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2 weeks ago
Feature: We built this city on conveniently delineated tiles
A lot of genres have had a resurgence over the past five years, but none more successfully than management games. There are now more ways to direct trains, lay conveyor belts, coral visitors and profit, profit, profit than you could play in a lifetime. The question is: which of these famous timesinks is worth your time, and which of the whipsmart new hires can compete…
2 months ago
Feature: Quaid, start the reactor
I’m trapped on Mars, and it’s getting cold. Despite the reflective sheeting I’ve hung up to insulate my workspace, night has long since fallen, and the heat is leaching from the glass walls. I’m eating boiled potatoes yet again, and I miss my family like crazy. But there’s no way I can see them again, until I’ve solved a lot of problems So I put…
3 months ago
Surviving Mars turns the red planet green in terraforming expansion
Green is the new red and you, dear Surviving Mars player, have committed the fashion faux-pas of colonising a planet in last season's colour. Oh dear oh dear. Thankfully, the second expansion for Haemimont's colony-building strategy game will allow you to change that passé rust red for verdant greens and pops of blues by terraforming the planet. As a bonus, terraforming should make the planet…
5 months ago
The publishers of click-o-strategy games from Crusader Kings II to Cities: Skylines are bringing our precious PC mods to console, teaming up with Microsoft to launch cross-platform modding support. Paradox Interactive are starting with Surviving Mars, 2018's pretty deece space colony game, and plan to bring mods to more of their Xbone versions later this year. While this change mostly benefits Xboners, isn't it nice…
8 months ago
Feature:
Is... is it over yet? Are the Black Friday and Cyber Monday PC gaming deals finally finished? Just a couple more hours to go now, you can do it deals herald, you can get through this. You've got a week and a half holiday coming up soon, just get through the afternoon and then you can go and lie in a dark room and not…
After launching small DLC without the game exploding on the pad, Surviving Mars developers Haemimont Games are just about ready for their colony-management sim's first expansion. Space Race is its name and, publishers Paradox confirmed today, launching on November 15th is its aim. The expansion will introduce rival colonies competing with you for the contracts, support, and parent-like approval of sponsors (including two new sponsors,…
9 months ago
Feature: Low-pressure area
My body betrayed me last month, trapping me in my bed when it wasn’t sending me rushing to my poor, overworked loo. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t work and so I turned to management games to take my mind off the virus squatting inside me. Juggling budgets, disasters and production chains might not sound particularly relaxing, but there’s also a swathe of low-pressure sims that…
Surviving Mars’s Space Race expansion brings rivalries to the red planet
Surviving Mars's initial foray into off-world colonisation is bearing fruit, as developers Haemimont have announced Space Race, its first expansion grown on Martian soil. While the original game was purely a story of mankind struggling against a hostile environment, the Space Race expansion sounds a little more realistic - this time you've got AI-controlled corporate and national rivals. While you won't be declaring war on…
11 months ago
Surviving Mars’s Da Vinci update lets you build without gasping for breath
As well-liked as Surviving Mars is for its uncompromising look at offworld resource management (you can't order some next-day delivery oxygen if you're running low), it's not unreasonable to wish that there was an option to have it ease up a little. Now players can get a feel for its many spinning plates without your doom feeling quite so inevitable. The Da Vinci update, released…
12 months ago
Feature: The endless march of time
We're just about halfway through 2018 (which has somehow taken both too long and no time at all). As is tradition, we've shaken our our brains around to see which games from the last six months still make our neurons fizzle with delight. Then we wrote about them here, in this big list feature that you're reading right now this second. And what games they…
Amazon sold pirate copies of Frostpunk and Surviving Mars, among others
That big shop on the internet, Amazon, has been selling pirated copies of PC games, some do-gooders have discovered (or rather, sellers using Amazon as a storefront have been selling the pirate goods). The dodgy games include icy societal survival game Frostpunk and dusty martian city-builder Surviving Mars, which were being sold for the suspiciously cheapo prices of $3 and $4. If you bought one…
1 year ago
We've just passed the half-way point of 2018, so Ian Gatekeeper and all his fabulously wealthy chums over at Valve have revealed which hundred games have sold best on Steam over the past six months. It's a list dominated by pre-2018 names, to be frank, a great many of which you'll be expected, but there are a few surprises in there. 2018 releases Jurassic World…
A few updates later, Surviving Mars is quietly a much better game
We've diligently posted about DLC and similar gubbins for Surviving Mars, Haemimont and Paradox's good-ish space colony management game, over the past few months, but one thing we've not done is dip a finger into its red soil to check whether or not it's ready for new life to grow. Along with the DLC - most of it free - there've been a few major…
Surviving Mars’ new, free DLC tries harder to stop you surviving
You can go a whole game of Surviving Mars without triggering one of its 'Mysteries', though that's as much to do with a slightly dodgy interface as it is personal choice. But when you do the flip the switch and welcome uncertainty into your citizens' delicate lives, everything gets upended. I won't soon forget the legion of floating orbs that sucked all the heat out…
Surviving Mars ‘Curiosity’ update teaches old domes new tricks
Red planet colonisation sim Surviving Mars did a mostly stand-up job of transplanting Sim City tropes to a hostile new world, but a slightly iffy interface and an inflexible aesthetic perhaps meant that its high-stakes potato-farming wasn't always as epic as hoped. As is increasingly tradition for Paradox-published games - hey-o, Stellaris and Cities: Skylines - it seems long-term refinement is very much plan. We've…
There are too many idiots on Mars but that's about to change. Colony-building sim Surviving Mars, which pleased our Alec well enough when it launched last month, has received its first major patch. The update notes are a treat - not quite Crusader Kings, The Sims or Dwarf Fortress quality, but there's some solid stuff in there. "Colonists will no longer try to walk kilometers…
Feature: Mars a-rats!
John is elsewhere this week, squeezed into Brendan's luggage for a flight to San Francisco and the Game Developers Conference, so I'm here for the regular rundown of last week's top-selling games on Steam. This week, the letters R, A, and S are well-represented with strong showings from both Mars and rats.
Feature: Sim City amongst the stars
I shed a surprising amount of tears during the founding of my first red planet colony in Surviving Mars. None of those tears had anything to do with the pipe leak that killed 58 people, I hasten to add. For those, I just swore at my repair drones and made more colonists work gruelling night-shifts at the polymer factory so we could patch up the…
Feature: Attack the Block
The cubes are black, and shiny, and mobile. They hover in a neat, impossible stack outside one of my colony's larger domes, clicking delicately about one another, always returning to the same overall shape, harming nobody. My robot rovers form a cautious circle around them while my scientists scratch their heads and bicker. I look at the cubes, one of the many Mysteries of Haemimont's…
2 years ago
Feature: The year two thousand and eighteen is upon us
As we lay 2017 to rest, let us remember all of the wonderful games that flickered across our screens and occupied our hearts and minds. But now we must promise never to think of them again because times have changed. This is 2018 and if we've learned one thing from the few hours we've spent in it it's that there are games everywhere. Every firework…
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