Unlike any other game I’ve seen in this genre, there is no visualization whatsoever of what your colony looks like: the UI is a simple tree of expandable options with miniature icons, and if you complete a solar panel, the “Solar Panels” row ticks up from “1x” to “2x” and the Power panel adds +0.3 MW. Your initial objective is simply to become self-sufficient in the essentials (energy, oxygen, water, food), shuffling your meager crew around a cycle of researching new things and building buildings. The core of the game is a resource gathering/city building exercise. Enjoy these shiny graphics while they last, because for the rest of the game, the UI is closer to Excel’s 1979-vintage predecessor Visicalc: green figures on a black background, slowly ticking up or down. As you start the game, you’re treated to a 3D view of Earth, where you can select your faction, and then another 3D globe of Mars, where you can select the placement of your nascent colony. One day, idly dredging the depths of the Play Store, I stumbled on MTA. Between the two lies a whole heap of pay-to-play trash, where materials can be magicked out of the thin Martian air and buildings completed instantly simply by forking out cash for credits.
#GEM TOWER DEFENSE STARCRAFTE 2 ABSURD SIMULATOR#
At the other end of the spectrum, the obsessively micromanaging Mars Simulator Project does things like assign each settler Myers-Briggs personality types and track the radiation exposure of their eyeballs, pretty much foregoing colony building entirely. Paradox’s Surviving Mars is typical in the shortcuts taken by big-budget games: metals can be obtained by having a drone zap rocks of metal ore conveniently lying on the surface, instantly turning them into refined steel. “Decent”, in my book, means bearing some resemblance to reality, so that (for example) materials should either be made locally or slowly and expensively hauled from Earth. I grew up on a steady diet of science fiction, SimCity, Elite and Civilization, and am thus always on the lookout for a decent Mars colony simulator. This game is Mars: The Arrival (MTA), a Mars colony builder app by Heiwa Games, for Apple and Android.įirst, a bit of backstory. In a world embracing instant digital gratification, I’d like to compose an ode to a quirky game where the average length of a move is measured in days and even paying money can’t speed things up.
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