Surviving Mars

Virtually no mod support, despite it being a proclaimed feature. There are countless mods available on the Steam workshop, including several that featured when the dev announced mod support, but they aren't available anywhere else. Dev locked away public access to the Steam workshop too, so GoG users can't simply download them. If you're considering this game, get it on Steam or not at all.

Let me start by saying I do enjoy this game. You probably will to. However, this does not take away form the biggest 2 sins of this game. First, and the bigger sin. NO MOD SUPPORT FOR GOG. For some reason, the devs have taken an anti-no drm stance, and punish GoG owners of this game. If you buy it on Steam, you can use mods. It's not a worshop issue, for you can download and use mods from Nexus Mods with the game on the Steam version. However, it's obvious the devs don't look kindly on a no-drm platform, and are punishing those of us who bought it from GoG. I bought the game here, as a sort of mini-protest (and to help show a large GoG interest), though obviously the devs don't care. I was just a sucker for buying the game. Second, this game is horribly complicated. Compare this game to Planetside. Planetside is like Algebra. Complicated, but not horrifically so. A good complicated. Surviving Mars, however, is advaned calculus mixed with theoretical physics. There are over 10 different resources, counting colonists, that you have to manage. Oh, and dust storms that damage equipment and leave a fine dust coating over everything. There's also wear and tear you have to deal with, and different buildings/devices have different resources needed to keep them in shape. Oh, and most of the buildings you either have to research (though you never know WHAT RESEARCH unlocks them), or pay money for a limited amount of prefabs that are sent on a rocket to you from Earth. Oh, speaking of the rocket, it takes a long time to fly to and from Earth. Most of that is before you even have people living on Mars. Overall, don't buy this game. Especially with the bull the devs are doing with mods. Haemimont Games is pro-DRM, but wanted to double dip with Steam and GoG. However, they punish GoG customers by removing mod support.

Seeing the game both available on Steam and GOG I waited my time till I thought the game has passed its early release stage - aka all DLC´s for the Season pass have been released. So I grabbed the game on the summer sale. Loading the game forces me to agree to an EULA allowing them to collect data, tracking cookies, etc. The game has mod support (now?), but of course you cannot use these mods the game is able to show you in-game **without** a paradox account. I mean we are in 2019 and you need an account to use the game fuctionality. You could not track the mods installed on the local hard drive, retrive an index from the website,... You need to implement a privacy invasive mod support. I am using GOG to get away from Steams nosiness. These two fact issues cost Surviving Mars a star each. The last star is for a clunky UI and a bit of unimaginative implementation terraforming stage.

Just a note: Casual gamer here. To be honest, I expected this game to be something like Settlers. Gather resources, build stuff, expand to new territories, etc. It turned out to be not that simple and relaxing as I expected. Where should I start.. First of all, resources are scarce. Some are limited straight by their amount on surface, others limited by amount of "access points" where you can get them, So called Advanced resources and buildings for them cannot be produced at all, only ordered from Earth. There are complications to that, which I will mention later. To add insult to injury these advanced resources are required to build some critical components required from very beginning, like sources of energy that don't die at night or energy reserves in case something went wrong. Second, this game is a logistical nightmare. Everything have it's range limitations. Water and air require pipes, electricity requires cables, resources require drones to bring things manually. Pipes and cables cost resources, and drones.. well, that's the sad part of the story. If you need to expand to nearest sector expect lengths of pain as your drones slowly drag hundreds of resources one by one from one drop point to another.. after you order them to do so manually as otherwise they'll find more interesting thing to do. If you built a mine - it can only operate if it is within Dome's quite negligible operations radius. Third, every building degrades. Which is annoying. Then Drone have to repair it. And it degrades quite quickly. Drones do not degrade (wow) but have battery charge, so they won't go far from your main base anyway. Fourth. Research "tree" is randomized at start of every game, say farewell to pre-planned strategy not including "restart, hope I'll get required tech next time". By the way research is super slow, someone clearly misplaced research speed and buildings degradation speed. Fifth, no Tutorial. Just list of suggested buildings. First time I built Dome in the direction of presumed expansion, I found a bit later that Rare Metal deposit is out of it's range. Wow. Great. Game advertises Tutorial made by some person, but it is a set of 5 youtube videos, first of which is about 25 minutes long. I came to play game, not to watch 2 hours tutorial while taking notes. Sixth, lots of bad design solutions, like advanced resources required from start, main energy source non-functioning half of time, drone control center requires power as well (micromanage every assigned bot manually at night, my dreams came true.. NOT). Honestly, there are lots of thing that makes game experience annoying and overcoming them is not rewarding for me at least. To be short, maps are large but mostly resource empty, expanding is a some kind of a bitter cure to not to die. Half of your infrastructure dies at night as wind energy source requires Advanced resource that you cannot manufacture from the beginning, Mostly you feel like you are fighting some game design flaws rather than anything else.