Waking Mars

 PC
User Score
7.7

Generally favorable reviews- based on 74 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 51 out of 74
  2. Mixed: 17 out of 74
  3. Negative: 6 out of 74

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  1. superecnate
    Jun 5, 2013
    10
    Waking Mars is a unique game. It's very diffrent from most games, because instead of killing, shooting, and destroying, your goal is to develop the devestated Martian ecosystem. It does not take long to become immersed, and it becomes difficult to leave the game. I found myself driven to explore, and solve the interesting mysteries that you begin to find. The dialoge is a bit long, but itWaking Mars is a unique game. It's very diffrent from most games, because instead of killing, shooting, and destroying, your goal is to develop the devestated Martian ecosystem. It does not take long to become immersed, and it becomes difficult to leave the game. I found myself driven to explore, and solve the interesting mysteries that you begin to find. The dialoge is a bit long, but it is very interesting, and I often find myself wishing there were more of it. The characters are very well written, and aren't the sterotypical cast of most games. The most fascinating aspect of the game is that you have to play the scientist, and learn about how the ecosystem interacts. An amazing thing about the development of the game is the effort that the developers went through to make it scientifically accurate. You simply do not find the mumbo-jumble found in other games. The developers spent a lot of effort in this, and it shows. Thus, as long as you immerse yourself (which isn't hard to do), you will love this game.… Expand
  2. lmorsino
    Dec 22, 2012
    8
    Its nice to play a platformer where you're not just shooting stuff up. I enjoyed the fact that it had a science theme. Waking Mars is a relaxing, not too difficult puzzle/mystery game. It took me less than 6 hours to finish. The music is quite good, and the story kept me interested. The graphics have a unique style but could have been better in places. My big complaint was that many of theIts nice to play a platformer where you're not just shooting stuff up. I enjoyed the fact that it had a science theme. Waking Mars is a relaxing, not too difficult puzzle/mystery game. It took me less than 6 hours to finish. The music is quite good, and the story kept me interested. The graphics have a unique style but could have been better in places. My big complaint was that many of the caverns looked similar and the animation could use help. Though for the price, the game is a good value and there's really not much to complain about. I would recommend it for someone who wants something a little more cerebral...… Expand
  3. malcolmm
    Nov 15, 2013
    6
    Waking Mars is an interesting game with unique (as far as I know) gameplay elements. You plant and in some cases feed plants on Mars to achieve various effects. Controls are simple, graphics and sound are also simple but don't detract from gameplay.

    But interesting play mechanics don't always yield fun gameplay and I found I had to force myself to keep playing to give it a chance.    Waking Mars is an interesting game with unique (as far as I know) gameplay elements. You plant and in some cases feed plants on Mars to achieve various effects. Controls are simple, graphics and sound are also simple but don't detract from gameplay.

