Yesterday a friend of mine invited me to play Surviving Mars on his Laptop and well, first it was a really great experience and it was fun to build a first foothold of mankind on Mars until.. until we built our second dome for the colonists. There is no (!) way to connect domes and build special units for different purposes in that way (e.g. an entertainment district, a farming dome, a living dome) - instead you have to place the same basic buildings all over again in every dome with just slight differences. That felt so wrong, it completly ruins the game. E.g. colonists can starve in one dome but with another dome entrance just some meter away, they wont get there, even not using the spacesuits they came in. And there here are no tubes to connect the living spaces of the colonists. We couldnt believe it. It is such an obvious design flaw and a sad thing, since otherwise the game would be really interesting. Until that changes through an update or DLC and we can in fact build connected domes and by so cities on mars, the game is broken. Sadly.
this piece is a really strange and unique game, in basic its a RTS, but also it has many quite different gameplay aspects. in very very basical terms, you collect souls and summon creatures, which you direct around to fight other, well, wizards. or to solve quests. ah, quests, this game is embedded in such an interesting story, often you approace some kind of shrine, where the gods communicate with you and each other. thats very funny and well made, imagine the god of the winds arguing with the god of fire, trying to pursade yourself to take their mission and not the other. wonderful creative gamedesign, cheers ka
