Take On Mars Review

[Browning Winters]

Whyis Terraforming Mars so popular? This was the question I posed to twitter the other day. I was admittedly in a bit of a grumpy mood and trying to bait responses to my hot take. Fortunately the responders were largely gracious and I learned a lot about the appeal of a game like Terraforming Mars. This article will function partially as a review, but also partially as an investigation of my own preferences.

This leads to very automatic decisions, as you are mostly evaluating the basic return on investment of your actions. I am not saying you will not have difficult choices to make at times, but they are too few and far between for a two-hours game. This applies to several aspects of the game. The tile laying, for one, while not entirely devoid of decisions, remains a very bland exercice.

I do however acknowledge that going wide generates tremendous replayability: you will focus more on a different aspect of the game each time. And the theme is exceptionally well implemented. Neither amount to a great game in my opinion, and its continued popularity bothers me. Any euro designer out there now knows they do not need to come up with satisfying, intricate interactions; a bunch of disparate mechanics and a good theme can get you unparalleled success.

Thanks for articulating what I could not identify. My play group played this game, it took 4 hours. and everyone was bored and irritated for the last 45 minutes. We were left wondering how such a highly rated game could be so drab. We concluded its lack of interaction, the so called multiplayer solitaire, was the downfall for us. We made the assumption that many board game geeks, especially those who would be attracted to a Mars themed game, would be introverts who would relish the large number of decisions and distractions without having to use any of the diplomacy skills that my play group thrive on while gaming.

I was impressed during my first two games. After that it went down the hill.

I feel and understand all of the criticism in this text.

Looks like On Mars could fill the space I have created selling TM last month ?

I had heard good things and was excited to play TM. 1st game I even got 2nd place and would have been 1st if not for a luck tile swap card final round. I did like the tile building and would have liked more of that.Play length was very long and in part to over complicating the entire game in every way.

Since the pandemic one if my containment projects was making my own game. After 1 year I saw issues that were not resolving. After 2 years and over 50 play thoughts I knew I could not move forward unless I fixed a major part. It was a painful gut punch. I needed to reduce the resources from 5 to 4. 5 was overly complicated and unnecessary and harder to explain the minor differences. I spent the last 6 months dissolving 1 resource and either removing its use redistributing its uses to others. After it was done felt like I cleaned a hoarder house. Everything was clean and worked so much better.

Similar issue with 2nd resources. Just too many. Combine or eliminate some. Also issue if several things as microbes and animals were almost completely worthless. They are both the most rare and have the weakest and least uses. That is a triple fail for balance.

I was very excited to play Surviving Mars. In fact, I sought out the review. I had been following the game through its development, and I loved the tone of the trailers. The fun, slightly retro-futuristic vibe on display sold me on the idea of trying to sustain a colony on Mars against the elements. I was all prepared to lead a group of intrepid explorers in a quest to hold our own against meteor showers and possible alien incursion.

Players are then asked to specify what they would like to take on their first rocket to start building their colony. There are maybe 20 options, ranging from pre-fabricated building kits to raw construction materials. There are larger, rover-style vehicles, and smaller drones, used for material gathering and building tasks. The game gives players no indication as to what might be useful. It just lets you pick some crap and shoot it on a missile to Mars. So fine. I made a few guesses at to the types of items that might be helpful and launched my first mission.

Your next uninformed decision involves where to land on the planet. There are a few meters that appear indicating whether areas might be rich in certain resources, and whether they might be susceptible to particular disasters, but these meters are very surface level.

The next thing you know, you are selecting a specific place within your landing zone to land your rocket. What makes one place better than another? Who knows! Your rocket lands, your drones roll out and start unloading stuff, and then the game gets down to the serious business of completely ignoring you and your problems. The player is given an interface with at least 40 items that can be built, another menu to assign research, another menu to determine which areas of the surrounding terrain to scan, and on and on and on.