    But interesting play mechanics don't always yield fun gameplay and I found I had to force myself to keep playing to give it a chance. Perhaps once more plants are introduced it gets more interesting, but after discovering about 6-8 different plants I got bored and gave up.    … Expand
  4. JimCorbett
    Jul 27, 2013
    7
    I was pleasantly surprised by Waking Mars. It is a fun puzzle-platformer that is (obviously) set on Mars. you play the role of a scientist who is searching a labyrinth of caves on Mars for alien life. The story itself is actually decent and the voice actors portray their characters well, I just found Amani and ART (who seems to be a bit too much like Claptrap from the Borderlands series)I was pleasantly surprised by Waking Mars. It is a fun puzzle-platformer that is (obviously) set on Mars. you play the role of a scientist who is searching a labyrinth of caves on Mars for alien life. The story itself is actually decent and the voice actors portray their characters well, I just found Amani and ART (who seems to be a bit too much like Claptrap from the Borderlands series) to be a bit annoying and I sometimes skipped through their dialogue because of that. The gameplay is quite fluid and fun. You get seeds from various Martian plants and use them to increase the "biomass" of each level. Once each level reaches a certain level of biomass, you can advance to the next level. It doesn't sound very fun, but it actually is. The game falters in its graphics and musical score. You'll be staring at bland, orange graphics for pretty much the entire game. There is very little, if any, interesting set pieces or backgrounds. Some people found the soundtrack to be good, but i honestly found it to be quite bland and repetitive. These shortcomings don't completely detract from the overall experience. Waking Mars remains an enjoyable 2D pluzzle-platformer.… Expand
  5. fartheststar
    Jun 28, 2013
    8
    Very cool game. I'd classify it as a puzzle/simulation/sandbox/builder type game not a platformer in the typical understanding of the word. It's primarily an ecology puzzle sim where you're introduced into a foreign ecosystem and you have to figure out how all the pieces of life fit together. You grow plants, animals and they all interact in different ways and have differentVery cool game. I'd classify it as a puzzle/simulation/sandbox/builder type game not a platformer in the typical understanding of the word. It's primarily an ecology puzzle sim where you're introduced into a foreign ecosystem and you have to figure out how all the pieces of life fit together. You grow plants, animals and they all interact in different ways and have different properties and you're the farmer who has to figure out how to reintroduce life into the martian caves. The fun is building systems that work using the spores, seeds, biostock, etc that you have and maxing out system potential and seeing everything come to life. In the process you uncover a story of the history of life on mars. Beware: I found this game addictive it kept me up all night as I progressed. There's two endings be sure to google if you have trouble figuring one of them out it's probably worth seeing (the second alternate ending is more satisfying than the first imho).
    I almost didn't buy this because I don't care for platformers but I'm very glad I got it. This thankfully has very little to do with platforming. I don't give alot of 8s or higher, but this is one of the most fun games I've played in a while. I don't play quickly, but I got 17 hours of fun in my first play-through.    … Expand
  6. slushie7
    Jan 13, 2013
    10
    Waking Mars is an absolutely amazing game. This is definitely not an action game; the casual puzzle/platform mechanics simply serve as the driving for the incredible story line. This story line combines with a great soundtrack to create an incredible atmosphere that had me hooked from the start. If you like science fiction and still have an active imagination, I would highly recommend thisWaking Mars is an absolutely amazing game. This is definitely not an action game; the casual puzzle/platform mechanics simply serve as the driving for the incredible story line. This story line combines with a great soundtrack to create an incredible atmosphere that had me hooked from the start. If you like science fiction and still have an active imagination, I would highly recommend this game. The price tag is nice, too.… Expand
  7. Nile3
    Dec 21, 2012
    3
    Great gameplay, medium graphics, extremely annoying dialogs. I stopped playing because of the dialogs, they just won't shut up. The science isn't terribly accurate either, but if you are reading this, you probably graduated from a public school in the usa so you really don't care.
  8. orwellianbob
    Jul 26, 2013
    1
    Dialogue sucks, story sucks, gameplay like spelunker from NES only MORE BOARING... I found the game had way less effort put into it than the preview for it did.. Its a cheap game and good thing cause I would value it at a dollar or less...
  9. hellznrg
    Jul 5, 2013
    9
    Similar to Aquaria, but much better. There are a few annoyances though... like the floaty seeds which are a pain to position properly. They could have made it less onerous.
  10. Duussstttt
    Jun 4, 2013
    7
    Waking Mars is a charming little platformer/adventure game in which you explore a winding cave in the depths of planet Mars. Life in the form of semi-intelligent plants and crustacean-like animals have recently come out of stasis, and you are sent to research them before (minor spoilers) you are trapped by a cave in and must escape.

    Without giving too much away, suffice to say that the    Waking Mars is a charming little platformer/adventure game in which you explore a winding cave in the depths of planet Mars. Life in the form of semi-intelligent plants and crustacean-like animals have recently come out of stasis, and you are sent to research them before (minor spoilers) you are trapped by a cave in and must escape.

    Without giving too much away, suffice to say that the story is engaging enough to keep you interested as you plod along through the caverns, in addition to giving to a handful of overarching objectives to complete. The characters range from the mature and inquisitive MC to a plucky information specialist connected to you by radio and a comic relief on-board AI. Dialogue is voiced decently (especially that of the main character) and is accompanied by a handful of well drawn expression photos.

    Speaking of art, the game is very stylized and a pleasure to look at. Backgrounds and the use of perspective are superb, and the plant and animal designs are imaginative. You will run into the odd hiccup with clipping and obvious sprite outlines, but nothing too jarring. In terms of sound, the creatures are unremarkable and the ambiance soundtrack preforms adequately, though it is no Metriod and becomes repetitive near the end (especially when you push for 100% completion in every room).

