Surviving Mars

Pros: The game does a good job of keeping you engaged and putting the carrot in front of you to research and build more. You will get lost in the game for hours. The art and modeling for the game is nice. Buildings start to look aged and collect Martian dust as they fall into a state of disrepair. Concrete extractors actually leave the surface of the planet changed and there are scorch marks to denote landing points of your rockets. Neutral: The music is pretty good. There are a few radio stations but subjectively some songs are a bit obnoxious. There is some planetary interaction but it never really feels like a mysterious red planet. There is some diversity in how buildings look or how you choose the color palate for your drones. It is a bit odd though because while you can change the name of a dome or person, you don’t have the ability to change the name or even color palate for a bar or casino. Cons: Bugs - I have researched the ability to create new drones in my colony, however the game will not allow me to do so. It insists that I don't have the research completed although it is clearly the opposite. There was a point where the game refused to shuttle polymer between my colonies which caused a cascading failure and effectively “broke everything.” UI - I don't have the ability to drag-select a box shaped area. This means that if I want to reassign 20 drones to an RC I have to select the drone, select reassign, then select the RC 20 times. Info - The game doesn't provide you a lot of information about the progress you are making. For example there was an instance where I had an "evaluation" task to complete 40 research items in 100 Sols. The game didn't make a persistent marker showing how many Sols I had left or even how many research items I had completed. Tutorial - There really isn't one. Sorting – The game will tell you that you have a certain number of people with a specific trait, but there’s no way to list them so you can address the issue.

It's city building, with research and resource gathering. The game concept is interesting, but the actual game feels rushed out the door prematurely and a lot of useful stuff cut out in order to meet a deadline and sell the rest later as DLC. A real tutorial that outlines what you can do is sorely missing (the messages that pop up from time to time are no substitute), micromanagement is far too tedious sometimes, and the endgame is somewhat boring, as in, what shall I do now, now that I've researched everything and have a more or less working colony? I'm sure given that the publisher is Paradox, that a landslide of DLC is already being prepared, which, in 2-3 years time, will represent the game as designers originally intended it to be released now.

I first bought this game on Steam in July 2018 and played it on and off for about 200 hours until a little over a year ago. During that time, I don't recall experiencing bugs or issues so severe that the game was unplayable. So upon reading the news of a new seemingly interesting DLC, I immediately jumped back in only to be greeted (read: buggered) by a series of game-breaking bugs: 1. Drone navigation issue causing food not being picked up; 2. Drone navigation issue causing dome construction unable to proceed; 3. Drone navigation issue causing RC Commander to lose drones underground; 4. Drone navigation issue causing underground rubble unclearable. The first 2 seem to have been fixed 2~4 weeks after I encountered them. After going back to Steam to read reviews, I finally understood what's going on: Haemimont Games no longer work on this game. I recommend anyone interested in the details to check out the negative reviews left by "James187" and "Sticky Wicket" on Steam. To summarize their points if I may: 1. Abstraction software do not love this game; 2. Abstraction software do not care about the player community; 3. Abstraction software are incompetant at game development; 4. Abstraction software are here to milk the market. The current situation is quite unfortunate, so unless Paradox Interactive reverse it, my rating is 1 star out of 5. If you really want to try this game, wait for at least 75% off.

Yes, that's right. This spanking new monkey that came out in 2018, depends on a version of openssl that was replaced by a (compatible) version in 2016. Because of how they link the game with the library you _must_ use this exact version; any newer (compatible) version is not accepted. Nobody ships that library on modern linux distros -- in fact, in 2018 when it came out, nobody did either. To top it off, the game doesn't even bundle the library with it. The game also uses non-standard library names for a bunch of stuff that you have to fix manually (just simlink them will be fine).

Been playing 4 days. I like that it's supported on many platforms, but now I see why: I bought it before I realized Paradox was involved. Now that I see all the $DLC I wish I had stayed away. Ship has sailed. Game is fun for a while but endless micromanagement is tedious. Problems: running pipes, some UI elements cut at screen edge and require rescaling to fix, when using salvage tool sometimes salvages wrong object, polymers don't show up on orbital scan, scrolling sometimes ceases to work and requires exit to desktop to fix, cannot automated advanced resource mining/factory (unless it's hi-tech I haven't seen yet or worse $DLC). Some processes and elements of the game feel well thought-out. I like the tech trees, special discoveries make it possible to skip useless tech, but I bet there is a $DLC reason. Rocket delay keeps timing tight. I like the personal element with the colonists. Overall I don't feel it's an Outpost (1994) debacle, but parts of the game feel unfinished in that they seem to lead nowhere - possible $DLC gating I suppose. Base game is okay but I would avoid it if given a second chance. For the price I would have expected more. Will actively avoid Paradox label in the future, shame on you GOG for basically sponsoring this gambling company!