My second rocket arrives, and I build the water condenser. Around this time, my solar panels start shutting down. Apparently, they require regular maintenance to prevent red dust from building up on them and gunking up the works. Did the game tell me this so I could prevent it? Nope.

This is the point where I would have bailed on this game. I have played hundreds, if not thousands, of games. I have a wide variety of experience in the gaming world. I understand game systems, and how things tend to work. However, there is a certain amount of information that players need when starting new games, and Surviving Mars simply does not provide that information. I should not have to go out to YouTube to watch several hours of tutorial videos in order to get started on a game. Much like I would never start a large and complex board game without an instruction manual, I should not have to start this obviously complicated game without some sort of tutorial mode.

Of course, for the sake of the review, I tried again. And again. And again. Over and over. Each time I made it a little farther before some unforeseen event shut me down. On my fourth attempt I managed to get people to Mars and keep them alive for a few days. On my fifth attempt, I was able to keep them alive for the ten days needed to declare the colony viable. On my sixth attempt, I was able to add a second dome. I did learn a little from each run and get better. But each attempt represented at least two to three hours of playtime, causing me to get that much more frustrated every time something stupid happened and wiped me out.

There is a fine game under the surface of Surviving Mars, and the developer may eventually patch in a tutorial mode so that players can understand its complexities. But in its current state, I would only recommend Surviving Mars to the hardest of hardcore. It is not the light and fun game you see in the trailers. There were times when I enjoyed aspects of Surviving Mars, when my colony was humming along, and thing were going right. The visuals and soundtrack are indeed a treat. But when things go wrong, and you have no idea why or how to fix it, all the fun leaks out of the game like so much oxygen from a punctured dome.

When I received the set I thought it wise to build it at home before I left for Lanzarote. Firstly I thought it would be a good idea to have a dry run on the build itself in the luxury of my own home. And secondly, and more stupidly I had a foolish hope that it might be able to travel partially built. This was all before I put it bag in the hold of a plane, which you can see the result of in the image below.

And this is a little thing. But there is something quite satisfying about the fact that the retractable landing gear has reversed plates so that the smooth side is on the bottom. Obviously mine are quite heavily scratched now. I guess that comes from positioning it in lots of rocky locations.

With a steady table to build on now I just needed some instructions. And with this I was so very grateful that Lego now have their instruction books as PDFs available online. And that you can download it at a deserted beach thanks to 5G data. The day was saved, even if it did mean I had to spend another hour or so rebuilding for the 3rd time following instructions on my phone screen.

Because Lanzarote like all the Canary Islands is volcanic some of its beaches are black in colour. After a quick geography lesson online this is because of the ground down basalt making up the grains of sand. Basalt is formed from cooling lava. And its impact on this particular landscape make for something very otherworldly, perfect for astronauts and spaceships.

I loved the retractable landing gear and was conscious to have space and a visual difference under the model to see it sitting in the landscape. Having it raised up also helps define the dynamic wedge shape without it getting lost into the floor.

With this setup I found a fairly undisturbed bit of beach and framed everything with the mountains behind. Putting the highest mountain on the right of the image I tried to balance that with the ship on the left. I then left the crew to trail back across to the right to invoke them exploring the new world the found themselves on.

Behind the beach was a lagoon, so the ground was actually lower in the immediate background. However it rose again soon after and in the resulting photo it comes across as layers of the landscape rising up to the mountains behind. I was really happy with the result and will talk about this a little more with some of the other shots.

You can see just creeping into the photo on the right the edge of the ocean. And all of the spray coming of of the very strong gusts and waves were flying across the beach making this stark, yet hazy setting.

My trip to the beach was not only set in the dark sands. In the last km or so as I walked the ground became very rugged and rocky. Like the beach everything was dark and black in colour. And in truth I thought I was walking through a miniature version of Mordor. When I go back the next time I visit Frodo and Sam will definitely in my bag, that is for sure.

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