Surviving Mars

The best way to "play" the game is to empty the rocket on earth, launch the rocket back into orbit (so it doesn't get hit by meteors), never build anything, queue all of the research, leave the game running. This way you not only make a couple of billion in crowdfunding (this is a real tech in game) but nothing will ever get destroyed, you will be able to research everything before even "starting" the game. Mars will be fine for another couple of hundred years, and i will enjoy my crowdfunding billions here on earth ... probably going to spend them on alcohol and steaks. Yay!

The good parts
* It looks pretty to decent. It has this clunky mix of Satisfactory stuff like pipes everywhere and the pretty things inside the domes. I did not play long enough to actually see any terraforming, but would imagine it looking pretty much like whats inside the domes right now.
* Drones are actually somewhat useful and behave more or less how i expect them to. They are also pretty fast, so that's a plus.

The terrible things
* Pipes share oxygen and water, but not electricity, that is separate. Why? Because pipes are clunky as f*** and building two networks would have made this game impossible.
* Pipes are about 7 feet above ground ... like on earth. Like, you know, how pipes in every city on earth running fresh and waste water are above ground. Also if pipes are damaged anywhere you are losing about 100 sol worth of resources per hour.
* It ignores every single bit of actual science around living on Mars or terraforming it. This might be a plus, depending on where you are coming from.
* It is slow ... like really slow, even on the fastest setting it is slow. Grass is growing in real life faster than the plants in my hydro towers.
* It has got events. And they are random. Not like monopoly random but weird. You can have an event that doubles science income (depending on start) or if you don't want that you can take 2 iron. An event that costs something like 500M worth of imports from earth, or does nothing. 500M is a lot, depending on start.
* It has got meteor showers. But as in all zones games, they are only animated/calculated where the game actually has stuff, because it would be too resource intensive to actually calculate a meteor shower properly. Depending on when this hits, this may be game over at any time. If you have a single building on the entire planet, it will be hit within the first 100 sols. Heck, if you have a rower out somewhere, that will be hit, if its the only thing around.
* It has maintenance, but it's weird. What would a simulation game be without any completely random and made up resource sinks, ey?
* It has resource chains and resources. One of the more important (but somewhat abundant) is concrete ... because like here on earth, you dig that out of your garden to fix your house. Water is caught out of the air (what a Dune reference). Fuel is made from water. GHG factories burn fuel to warm Mars and produce greenhouse gases. So you take things out of the atmosphere, do some things and put it back and it somehow warms the planet and produces different elements ...
* Resources are consumed when the building is turned off. I guess it doesn't matter after all if you forgot to turn of the stove.
* Domes are made of glass, because it looks pretty and who wants a meteor safe house underground that's protected by several meters of cheap Regolith and insulates against -150 degrees surface temperature (this is from the in-game reference)?

Random
* Buildings in domes require more or less the same maintenance as outside. Martian storms are overrated!
* The first living building you get for your colonists is a two story house with a cute little veranda and two chairs four lounging in the sun. If only i had like a billion dollars to build myself a rocket to live on Mars,
* The game insists you keep the colonists happy, you are here to work for them, not the other way around. The game suggests a bar, appropriately called space bar and not mars bar. Because alcohol fixes everything, even here on earth. I would check out the recent WHO report on alcohol, it basically mirrors this sentiment.
* The game has some weird slurs about eating habits. It also has extended building support for ranching. Because the energy conversion from sun to plant to animal to human is so much more efficient. Especially as the amount of sunlight hitting Mars is only about a third of what Earth gets. And who cares about efficiency in a survival simulation?
* Sun is only a third? So why are all my domes made out of glass? Oh yea, Pretty ...
* It proudly quotes Elon Musk and wants us to build shuttle service between the houses so the colonists, who are there only on vacation, don't have to walk. I think it took heavy inspiration from The Line, and what was that other city? Super Phoenix?
* Most of the factories and the food production and water conservation need to be manned by humans at all times. Why? Because humans are a resource that needs to be carefully managed and is used as "The Gate" in the game.
* Food in hydroponics will fail if the stations are not fully manned by humans. Like here on earth, the tomatoes in your garden will not grow if you are not watching them 24/7. Honest!
* Growing food for 12 people requires 6 people, because if you don't man the stations you don't get any food at all.
* The high tech wind farms, will perform 50% better if you stick some pieces of plastic onto them. I have to try this with my turbo car. I bet the wrappers from some mars bars will make it go twice as brrr
* You can dig out Mars with a couple of drones and a few rocks. Digging out a mountain ridge will be about 10 times faster than building a house no matter how high the mountain is. And requires less maintenance. But building an electrical line over a small bump in the earth, like where two ramps meet? Never!
* In fact you can completely level Mars in less time than it takes to build a colony that supports 12 humans ...
* You can only put things into storage, which requires energy (after all the iron bars don't want to be cold at night), or depots, but not anywhere. Depots don't cost anything, they don't even have a fence. Except you can put things anywhere, and the game will do that happily, only then you don't need depots. So what are you researching them for?!
* You cannot build a pipe over a debris depot (yay for cleaning up mars, all those lose rocks everywhere are an eyesore), but you can dismantle it and then build the pipe. The rocks will still be happily piled where they were.
* There is a special projects where you can manually trigger a meteor storm. You will get anomalies (think Civ5 huts) and some resources. On the other hand, the random meteors hitting Mars all the time, they don't give anything. I guess we really know the good Rock from the bad one, no? Space metal! Yar!
(the event that shatters your glass dome is a concert)

I don't really have anything else to say other then that this is just a really good game, it's fun almost everytime I play it.

