Surviving Mars

About Surviving Mars

Surviving Mars dropped in March 2018 from Haemimont Games and Paradox Interactive. This sci-fi city builder lets you colonize the Red Planet as one of three major space agencies. You pick a sponsor, scout a landing site, and start building domes on alien soil. The game runs on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Linux, and Mac. It is strictly single-player with no multiplayer chaos. Your main goal is keeping colonists alive while you figure out what those mysterious black cubes actually are. The pitch is simple enough. You manage resources, handle sandstorms, and expand your settlement without dying of exposure or boredom.

Gameplay

You start by selecting a space agency to fund your mission. Once you land, you place domes for housing and life support while mining minerals nearby. Drones fly around to automate tasks like farming oxygen or collecting water ice. You research new tech trees to unlock better building types and terraforming tools. A typical session involves checking resource bars constantly. You might spend an hour optimizing power grids before a massive dust storm hits. Colonists need food, water, and air, so you must balance production lines carefully. Some days you just walk around the bar to keep morale up. Failure is easy if you ignore a single resource or let a dome crack during a radiation event.

What Players Think

PlayPile data shows 100 ratings on IGDB with an average score of 72.1 out of 100. The community mood leans toward frustrated but engaged. Average playtime sits around 45 hours for most users who actually finish the campaign. Completion rates suggest many players quit when resource management gets too punishing. Review snippets often mention the deep simulation depth but complain about the harsh difficulty spikes early on. Some users report spending over 100 hours just tweaking colony layouts. The historical low price of $9.89 on GOG makes it a tempting buy for strategy fans willing to endure the learning curve. Most players feel the black cube mystery adds enough narrative drive to stick around.

PlayPile's Take

This game works best for players who enjoy complex resource management and don't mind losing colonies frequently. At the current price of $9.89, it offers solid value despite some steep difficulty curves. You will unlock 40 achievements if you push through the harder scenarios. The game lacks polish in its late-game optimization tools, but the core loop remains engaging for hours. Avoid this title if you want a relaxing city builder without constant stress. Surviving Mars demands patience and careful planning every single session. It succeeds as a hard-nosed simulation of off-world living rather than a casual experience.

Storyline

Welcome Home! The time has come to stake your claim on the Red Planet and build the first functioning human colonies on Mars! All you need are supplies, oxygen, decades of training, experience with sandstorms, and a can-do attitude to discover the purpose of those weird black cubes that appeared out of nowhere. With a bit of sprucing up, this place is going to be awesome!