![]() ![]() By the time this point in the adventure is reached, a settlement will have many colonists, some of whom have banded together in an attempt to convince the player, as overseer, what to do with the artifacts, if anything. These are the main source of lore, and involve finding key artifacts hidden in the planet, such as mysterious black cubes or perhaps monolithic-type structures. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect to Surviving Mars is its mysteries. This is a missed opportunity, since a lot of utility feels lost with that glaring omission. Yet, the DualShock 4’s touchpad as well as its button, go completely unused in Surviving Mars. There are handy shortcuts to quickly change roles or target objects, which is sorely needed in a game such as this, and is always appreciated on console. ![]() If an incorrect object is highlighted, simply pressing the cross button repeatedly will cycle through nearby objects, until the intended target is highlighted. For instance, pressing the Cross button selects the nearest object to the cursor, which is always centered on the screen. Surviving Mars has a fairly smart control scheme, with compromises made for the controller. ![]() This isn’t the most detailed simulation game out there, graphics-wise, but in a sci-fi setting perhaps it doesn’t really need to be.Ĭity simulation games are generally designed with the PC in mind, because the interfaces are full of things to select and click on. Equally as important is being able to zoom out when a city is full, which doesn’t seem to be much of a problem, either. Zooming in up close on buildings reveals a decent amount of detail, and the longer a building or robot has been around, the more dust cakes up over time in a nice touch. Other than during a manual or autosave, the engine running the show keeps the screen refreshed with data, and hopping from screen to screen is a breeze. It shows in Surviving Mars’ smooth performance. The development crew at Haemimont Games are no strangers to the city-building genre – they’ve been at it since their release of Glory of the Roman Empire in 2006. It’s yet another aspect of Surviving Mars that ensures things are always interesting. ![]() There’s all kinds of these traits that will mix and match to various degrees, such as workaholic gamers, lazy alcoholic gamblers, rugged sexy party animals (yes, “sexy” is actually a trait, which can help to improve the birth rate), and others which have to be kept in mind. If a colonist’s sanity level dips too low, for instance due to a prolonged period of starvation and oxygen deprivation, they may commit suicide – however, those who have the religious trait will never commit suicide due to a low sanity level. Each citizen has their own personality, as well as accompanying traits, both beneficial and detrimental to the colony. This research can be used to make improvements in five key areas, such as increasing the resource load that each drone can carry, improving productivity of workers, and plenty of other boosts to gameplay. As long as something is in range of their commander drone, if it needs attention and there are available resources, it’ll get repaired or maintained without manual intervention.Īs a settlement expands, research can be gained – automatically if the difficulty is low enough, as well as through properly staffed research facilities within functioning domes. Drones can be commanded individually, but are also pretty good at behaving autonomously. They can extract resources such as metals from deposits scattered in the barren wastelands of Mars, repair broken equipment including one another, build and repair structures, and more. Those drones are the labor force of Surviving Mars. There’s a ton of preparation involved, and drones will be constantly busy leading up the arrival of colonists. A lot of these fixtures have to be built ahead of time, otherwise the freshly arrived colonists will quickly turn into fresh corpses. Unlike in games such as SimCity, where simply placing a zone connected to power and water is enough to get things going, Surviving Mars requires each dome to have living quarters, medical facilities, farms, recreational centers, and other spaces if one is to be successful. Domes are required in order for humans to be able to arrive via rocket ship and attempt to eke out an existence on the Red Planet. The basic resources in Surviving Mars are metals, concrete, machine parts, polymers, and electronics, which cements it as a sci-fi game through and through. What is there to do as a Mars colony manager? As with most city sims, the first order of business is securing resources to prepare an area for habitation. ![]()
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