Surviving Mars

is a city builder with a killer attitude.

Acolonist has died,” Surviving Mars’ AI assistant warns me in its detached, robotic voice. By the time I’m looking at the dome where she’s kicked the bucket, four more colonists have joined her. It quickly becomes a cascade, with people collapsing and gasping for air in every dome. In an alarmingly short space of time, my sprawling extraterrestrial colony of hundreds is decimated. Surviving on this inhospitable world is no mean feat, but it’s worth the effort. Famine, dehydration, domes cracking and exposing their denizens to the deadly world outside—my first colony ended up being a lesson in the folly of setting up shop on Mars. Over 300 colonists perished. It started peacefully, however, with cute drones and pressurefree building projects.

Humans don’t start coming to Mars until they can survive there, so the infrastructure needs to be established first. By the time the first human set foot on the planet, I had an elaborate network pumping oxygen and electricity to everything from domes to drones. The objectives are daunting, but by not forcing you to worry about colonists first, Surviving Mars has a forgiving early game.

Depending on the bonuses that you get from your mission sponsor, you’ll also get some help. The easiest sponsor to pick for your first game is the International Mars Mission, netting you a decent cash pool. Money doesn’t mean anything on Mars, but it’s used to buy crucial cargo that can be sent from Earth.

Despite its survival bent, Surviving Mars follows the same pattern as Tropico, turning resources into finished products while keeping people happy. It’s something familiar to hold onto when the curveballs start flying.

Between the dust, meteors and tornados, living on Mars is tough. If you’ve planned for the worst, kept your stockpiles topped up and put your drones in the right place, though, you’ll be treated to a mechanical ballet as diligent gatherers scoop up resources and then get everything under control, fixing up machines and repairing drones all over the colony.

Even once you’ve got some automation set up, however, it still feels like disaster is nipping at your heels. Something is always going on, however most of the crises that strike your colony feel surmountable with a bit of creative tinkering.

Spaced out

If only humans were as great workers as drones. Living on Mars is hard, so colonists need looking after. Working during the dark hours, getting sick, seeing someone die—there are so many threats to colonists’ mental state, and they can culminate in depression or even suicide.

That’s why domes need to be filled with infirmaries and social spaces. These places give colonists somewhere to get help or relax, but they also need to be maintained, necessitating more resources and colonists. That’s the tension at the heart of Surviving Mars: It constantly drives you to expand, whether through resources running out or colonists needing more services.

Since colonies can grow to a gargantuan size, Surviving Mars needs a solid UI to make sense of it. Unfortunately, the one it has isn’t up to the task. There are quality of life features, like the ability to pin things to a taskbar, but the menus are messy, and there’s a lot missing. It provides an overview of the colony, but there need to be more ways to view details.

The result is a lot of extra micromanagement, which seems out of place in a game where you command armies of automated helpers and hoard state-of-the-art technology. I like that even once you get an advanced colony going you still need to be hands on, but there’s often just too much to juggle at once.

As fiddly and stressful as Surviving Mars can be, nothing else marries survival and city building so deftly. It’s a tricky but satisfying space disaster, but I do wish I’d managed to save those 300 colonists

Living on Mars is hard, so colonists need looking after