It's a tricky but satisfying space disaster, but I do wish I’d managed to save those 300 colonists. I actually like that even once you get a pretty advanced colony going you still need to be hands on, but there’s often just too much to juggle at once.Īs fiddly and stressful as Surviving Mars can be, nothing else marries survival and city building so deftly. 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. It provides a broad overview of the colony, but there need to be more ways to dig into the details. There are quality of life features, like the ability to pin things to a taskbar for quick access, but the menus are messy and there’s a lot missing. By the time I’m looking at the dome where shes kicked the bucket, four more colonists have joined her. Unfortunately, the one it has isn't up to the task. 'A colonist has died,' Surviving Mars’ AI assistant warns me in its detached, robotic voice. Since these complex colonies can grow to a gargantuan size, Surviving Mars needs a solid UI to make sense of it. 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, but expansion puts even more demands on your colony. These places give colonists somewhere to blow off steam and get help, but they also need to be staffed and maintained, necessitating more resources and colonists. That's why domes need to be filled with infirmaries and social spaces. Working during the dark hours, getting sick, seeing someone die-there are so many invisible threats to colonists' mental state, and they can eventually culminate in depression or even suicide. Mars is an awful place and living there takes its toll, so colonists need their mental well-being looked after.

If only humans were as great workers as drones.

Surviving mars pc game review