Surviving Mars Free On Epic, Again

Monday, Aaron spoke of Final Fantasy 7‘s world heading to mobile. I also noted changes to the release of the Watch Dogs: Legion online mode, while Aaron covered Valve’s failure to do to Dota 2 what Blizzard did with Hearthstone. Tuesday, Taylor spoke about a Pokémon sale. Wednesday, I covered Germany’s coming Loot Box laws, and the ZeniMax-Microsoft deal being cleared on both sides of the pond. Though returning to random chance and EA’s favorite surprise on Friday, an employee has been accused of trading “random” in-game items for personal gain. Alexx later rained on my parade and made me want to pick up an indie game releasing soon.

I think you can forgive me for not playing this week’s free game on the Epic Games Store this week for two reasons; one of which is hinted at in the title. Though while I could have taken some time earlier this week to play it again, I was holed up in bed yelling “I don’t like being tired and achy.” While I will happily take another week like that again, I’ll only do it once more for the second dose. The benefits of being vaccinated far outweigh being stupid and dead. Nonetheless, surviving my terraforming of Mars might be less unbearable if it was only a small prick from a jab to save us from my poor decisions.

Surviving Mars is the type of game that if I had all the time in the world, I’d be spending hours just playing quietly with headphones on listening to that Legion soundtrack I’ve been doing. It is a city-builder less in the vein of Frostpunk, Tropico 6, or EA’s Sims City series of the late 90s early 00s, but more Cities Skylines. All of those are games I do quite enjoy for different reasons, but as I’ve echoed a hundred times already, I love space. It is the mystery of what is out there, the challenge of surviving it, and in many ways, not ruining it the same way we’ve done to everything else we’ve explored as a species.

The ultimate goal of your expedition to Mars is to colonize it and poo on your potatoes. You also have a goal of creating a greater and greater infrastructure to make the inhospitable red planet in your eye a bit less like the American Life of Mars (a god-awful pile of tripe) and a bit more like the British one. You just need to remember to pack John Simm for the several-month-long trip, and not the crap 80s sequel, no one wants that. Joking aside, if you enjoy city-builders but don’t have this one in your collection, you are missing out.

All this week until the 18th of March, you can pick up Surviving Mars on the Epic Games Store. While I skipped replaying this week’s game, it looks like I will have to do some actual work next week, as I talk about The Fall. A side-scrolling sci-fi techno-futuristic adventure horror from Canadian developer Over The Moon releasing in 2014. We’ll find out if I am over the moon with it. Call me a clairvoyant if you must, but I’ve got a feeling there will be a second (as of writing) unannounced game to come with this one. Though, I could be wrong (let’s hope I am anyway).