Surviving Mars

 PC
Metascore
76

Generally favorable reviews - based on 39 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 23 out of 39
  2. Mixed: 16 out of 39
  3. Negative: 0 out of 39
  1. Game World Navigator Magazine
    Mar 30, 2018
    73
    During the middle-game the process becomes blatantly boring: as your colony steadily grows, your biggest struggle will be with interface and lack of automation for certain tasks. After hours of going through the motions, you’ll wonder if moving to Mars was a good idea in the first place. [Issue#228, p.48]
    All this publication's reviews
  2. 4P.de
    Apr 1, 2018
    72
    The extraterrestrial city builder has a lot to offer, but suffers from design flaws, feels downright unfinished here or there and would have benefited from more depth.
  3. CD-Action
    Jun 5, 2018
    70
    The depth of systems overseeing gameplay is commendable. It’s a shame though that few players will find enough patience to endure poorly balanced pace and experience Surviving Mars’ biggest strength – its inventive endgame. [05/2018, p.82]
    All this publication's reviews
  5. Meristation
    Mar 28, 2018
    70
    Surviving Mars is a sci-fi settlement builder which becomes more enjoyable once you have understood its complex mechanics. It portrays lots of sci-fi references and its controls on PC are pretty intuitive.
  6. Games Master UK
    Mar 22, 2018
    70
    A solid colony builder packed with complex systems, but the red planet feels a little too familiar. [Apr 2018, p.81]
    All this publication's reviews
  7. COGconnected
    Mar 20, 2018
    70
    Surviving Mars is a challenging city building experience for those willing to work to crack the surface and is tremendously satisfying once you get there.
  8. PlayGround.ru
    Mar 20, 2018
    70
    Surviving Mars is an unintuitive game that really needs some kind of tutorial. Still, it perfectly captures the atmosphere of exploring and colonizing the Red Planet.
  9. PCWorld
    Mar 19, 2018
    70
    Surviving Mars has a lot of interface annoyances and other small issues, but its blend of optimism and dread makes a compelling foundation for a city/colony builder.
  10. JeuxActu
    Mar 19, 2018
    70
    Surviving Mars is a very good city-builder game with a lot of upsides, but the early game is made unnecessarily hard by an absolute lack of tutorial, which forces the player to learn by trial and error.
  11. Everyeye.it
    Mar 15, 2018
    70
    No doubt about it: Surviving Mars is a good sci-fi city builder.
  12. Vandal
    Mar 25, 2018
    68
    It’s an interesting experience, hindered by the lack of information the game provides about it. The ingredients are good, but it needs more seasoning.
  13. Jeuxvideo.com
    Jun 23, 2018
    65
    Surviving Mars surely doesn't lack charm and depth. Dedicated gamers will be pleased to establish a massive colony. Others will probably look for a more structured and organized game.
  14. New Game Network
    Mar 21, 2018
    65
    Surviving Mars has the interplanetary foundations of a good strategy game, but it gets bogged down in its own complexity, micromanagement, and a surprisingly bland setting.
  15. games(TM)
    May 18, 2018
    60
    A great foundation, but sadly a giant misstep. [Issue#200, p.78]
    All this publication's reviews
  16. Strategy Gamer
    Apr 7, 2018
    60
    Surviving Mars is treading old ground, despite the new soil. For better or worse, it offers a comfortable colony management experience that trades innovation for familiarity.
  17. Game Over Online
    Mar 15, 2018
    55
    I eventually stopped playing after about 30 hours because the game was just too mind-numbingly boring to continue. I was also shocked that I had only played for 30 hours. It felt like at least twice that long.
This publication does not provide a score for their reviews.
This publication has not posted a final review score yet.
These unscored reviews do not factor into the Metascore calculation.

In Progress & Unscored

?
  1. Eurogamer
    Mar 19, 2018
    This is a game that manages to remain optimistic about human can-do while never forgetting that Mars looks like a bit of a dive and it's going to be properly awful trying to live there. Awful, but interesting. We will go to Mars to find out who we actually are. [Recommended]
  2. Polygon
    Jun 23, 2018
    All of Surviving Mars’ interlocking systems make for an arresting time sink that merges logic, forethought, psychology and experimentation. If you’re the sort of person who enjoys losing yourself in high stakes strategy, building and planning, Surviving Mars is worth a look.
  3. Rock, Paper, Shotgun
    Mar 15, 2018
    Though I sometimes grew weary of the donkey-work of cables and repairs, I definitely relish the new state of sustained fear Surviving Mars brings to city sims. It means that even small accomplishments feel so much bigger.
  5. Vice
    Mar 16, 2018
    I survived Mars. My reward was a self-sustaining economic engine serving no end greater than its own perpetuation. It was dozens of millions of miles from Earth, and I felt like I’d gone nowhere.

