Utopia includes ten scenarios, all with a different planet and a different alien race. The scenarios are named according to the alien races in the Amiga version and according to the planets in the SNES port. The game, taking place in the future, on a new planet, is open-ended where the player character is a planetary governor who evacuated his colony after it was hit by a biological weapon by an alien race.
Instead of being reprimanded or fired, the governor is lauded for his care of colonists’ lives over material gain, and promoted to a series of pioneer worlds to colonize. It is the player’s task to colonize the new planet, manage the colony and raise the quality of life for the citizen in order to reach utopia. Initially the player has a few colonists with a lot to do. The player needs to build everything from scratch.
Building takes time and free colonists, in addition to money. Buildings under construction are depicted by scaffold. Certain buildings require personnel (hospitals, labs, mines, factories, shipyards …) and therefore the player has to engage in population management. The player also has to micromanage features such as tax rate, birth rate and trade.
