Tharsis

in library

3.5/5

( 49 Reviews )

3.5

49 Reviews

English & 4 more

Posted on: October 9, 2017

AyeBraine

Verified owner

Games: 122 Reviews: 3

A solid, atmospheric puzzle / strategy

The game will obviously get an enormous amount of points with those who are enraptured by the idea of space exploration and its often dark implications: the challenge of being the most lonesome person who's ever lived chief amongst them. Tharsis has a good story, but it nevertheless only provides an aesthetically pleasing framework for the solid logic puzzle hidden within. Don't be fooled by the randomness of dice-throwing: the outcomes are highly controllable and rely primarily on skill and tactics. The game challenges the player with a steep learning curve, but after experimenting and reading some tips online, I found the mechanics logical, transparent, and well-balanced. In about 5 hours, I was able to start reliably winning on Easy mode (and got at least two variations of voiceover lines, which is also nice). I recommend new players to try out "Missions" (these tutorials are way better than the actual campaign tutorial - short on-the-job affairs). And also a thorough Steam guide some German dude has written. In fact, I must have missed a great chunk of the learning process (and fun / frustration) by reading the guide. But oh well, you can't unsee stuff. Though technically modest, Tharsis is well-finished in all the right places. Weird but expressive astronaut heads, nice interiors, cool hand-drawn cutscenes, and, most of all, brilliant electronic music by Weval. I will be definitely bying the album.

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Posted on: June 20, 2016

Jeysie

Verified owner

Games: 550 Reviews: 1

Hard but more strategic than it seems.

This game is definitely as difficult as everyone says it is, in that you will need to strategize carefully to mitigate the randomness of the dice and events and juggle your resources. However, once you get past the difficulty cliff (which your astronauts will be thrown over many times), you can learn how to better gauge probabilities, which events to solve and which to leave alone for now, and how to best use what you have available. Eventually you'll start winning more consistently, particularly once you get to unlock some of the advanced (and more useful) crew members. My main complaint is that for a game you'll have to replay multiple times, it doesn't offer enough options to fast-forward past certain parts. New games tend to be a bit slow to load (you can skip the opening cutscene but it takes a bit to get there), and when you know you're doomed the final parade of resolving events before destruction can feel interminable (though at least another press of the space bar will speed up the actual explosion at the end). I feel like speeding up the beginning and having a fast-forward button for the event resolution (or even better, an "I know I lost just tally my score already" Abort Button) would be a big help here. Secondary complaint is that the cutscenes don't have the audio and video synced that well. Often the audio will have already finished while the video is still going. Tertiary complaint is that a way to save your favorite crew composition would be very nice, versus it always defaulting to the starting roster. All in all, though, I rather enjoyed taking a chance on this game, particularly since I like Elder Sign: Omens which this has a similar vibe to (game with horror themes, dice, and ways to work around/with the dice).

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Posted on: June 10, 2019

DragonNOR

Verified owner

Games: 49 Reviews: 1

A good looking throw of the dice

Tharsis, while a game with well crafted art and an interesting story, is a frustrating game at its core. I have played quite a few 'survive against the odds' games like 'This war of mine' and 'Frostpunk' which pulled off the sense of desperation perfectly, and whenever you screw up there it always feels like your failure is based on your inability to predict or react to a certain aspect of the game under increasingly difficult circumstances. Tharsis does all of this to a point. If I were to give it a quick description, it's like those games but a 'lite' version. Tharsis is not a complex game. You are on a mission to reach Mars when disaster strikes and your food stocks get blown up by a meteor. The game is turnbased and every turn you are hit with a number of disasters or systemerrors that you need to clear up during the round or risk getting overwhelmed as the turns progress. The way you fix these disasters is by rolling dice, subtract the numbers you get from a fixed number on the disaster you're trying to fix and hopefully don't roll so badly that you have to send all your crewmates to one room to fix one disaster when you have three active. This is where the game is at it's most unforgiving and frustrating. While there is a learning curve as to what crewmembers to place on a task and in what order, if the dice rolls don't add up then you are screwed. And no tactics or planning in advance can mend this completely. If you are plain unlucky then your game ends quickly and without mercy because of something outside of your control. Tharsis is also a very short game. The main campaign lasts for about nine turns while you try to keep the ship together. Aside from this you have a set of challenges that you can complete. The game can be completed in half a day and despite it's intruiging story and art I do not think it's worth it's original asking price of almost 12 dollars. A short, visually interesting games with simple mechanics that is best enjoyed on sale.

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Posted on: December 21, 2019

timbiggs

Verified owner

Games: 342 Reviews: 1

brutally unforgiving & excellent for it

This is really an initial impressions review, as I have only had it a couple of days. This is not that like many other games- it is hard, it is punishing, the graphics are nice, but there is not much action, there is no time pressure- so you know that when you die, you thought about it, and still made the wrong decision. It is sort of a puzzle in the vein of Into the Breach (which I also love) where previous mistakes come back to haunt you, with with a bit of randomness thrown in. Some reviewers have said it is too random, but I think they just don't understand it. There is chance, but just like a game of cards, you can heavily stack the odds in your favour if you know what you are doing. On my first play through (on easy), I made it to week 8 (you need to survive 10 weeks) without any serious risks, but then something threw me and I was gambling to stay alive for the last 2- which seemed a reasonable balance. Do you like complex logic puzzles, choices were there is only bad or worse, spending 5 mins staring at the screen thinking what option is the best risk/reward trade off when things start going south? Then this could be just the game for you. Are you looking for the sort of game where you can recover from mistakes with a bit of skill, or you want a bit of light distraction? Then you may want to look elsewhere. Oh, and where else might you need to eat your friends to keep going for another week?

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Posted on: September 29, 2021

Goldenclaw1119

Games: 148 Reviews: 1

Plagued by balance issues.

I have put many, many hours into this game and I continue to reach the inescapable conclusion that the balance is off. It simply requires too many "perfect" dice rolls to get by, which is really difficult to do even on normal when you have crewmembers starting out with 1 die. It's designed for you to be able to survive Round 1, but things can get a bit ridiculous when you get into 3 event territory and they end up being 2-3 severity damage events all together. I think I had 7 pop up on one turn, which is nearly impossible to recover from. I disagree with another reviewer that a 100% win rate can be obtained on normal mode. How to fix, so that the overall win rate is improved and newbies to the game can focus on improving score instead of losing almost every time and hating the game? My initial thoughts were a 20% reduction in the cap on damage events. So instead of a 32 it would be smaller. Another idea, and perhaps the easiest, is to simply add the 5th crew member. I do really love the mechanics of this game and it would be great if they would do a balance "maintenance" update on the game, and then possibly adapt the engine to other genres.

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