Archipelagos is a 1989 action strategy game developed by Astral Software and published by Logotron for the Amiga, Atari ST, and MS-DOS.
The game was widely praised on release, especially for its inclusion of 3D graphics during an era where they were rare. On a technical level, the game was far ahead of its time, and received further acclaim for its unique gameplay.
Archipelagos Premise

©Screenshot from Archipelagos
Archipelagos is played in first-person, in a 3D world, a rarity for the era. You awaken on a landscape filled with procedurally generated islands, with a total of 9,999 possible levels.
On each level, you can find a bunch of boulders as well as a single stone obelisk. In each level, you must destroy all of these boulders hidden around the world. After this, you’ll be on a timed mission to find the obelisk and destroy it, too.
It sounds simple, but each level has several enemies that try to stop you from completing your object. The most prominent are the trees which spread poisonous blood that hurts if you stand in it, which try to chase you more actively after you’ve destroyed the boulders.
Archipelagos Main Characters

©Screenshot from Archipelagos
Throughout the ’80s, some games put gameplay before story. Archipelagos is one such game, having no story to speak of. This is the exact same for the characters – they just don’t exist in this title.
As a result, Archipelagos has no main character.
Archipelagos Titles in the Series

©Screenshot from Archipelagos.
The core gameplay of the Archipelagos series is quite experimental, so it’s not a huge surprise that it wasn’t a huge series with plenty of iterations. After the original game, a remake titled Archipelagos 2000 was released in 1999.
Unfortunately, that’s where the story of this particular franchise ends. Will it ever return? Probably not. It’s not a series that holds much name value in the eyes of most gamers, so there’s no huge nostalgia to draw on by bringing Archipelagos back.
- Archipelagos (1989)
- Archipelagos 2000 (1999)
Archipelagos Cheat Codes

©Screenshot from Archipelagos.
Archipelagos only has one cheat of note. It’s a level-select cheat that allows you to start from any of the game’s 9,999 levels.
To do this, you need to finish the game’s first two Archipelagos, and press Enter to select another. Then, type the number 8421 and press Enter twice. Now, you can enter any number between 1 to 9,999, and you will go to that seed as your next level.
Archipelagos Cheat Code FAQ

©Screenshot from Archipelagos.
Does Archipelagos Have Achievements?
No. There’s no way to unlock achievements in this game, as it only exists on extremely old hardware.
The image featured at the top of this post is ©Screenshot from Archipelagos.