Awards & Rankings

67
#67 Most Discussed PC Game of 2018
52
#52 Most Shared PC Game of 2018

User Reviews

All reviews »
User Score
7.0

Mixed or average reviews- based on 218 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 120 out of 218
  2. Mixed: 57 out of 218
  3. Negative: 41 out of 218
  1. Lewis12
    Mar 18, 2018
    5
    Surviving Mars doesn't live up to it's promises. It's pretty enjoyable until you build your first dome, that is for first 2 hours. QuicklySurviving Mars doesn't live up to it's promises. It's pretty enjoyable until you build your first dome, that is for first 2 hours. Quickly becomes tedious and monotonous, with lack of any strategic or management depth (I've been digging management and city-building games for years). Overall, it clearly looks unfinished with a plenty of room left for add-later content.

    The game is rather unique for today's standards for not leading the player by the hand in discovering it's mechanics, which can explain some of clamor on Steam reviews. Nevertheless, it feels blatantly incomplete even on higher difficulty settings.    … Full Review »
  2. Jrdp
    Mar 16, 2018
    6
    When this game was announced i found several interesting themes on it, a surviving game, the mysteries, random tech tree, etc...

    With only    When this game was announced i found several interesting themes on it, a surviving game, the mysteries, random tech tree, etc...

    With only 3 or 4 hours played it is soon to make a deep review, but my first thoughts:

    The base building seems a mixed bag, it's pretty and have enought options but the layout it's confusing, adyacent elements sometimes seems to not connect with energy and ask for 1 title power lines, it's dificult to say sometimes if the terrain would allow to plant anything at first sight, the domes are independent and people seems to avoid going from one place to another.

    The game seems to ask for a deep micromanagement but dont have the tools to allow you make it easily, it's very dificult and time consuming to for example review each colonist characteristics and set him in the correct dome/work but the game seems to ask for it, its like to be playing at Cities, have the need to organize the trafic layout but dont have any tool to see the densiity, flow, jams, etc...

    I choose one low dificulty (not the easier, but relatively close) and the game is too easy, the events till the moment are not problematic nor give any challenge and even one "catastrofic event" that was a massive meteor shower have almost zero impact on the buildings.

    The tech tree is ok, but i found the investigation too fast (at least on this dificulty) and dont makes you feel the need to have hard choices of what tech research, you could allways stack 4 investigations and have zero need to prioritize one over another, there is too strong favour to advance the investigations almost in order top-down left to right....

    Another issue is the depleting resources deposits, it's not a bad system by itself, but if in 4 hours i have depleted a concrete deposit and a water one and need to move to the next i have terrible fears that it would become an issue in mid to late game, needing to move whole base parts to another part of the map just to repeat the same that i made the first time but over a new deposit.
    If it would only happend over "strange" resources like rare minerals, it would be a okis feature, but when it happend with all the resources (water, concrete, etc..) i found ii not very desirable (It's the first thing i would seek to mod with the workshop).

    Another thing is the need of materials micromanagement on the mid-late game, as soon as the base grow you need to manually move the materials from one part to another as the drones have a limited radious, for example, repair parts that you are building on a factory need to be moved (manually) to cover all the base if the drones that need then are not in radious of where it's stored, and it happend to a lot of resources, on the short term it's not a problem but 4 hours into the game already started to be, it's the second thing that need to be modded, automatic routes.

    Visually is okish, but not great but is good enougth from a base building game.

    The UI is really terrible, lacks basic features, i still have to found how to monitor and extrapolate power, oxigen and water consumption graphs, visual layouts of wind generator output to place new ones, when crop fails i need to known why it does and why previous ones don't, etc...

    As previously noted the building choices are not bad and have several building types, but from the first hours i have the strange feeling that what it's short its not the building types but the choices whithin them, you one one building type of each, one point, and if you want a larger one, or another harder to withstand meteors, or another with less maintenance, or another more efficient or automated that need less manpower to functions you are out of luck. It's really a shame because the game is asking for it for example automated plants that need less manpower at the cost of a lot more energy and maintenance or a hundreds more options allow the player to build the base that they want, but it's not currently present on the game and it's missed a lot because that way the game is made just ask to define a bunch "perfect" layouts and just use them till the hell freeze.

    Ok, till now i have pointed all the negative, from my review you could ask why the hell with all the points being negative he gave the game a six? The short answer for it it's the potential of the game and that could be modded into a very fun and rewarding game.

    The long answer is that the game have a wonderfull basement that with DLC's and specially with user mods from the steam workshop could make it the definitive base building game (and from facts like that even mysteries could be added with mods lend me to belive that it's possible), it's like have a wonderfull terrain that allow you to bring into realliity the house of your dreams but the house it's currently a rusted caravan, the posibilitites are there but the reallity is a rusted caravan    … Full Review »
  3. Jrud05
    Mar 15, 2018
    3
    I’m not digging the fact that domes can’t be connected.
    The game should also have an in-depth tutorial available since it has a bit of a    I’m not digging the fact that domes can’t be connected.
    The game should also have an in-depth tutorial available since it has a bit of a learning curve. Luckily there are plenty of YouTube videos that help figure things out.
    My biggest concern so far though is the level of challenge, it just doesn’t seem to be very difficult. It would seem as if the game would need to be tough especially right at the beginning instead of the challenge only increasing as you play.
    The game seems to be mostly focused on logistics. It’s annoying to have to spend most of your time moving materials around.
    Hopefully with some updates, this game can be all it’s cracked up to be.    … Full Review »
See all user reviews »