The long awaited day is here. Thousands – no, millions – have sat – no, on third thought it’s probably something like billions; sorry – HAVE SAT monk-like, forgoing even basic human qualities of living such as eating, sleeping, having sex, or even drinking water. They wander the desert, like the Israelites of the Old Testamant, waiting for someone to deliver them.
No longer! That’s right, Firmament is out! It’s “just” a demo, and it spans the first part of the game. The finished product will be perhaps four times larger, or perhaps will never exist. Here are some neat stats about the game!
- 45,464: The game’s word count. Any given playthrough will probably get something like half that.
- 14,894: Lines of source for the engine + game, excluding libraries and including headers.
- 4,182: The number of unique dialogue nodes in the game.
- 347: The number of commits in the game’s repository.
- 113: The number of times the story branches in some way.
Whoa!! Neato!! Anyway, here’s how you can get the game
itch.io
If the idea of downloading an executable from a stranger on the internet gives you the howling phantods, then you can download Firmament through itch.io (for the uninitiated: a developer-friendly Steam geared towards indie games). You can download directly from the game’s page, or you can install the game through the itch client (as you would a Steam game).
Windows
Download the game here, extract it, and run firmament.exe
.
Linux
Step one: Download a real desktop operating system. Just kidding! The game is build as a cross-distro binary. Download it here, extract it, and run firmament
.
MacOS
OK, this one is ever so slightly more involved. Apple requires you to jump through a ton of hoops to publish software in any capacity, including paying them $100. The MacOS build of the game is signed, but you’ll need to manually approve it.
Download the game (Intel is here, M1 is here). Double click to extract it. You now have a file called Firmament.app
. Drag this file to your Applications
folder.
Double click on Firmament.app
to run it. MacOS will give you a helpful popup that you’re being naughty.
All you’ve got to do is manually approve the app. Open System Preferences
, and select the icon called Security and Privacy
. You’ll see something like this:
Click the lock, punch in your password, and approve it. Congratulations, you can now run Firmament.