Surviving Mars

Simcity on Mars

Overview

The Sim City genre has really exploded since Maxis' masterpiece from the 80s. Surviving Mars is a nice balance of sandbox, game, and story.

Three important aspects of Surviving Mars are managing the economy, planning, and experiencing the story.

Economic Management

A large part of the game is managing resources. There are about a dozen different resources and some short supply chains. For the most part, this is satisfying. There is a lot of automation and it's fun to watch your drones carry things around. The transport drone and the cargo rockets from Earth will cover you if you find yourself scare in a resource. It's fun to set up supply chains, and there isn't much stress about getting it perfect because Earth will save you.

Planning and Technology Research

Early on there are a few important decisions to make. Do you try to mine rare minerals to sell to Earth? Do you research advanced factories, buy the factories from earth, or just buy the finished good from Earth? Can you harvest loose surface metal or do you need to build a metal extractor?

In the two games I played, I didn't feel these decisions were important. I had enough money that I could buy whatever I needed from Earth. Factories are cheap to buy but expensive to research, and having one of each is enough to last for a very long time. 

Research is slow and most of the upgrades don't feel especially meaningful.

Planning location and contents of living domes is very important and interesting.

The Story

There are about a dozen "mysteries" to choose from every time you play. These have only a mild impact on the game, but do provide a nice distraction. Every time I was getting bored, this nice piece of fiction would show up to engage me. All in all, it is minor but nice.

Complaints

Lack of Depth

My biggest complaint is the lack of depth. There aren't that many different things to build. There aren't many different types of resources to exploit. The research path doesn't seem to vary much. I played two games. Neither was very tense, but I suspect that the tension wouldn't be fun. Much of the game isn't precise, but the game is quite forgiving. Being forced to play more precise would likely not be much fun.

Managing Colonists

I read an excellent piece of advice that said to not micromanage the colonists. Dealing with them is often frustrating and the UI for managing them is clunky. Sometimes this is a big deal. Rather than stress about it, it's better to play on an easier difficulty and try to organize your buildings in such a way for them to sort themselves out. Still, given that colonist management is the majority of the late game, this was disappointing.

Recommendation

This is a really tough one. As a Sim City sandbox game on Mars I got 20 hours of fun. The "game" aspect was not strong, but it was fun to see the different events once or twice. If pressed, I would reluctantly give Surviving Mars a thumbs-down.