Achievements. If you’re a regular gamer you’ve undoubtedly heard of them, and have probably already earned some. Sometimes they go under a different name, like trophies or badges or accomplishments; but whatever they’re called, they’re essentially the same thing. You complete some specified task in a particular game, and then you get bragging rights in the form of a shiny little graphic with a catchy title.

Well, now that Mayhem Intergalactic is coming to Steam, and since achievements are the Done Thing for Steam games, it’s expected that I add achievements to the game. So I have!

Those of you who didn’t buy the game via Steam will still get the achievements feature. You just won’t be able to show it off on a Steam profile page. But you can still invite your real-life friends over to your house to show them your achievements list and gloat.

Photographic evidence follows:

The title screen now has an Achievements button. Clicking it takes you to...

...the Achievements screen, which lists all of the available achievements and indicates whether you've completed them or not. (Work-in-progress screenshot.)

The Achievements screen as seen above is still a work in progress. I’ll need to hire an artist soon so that the achievements all have spiffy icons next to them instead of boring coloured squares, and – more importantly – I haven’t yet finalised the list of achievements.

This is where you come in!

I’d like your ideas and feedback on what achievements should be available in the next version of Mayhem Intergalactic.

Here are my current 15 ideas, as seen in the above screenshot:

• First Blood: Win a Quick Start singleplayer game.
• Natural Intelligence: Win a Quick Start singleplayer game with the AI difficulty set to Highest.
• Perfect!: Win a Quick Start singleplayer game with the AI difficulty set to Highest, and without losing any battles. [Editor's note: Yes, this is possible; I've done it. It merely requires patience and a little luck. Or patience plus abuse of the saved game feature.]
• Things Fall Apart: Destroy 1000 enemy ships in a single game.
• The Center Cannot Hold: Destroy 2500 enemy ships in a single game.
• The Blood-Dimmed Tide is Loosed: Destroy 5000 enemy ships in a single game.
• Maker of Multiplayer Mayhem: Win a multiplayer game.
• Master of Multiplayer Mayhem: Win 10 multiplayer games.
• Maestro of Multiplayer Mayhem: Win 25 multiplayer games.
• Vindictive: Destroy 500 native ships. Cumulative over multiple games.
• Bully: Destroy 1000 native ships. Cumulative over multiple games.
• Slaver: Destroy 2000 native ships. Cumulative over multiple games.
• Freebie: Conquer an undefended enemy planet. Then win the game.
• Mechanized Intelligence: Use rally points to connect all planets in a Quick Start game into a single network.
• Prime Directive: Win a game without conquering any native planets.

I’m not especially attached to keeping these the way they are, and some of them are admittedly a little bit boring. I’m sure that if we all put our heads together, we can come up with some much more interesting ones.

Feedback? Suggestions? Please feel free to leave a comment. I take all suggestions seriously, and if your idea is good then it has a better-than-even chance of making it into the game. There’s no limit on how many achievements there can be, so the more the merrier!