Surviving Mars

The game seems like a pretty good concept, but when something doesn't work you are royally screwed. I play A LOT of these games and though they may have their nuances, the game shines when it makes it clear what they are and how to deal with them. This game does a horrible job of that. The tutorial is pretty good, but once you start the game if you get stuck on something you have to search it up on forums and blogs. You should never have to go on a full college research tangent just to play a game. If you want to know advance tips that's one thing, but when the game doesn't make it crystal clear why multiple things are not working that is a huge problem. The game is simply unintutive. Here is an example, you click everything to get an interaction menu to edit and delete stuff. That makes sense. But certain items you have to go into the menu, under a certain section, and get a special salvage tool to get rid of them. Why not just make it a double click? Why make it complicated? That is the simplest example. The UI is horrrrrriiiibbbbblllleeeee. Managing colonists should be two clicks. There is too many complications just to manage colonists amongst other things. There is too much micromanaging just to get your transport drone to keep bringing you material across the map. No I don't want to have to keep telling my drone to keep getting material every ten minutes. JUST GO DO IT. Same with the explorer. Just let me click a button and have him go explore. I setup a tranport network for my colonist to get around, why isn't it working? Just tell me. I shouldn't have to look up a reddit guide just to figure it out. This should be apart of the UI. Compound these issues across entire game and you have something that takes too many small things you have to keep learning just to enjoy it. I don't have time to get a degree in learning bad UI flow to enjoy some downtime. Improve the UI, improve the selection flow, and make playing this game intuitive as it should be.

In the begining it doesn't look so great, but it gets better, and better with time. It doesn't have this hard-to-easy curve of citi builders but rather the oposite - like now I got some epidemy on earth of some spacebug one tourist got on mars. Also it has the mods available to download with Paradox Workshop.

If you want good advice, listen up... This game is NOT a typical citybuilder type, and is extremely tedious. I recommend getting Cities Skylines or anyother Mars games that actually work.

I got this game a bit blind because of a sale and to pass the time during confinement. The base working of the game is a bit confusing and I still haven't fully grasped the game system. It does seem a bit overcomplicated. There's no real narrative; no real story to keep you interested; it's just a sandbox sim game. To this point no real challenge either; but I guess that comes later. Really there's not much to keep me engaged; after building two domes and getting my production going I got really bored really fast. The other problem I have with this game is its political framing. It seems to carry a very libertarian/pro-capitalistic view of the world; and there's a whole recruitment; HR management; funding aspect that I find cringeworthy and tedious. There's a "social" reasearch tree funded with reasearch points; with kind of "evo-psyich" solutions to social problem; when there should have clearly been a political tree distinct from the reasearch tree to really deal with the need of your little community; social problem can't be dealt with by throwing "reasearch" at them. Also you're supposed to have people struggling in a harsh environment but you're still building them diners; bowlings and tons of frivolous things. There's not much survival there. Maybe I'm missing a self-aware thing in all this and I'm not giving the creators the benefits of the doubt; but I shouldn't have bought this game. I know It's not trying to be this game; but it lacks all the things that made me fall in love with Frostpunk.

Surviving Mars nails it on so many levels. This game is fantastic. Dome placement matters. The tech tree is random in the best possible way, providing a different experience with every play through. The micromanagement is all fun. The mysteries add a twist to each game. And the starting traits + sponsor combined with achievment hunting and mysteries open up a ton of replayability options. And the aesthetics. Drones zipping around, landing and launching rockets, the space elevator shooting into space. It's all very satisfying. Oh, and built in mod support.