| Surviving Mars | |
| Publisher: | Paradox Interactive |
| Platforms: | Windows macOS Linux PlayStation 4 Xbox One |
| Released: | March 15, 2018 |
| Genre: | City-building, survival |
| Modes: | Single-player |
Surviving Mars is a city building survival video game initially developed by the Bulgarian studio Haemimont Games, and later by Abstraction Games, and published by Paradox Interactive. It was released on Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on March 15, 2018. The player serves as an overseer who must build a colony on Mars and ensure the survival of the colonists. A spiritual successor, Surviving the Aftermath, was released in 2021.[1]
Surviving Mars is a city-building survival game that takes place on Mars and is modeled after real Martian data.[2] The player chooses a sponsoring nation and a commander profile, each conferring slightly different benefits, a unique building and vehicle. Possible sponsors include an International Mars Mission, the United States, Europe, India, China, Russia, and fictional organizations such as the Blue Sun Corporation, SpaceY, the Church of the New Ark, and even Paradox Interactive. A rocket filled with resources, drones, prefabricated buildings, and Mars rovers lands on a selected location and prepare the basic infrastructure. The only resources that may be found on the surface or extracted from underground are metals, rare metals, concrete, water and sometimes polymers, all other resources (food, fuel, machine parts, electronics, power, oxygen) must be manufactured or imported.[3] Money is only used for transactions between the colony and the sponsor, and is generated mainly from exports of rare metals. There is a technology tree divided in five categories: physics, engineering, social, biotechnology, and robotics. The game can generate natural disasters such as dust storms, meteor storms, cold waves, and dust devils.[4] To create a Mars colony the player must build a dome with buildings inside, provide power, water, and oxygen, and bring colonists from Earth. Each individual colonist has traits, flaws and a specialization, making them fit to work at certain buildings and unfit for others. They also have stats on morale, comfort, sanity, and health, which vary according to gameplay. Happy colonists may father martian-born colonists. Unhappy colonists may become Earthsick and leave back to Earth, or become rebels. People may also live in the domes as tourists, who do not work and stay for a limited time, and pay money if their comfort is high enough.
The game also has storylines called mysteries, which add various events to the colony,[5] including plagues, war, rival corporations, AI revolt, alien contact, and others.
Haemimont Games, developers of the Tropico 5 game, initially led the game's development.[6] The initial idea was to make a game set in outer space, and they soon realized that the setting and gameplay would be very different if the game was set on Mars, the Moon or Venus. Eventually the decided to use Mars as a result of the Mars race. The team studied the real-world challenges that scientists consider when thinking about colonizing Mars. These challenges were then translated into gameplay elements for the game. To do so, the developers sought to find a balance between the complexity of the real-world science and the more simplified nature of gameplay. CEO Gabriel Dobrev cited as an example the Mars Oxygen ISRU Experiment, or "MOXIE", a device that can generate breathable oxygen from the carbon dioxide of the atmosphere. Regardless of its internal working, when it was adapted into gameplay it became just a box that, once plugged, generates an in-game resource. And to avoid making it too simple, they generated situations where the MOXIE would not work, and others where it would break. Similarly, the game incorporates into its gameplay simplified versions of the problems an actual colonization effort would face, such as the Martian dust, the low temperatures and the constant need of food.
The game's aesthetics were inspired by The Jetsons and Futurama.[7] Describing the game as a "hardcore survival city-builder, where players will be tasked with creating a livable colony in the harsh, hostile environs of Mars", publisher Paradox Interactive announced the game in May 2017.[8] The game was released for Windows, macOS, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on March 15, 2018. The game included mod support from the start.[9]
About a year after release, in June 2019, Haemimont signed on with Frontier Developments for development of a new property for Frontier's publishing label.[10] In March 2021, Paradox announced that development of Surviving Mars has moved from Haemimont Games to Abstraction Games, a studios that have helped the development of the game Mass Effect Legendary Edition.[11]
Surviving Mars has several DLCs, available either separately or as part of the digital season pass available in the game's "First Colony Edition". Space Race, the game's first expansion, was released on November 15, 2018. It introduces rival colonies competing to achieve milestones on Mars, and two new sponsor nations, Japan and Brazil.[12] The second, Green Planet, was released on May 16, 2019, and introduces the concept of terraforming Mars into a planet that can sustain human life. Gabriel Dobrev reported that this was the highest user-requested feature since game launch.[13] Several content packs were also released, including a building pack and the "Marsvision Song Contest" radio station (with the release of Space Race)[14] and "Project Laika", which introduced ranching on Mars as well as pets in the colony (with the release of Green Planet).[15]
In March 2021, Dutch studio Abstraction Games took over the development from Haemimont, and released a free update patch that expanded the gameplay options regarding tourism.[16] The patch also released buildings created by Silva, a renowned modder of the game.[11] On August 31, 2021, the paid expansion was announced as Below and Beyond, which includes underground facilities and the ability to build mining bases on asteroids. It was released on September 7.[17] On August 28, 2022 was released a new paid expansion: "Martian Express", which includes a new means of transport: the train.[18]
The game received generally favorable reviews according to review aggregator Metacritic, scoring 80% on PC Gamer, and 78/100 on IGN.
Alongside and Frostpunk, the game helped to gain new popularity for the city-building game genre, which was in decline since the failure of SimCity in 2013. With the SimCity franchise no longer producing new games, smaller developers had a chance to provide more creative games. Shams Jorjani from Paradox Interactive said "Things that aren’t big enough for the biggest publishers, are big enough for us, and Cities [Skylines] is an example of that. Those publishers find greener pastures, and that leaves space for us to grow."[19] In particular, Surviving Mars provided an increased complexity to the genre, as unlike previous games bad decisions of the player can cause to loose the game.[19]
The city-builder game , also published by Paradox, received a free update themed around Surviving Mars. This was released to celebrate the game reaching sales of over 5 million, as well as its third anniversary. The new features were a new city building with a launch pad, an astronaut user in Chirper (an in-game parody of Twitter), and a new radio station, "Official Mars Radio".[20]
Josh Tolentino from Destructoid praises the complexity of the game, as it goes into intricate details while managing the extractions of raw resources, manufacturing of complex ones, space, colonists with traits and flaws, and even natural disasters. He pointed that currency has a very limited use and most resources are actual resources, unlike other city builders that put a huge emphasis on the in-game currency. He also pointed that, given the complexity and the random factors generated when starting a new map, game sessions are never the same, and even the basic survival of the colony is not guaranteed.
Josh Tolentino from Destructoid praised the visual style of the game, with bright and colorful buildings and domes that contrast with the dull, even if realistic, desert landscape. He also pointed that things can seem slow and quiet, but the in-game radios can change the mood of the gameplay.