official site: https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/older-downloads/ under redistributables

(1 edit)

Direct download..As in using the zip..I'm unfamiliar with the itch.io client at this time.Also downloaded that redistributable once i saw the link..Did'nt help.

Oh, interesting terribly sorry but looking at the DLL that comes from 2015. https://www.microsoft.com/en-in/download/details.aspx?id=48145 this confuses me because I've not been on 2015 for some time. Never the less that should work this time. 🤞

Not on my main machine right now, But will try this when i get back.Thanks so much for the support.

(1 edit)

Game won't launch. It gives 0xc00007b error. Tried updating drivers, .NET framework, restarted PC, tried compatibility mode..  i7 7700K, RTX 2080, 64GB RAM, 64bit Windows 10 Pro. Please help.

Downloading and installing https://www.openal.org/downloads/oalinst.zip should fix this issue. Can you confirm?

This fixed it. Thanks!

When i try to start the game it gives an error that "OpenAL32.dll" wasn't found. I downloaded 7zip to unzip the file, i don't know if it worked.

I had the same problem. I found a link to a website with fixes for that issue. Try updating your video and sound cards first and then use the link in this article to download the missing dll from Creative Labs. I don't recommend trying to find it on Google as you might get an untrusted source with a possible virus.

https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-fix-openal32-dll-not-found-or-missing-errors-262...

We are currently missing the dll from the current build and are working to get a build with it packaged together. For now I recommend downloading openal from https://www.openal.org/downloads/ directly. Install the windows installer version and relaunch the game.

Newer builds no longer have these issues. OpenAL comes with itch and itch now extracts the game correctly.

thank you for the response! i tried the new build but now i get an error that says the application can't be started (0xc000007b)

Could you email the details of the crash to support@awayteam.space? Things like OS and any .dmp files in the folder's root and any logs from %appdata%\TheAwayTeam\logs (assuming your on some version of windows)

I'm downloaded the game, unzipped it and am also having the (0xc000007b) issue. It appears as soon as I launch the game. Can't even get to menu.

(1 edit)

did you try downloading/installing openal. From what I reproed that seemed to work.