    Gameplay consists on flying around caverns and tunnels via jetpack while managing your BIOMASS meter and avoiding harmful obstacles. BIOMASS accumulates by planting flora and managing fauna, and is the main focus of the game. Near the each room becomes its own little enclosed ecosystem, with BIOMASS rising and lowering as animals eat the seeds dropped by the plants you've grown, multiply, and in turn feed other plants to grow more seeds. The trick in each room is generally to micromanage a handful of plant life until a certain level of BIOMASS is attained, thereby opening passage to more of the room and waking the animals, after which it becomes mostly about alien breeding and collecting their carcasses for compost.

    The controls simple, with seeds being thrown via mouse and locomotion controlled through the WASD keys. As previously mentioned, your primary method of movement is by jetpack, which is quite possibly the most fun part of the game. The physics are just floaty enough to allow you to preform all the aerial maneuvers needed for navigating narrow tunnels and dodging around character-seeking plant arms. You do get a jetpack upgrade that allows indefinite hovering, but I personally found the original inertia method of flying too much fun to switch out of.

    All told, the game came to just over 9 hours of casual play spread out over the course of a week on the hardest setting, though the difficulty did not seem to make any difference. I cannot see a lot of replayability for the average user but the farming mechanic CAN be addicting, so much so that I might consider revisiting it way down the road. As it is, Waking Mars is a great little indie adventure that at least deserves a look at $10.00 and a define buy for anything less    … Expand
  11. Raytings
    Aug 30, 2017
    9
    Mars is woke! Waking Mars: a spacey 2D exploration/puzzle game.
    You and your colleague are the first humans on Mars. Your mission: to explore the strange and wondrous Martian cave system that near the end of the 21st century, has been found to harbor life (plant looking, bioluminescent life)! In this 2D Side-scrolling exploration game, you’ll solve ecological puzzles, figure out if    Mars is woke! Waking Mars: a spacey 2D exploration/puzzle game.
    You and your colleague are the first humans on Mars. Your mission: to explore the strange and wondrous Martian cave system that near the end of the 21st century, has been found to harbor life (plant looking, bioluminescent life)! In this 2D Side-scrolling exploration game, you’ll solve ecological puzzles, figure out if humans are alone, and try to recover the lost artificial intelligence OCTO with the help of your own A.I., ART.

    So is Mars all that it’s hyped up to be?

    First off, I want to give a shout out to the developers of this game for choosing two people of color to represent their characters. It’s been rare (but increasingly less so), to see an asian male lead, and a supporting black female lead in any kind of media platform, especially video games. On that note, the characters are wonderfully voiced the whole time there is any dialogue (and there is a LOT of dialogue). The game does a great job connecting the dialogue with the 2D world in ways I hadn’t imaged possible for a 2D game; I was really tied down, playing a few days consecutively.

    In most cases the objective of Waking Mars was to raise the biomass levels of cave rooms with the different species of life you’d encounter inside the red planet. The biomass indicator is at the top right of screen, and has a 1-5 star rating, with 5 being the highest. The more lifeforms in one cave that you reproduced, the higher the mass. Towards the end of the game, the 5 star rating greatly helps you get to the end of the game. I found that after I finished most of the progression, and focused mostly on perfecting biomass throughout the whole map, I lost a bit of interest. It became a bit repetitive fast traveling through the cave systems, taking seeds from one area to another for transplant. Figuring out just which species would do the best in any given area could take a bit of thinking, and more than I’d want to devote in some sittings. Typically, Ledon Zoa create the most biomass (the tallest looking ones, with the floaty seeds).

    Tying it all together was a sense of peaceful exploration with no repercussions for death on normal mode, unlimited fuel for your jetpack, and aesthetically pleasing music that accompanied this “peaceful” feeling. There isn’t really much room for improvement because I think it’s the best game that it could be. If any request I have lingering, I hope a borderless window mode could be apart of a future patch, and a sequel!    … Expand

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
79

Generally favorable reviews - based on 5 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2 out of 5
  2. Mixed: 3 out of 5
  3. Negative: 0 out of 5
  1. PC Gamer
    Feb 8, 2013
    73
    A calming, likeable adventure with an engaging premise, but Waking Mars’s roots could go a little deeper.
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  2. PC PowerPlay
    Feb 6, 2013
    90
    A true exemplar of intelligent game design, Waking Mars is a compelling and imaginative masterpiece. An absolute must-play. [Feb 2013, p.74]
  3. CD-Action
    Feb 6, 2013
    65
    It worked much better as an iOS game than it does on PC. [CD-Action 02/2013, p.69]
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