In Story mode, the player chooses one of four careers (United Earth League military, Mars Consortium militia, Marauder Pirate Clan, mercenary) and follows Terminus's single-player storyline, set in the year 2197.

In Gauntlet mode, the player outfits a ship with near-infinite money at their disposal, and faces several waves of attackers, with the object of staying alive for as long as possible.

[3] Back in January 1998, the "Vicarious Visions' seven full-time employees and squadron of contractors" were laboring to complete the game, which at the time was to be the company's second release.

At that point "The development budget for Terminus ha[d] already crossed the $250,000 mark with months' more work to be done before an expected September 1998 release.

"[4] Bala said at the time "Terminus will include not only network and Internet play, which is becoming almost standard in games, but also the capability for players to communicate by voice.

"[4] Bala retrospectively said "The Department of Defense had recently declassified an audio compression algorithm that we ended up using and writing Voice over IP within our game at the time.

"[19] GameSpy said, "With Terminus, Vicarious Visions has raised the bar of excellence within three simultaneous genres, but couldn't quite glue all the pieces together into a cohesive whole.

"[11] GameSpot wrote, "Terminus offers flawed but nonetheless decent space combat action, along with an impressive online play feature.

The game ought to be appealing on account of this and its cross-platform compatibility, but its glitches and general lack of polish considerably diminish its overall quality.

"[14] MacADDICT called it "an intermittently fantastic game that should appeal to flight-sim jockeys, hardcore sci-fi fans, and anyone who's ever wanted to wield two joysticks.