Red Planet Farming

Grow veggies on Mars.

Mars is not the best place to grow a cabbage, but needs must in a world in which humanity has finally made camp on the red planet. That’s the premise of Red Planet Farming, which puts you in the role of agricultural director for Mars. You’re not expanding the Martian outposts, instead you’re claiming empty plots, planting potatoes and beans and whatnot, and trying your hardest to keep them alive, year by year.

In a sense, this is the city-builder as a turn-based puzzle game. Across a series of outposts, you have to grow a steadily increasing amount of food, while managing the needs of your chosen vegetables, and local hazards including cold snaps, meteor strikes, and, er, Mars quakes. After every year, your population will (hopefully) increase rather than plummet, while new seeds, technologies and hazards will be gradually introduced. When you’ve improved your first outpost, you’ll be invited to manage another, on a less comfortable region of Mars. Each level brings a new environment with its own tougher challenges to overcome.

TOM SYKES

A smartly streamlined building game where the knife-edge nature of planetary settlement still comes across.