Mars Horizon (PC) - Preview

To quote Jean-Luc Picard: “Space, it is really bloody big!” At least it was something like that. Space is a magical place full of blank voids of hatred that want to kill you, and according to our imagination, little green men with probes. I think someone said something about it being the final frontier, and that’s true because if we don’t fix the global warming mess we have going on, it will the final frontier we’ll be alive to see. Yet for some reason, some don’t want to explore it. Why? Space is cool, like bowties, fezzes, and Madness, it is just cool.

So, naturally, space games are cool; Shut up, that’s a great segue! Mars Horizon is part of the Steam Game Festival: Autumn Edition, lasting for the next week until the 13th of October. So most of the next week you’ll be picking between many demos you’ll hardly have enough time to play. Mars Horizon is one of those many games, and I got a quick preview of it yesterday. It is a game about being an accountant for early space agencies exploring the expanse we’re falling through while clinging to a dying rock.

Mars Horizon, unlike what you probably think when it comes to space games, focuses on the management of the agency instead of bombing Mun with little green men. Going back to the start of 1957, you take control of either NASA (then called NACA), ESA, which wasn’t founded until 1975 and was called ESRO before that, the Soviet Space Program, Japan’s NASDA, and CNSA. Though CNSA is the Chinese program which as far as I know didn’t start until 1993. From there you are tasked with researching, budgeting, and sending rockets, probes, and beings into space. Well, give or take, some sounding rockets don’t go that high.

Through the years, you get tasked with political upheaval as popularity in space rises and falls. In the early space race of the 60s between the US and Soviet Union, both had political pressure to outperform the other and win the race, you are no different. It is not just politicians you have to please either. You’ll have the public to please too, as you are asked to stop sending Donkey Kong into space. Maybe he should stop throwing barrels about the lab at anyone with a mustache and a red hat first. Nonetheless, you have your reasons to beat the other agencies to fly a lawn dart into Venus or kill a bunch of humans in a failed Moon landing.

It is all very nice, and well done. There are minor things I could do without, such as being told, “this will be the percentage of your flight” then having to go through a minute of menus and cut scenes every time. I understand why the first bit is there, it is so you can reschedule if there is bad weather. That is understandable. All the same, a rough weather report would have sufficed, though I’m sure that would mean the game would need to run in weeks not months. Nonetheless, the launch reliability is a mix of random chance and your experience, so you never know if the weather will affect it too much.

The same random chance works for the probe research mini-game. You are given objectives to get blue disks, purple compasses, or red WIFI bars; depending on your module, you can run certain commands to gain these objectives each turn. Though you have to manage the battery and resources on the probe, as far as I’ve come to understand it is random chance/luck if you’ve done everything correctly. That’s not a gripe though, after a turn or two I’d learned how to balance it with keeping spare power to resist failures. It is a fine mini-game, though it does get a bit repetitive the more you go on.

Later when you get to the Mercury and Gemini programs, you’ll have humans as a resource too. From there you’re going to expand and get into later space exploration with a manned mission to Mars. It is a brilliant piece of storytelling when it comes to history, as there is a full space-based encyclopedia giving brief rundowns of each piece of the space puzzle. From your rockets, the background of EVAs, Sputnik’s swearing and TV censoring, and even details on the animals used in the advancement of space flight. Every little advancement you make, there is more it will tell you about the real-life history of how we got there.

To quickly run down what I’ve not covered entirely: The research is as direct as you could make it while giving a little bit of freedom, as you’d expect. Building the agency’s base of operations could use some work. It does what it is supposed to, but you’ll take a while to understand how it all clicks together. Finally, the space map, the planetary alignment map, or whatever you’d call it, is a brilliant idea to pull out and reveal it. However, once you discover how to move it, it would be nice to make it easier to move about instead of the lock-on for the planet you are looking at. The lock-on seems to stick a little.

If you have time this week, you should play the demo of Mars Horizon. I’ve known about this game since about March, and I’ve been excited to see where it goes. I would like to see the ability to be a little more creative with your story heading to Mars. However from what I have been able to play so far, my excitement isn’t quashed. Currently, Mars Horizon is set to release on Steam at some point later this year.

A Steam PC preview copy of Mars Horizon was provided by The Irregular Corporation for this preview.