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 theWaking 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
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