*7.5/10 – Great Early Game, But Loses Steam Later*

Surviving Mars is a fantastic city-building and economic management game that really captures the challenge of establishing a thriving colony on the Red Planet. The early game is incredibly engaging—scouting landing zones, managing scarce resources, and ensuring your colonists survive the harsh Martian environment creates a tense and rewarding experience. The economic micromanagement is satisfying, and the game does a great job making you feel like every decision matters.

However, once your colony becomes self-sufficient, the late game suffers from repetition. The initial struggle for survival gives way to routine expansion, and without major new challenges or threats, the gameplay can start to feel monotonous. While DLCs and mods help add some variety, the core loop doesn’t evolve enough to keep the endgame as exciting as those thrilling early hours.

Despite this, Surviving Mars is still a highly enjoyable experience for fans of strategic city-builders. If you love meticulously planning supply chains and optimizing your colony’s growth, you’ll get a lot of fun out of it—just don’t expect the same depth in the late game as you get at the start. Worth playing, but could use more endgame content.

I absolutely love this game—I've played through various scenarios and still find myself coming back to it time and time again. I bought it at full price on release, and it’s been a worthwhile experience overall.

That said, even after all these years, some bugs remain. For instance, breakthroughs that have been researched sometimes don’t apply properly. Another ongoing issue is seniors refusing to move into retirement homes, even after being removed from their original apartments multiple times.

A simple fix would be adding a “Prioritize Seniors” button to retirement homes—similar to the existing prioritization options for engineers or medics in other buildings. It’s a small change that could make a big difference in gameplay flow and realism.

I remain hopeful that the developers will address these issues, as the existing bugs are too significant to ignore, despite official support for the game having ended some time ago.

It'd be a disservice to not credit the insanely talented modding community. Thanks to all the dedicated individuals keeping the game alive!

RETROFUTURISM!!! RETROFUTURISM!!! RETROFUTURISM!!! 😜😜😜

It's a great game and I love the retrofuturist aesthetic (go figure) that they went with. IIRC the artbook describes how they mixed the old retrofuturism with a newer, sleeker, technology and designs, to modernize the aesthetic (which is why I imagine there are no real big bulky TV screens). A lot of the technology is a mix of retro-futurism and newer stuff although the game has a clear preference for the former. And then some stuff transcends either, naturally.

This is a true space age retro-futurism classic

Game depends on lots of DLC.. w/o it's getting pretty boring(( it's like you missing something.. it's not build your civ.. but more gambling to get better resource scatter. And just wait till next turn.
like wait 10 SOL for more people, etc

Fun and relatively simple colony sim that could have used a little more polish.

The good.
-the OST is amazing
-slow paced chill experience
-satisfying tech tree with pretty OP and fun upgrades in the late game.
-excellent progression from pinching penny's and barely filling housing to raking in billions and overpopulation being the main problem in your colony.
-well written story cards and interesting and rewarding “mystery events”.
-very customizable game options and tons of variety in random events and starting settings that can have pretty big impacts on your early and mid game strategies.
-environment design is gorgeous. Still looks great at macro scales in 2025.
-has a lot of character and S O U L. You can tell the devs cared and had fun making this game.
-its overall a really fun game with a lot of replayability if you like slower paced games. The progression is very rewarding and well balanced. Challenging but not unfair. Different challenges and goals present themselves as you progress and watching lakes fill and tundras transition to forests is very satisfying. My complaints are mostly centered on the very late game so don’t let them discourage you from playing this (you should) (and get the Green Mars DLC. It’s vital). Mods also fix most of my gripes.


The bad
-buggy.
-the game ender (in the very late game, don’t worry) is that colonists and drones start having trouble managing themselves. Colonists lose the ability to efficiently distribute themselves and there isn’t an efficient way to do it manually so keeping homelessness and unemployment in check becomes a Sisyphean task. Drones also struggle to build things and will sit idle despite there being ample resources in nearby caches. Sounds like a major problem but this only really becomes an issue in your colony in the very late game. You’ll have forests and thousands of colonists before this really becomes unwieldy. Theres a mod for this that has helped in the past but is out of date as of 4/2025.
-not enough building variety in the late game. Once you are fully teched and self sufficient, you end up just building the same buildings over and over in every dome in order to keep everyone employed. So. Many. TV Stations.
-art design. The domes look great and most of the building designs are nice or at least totally fine. However there’s a few buildings that are so bad they impact the overall aesthetic. The garish Nurseries, playgrounds, and amusement parks are the worst offenders.
-missing some basic UI and control functions that should be standard in a colony sim with rts elements like this. You can’t double click or shift click units to select all similar types, only some units can set up transport routes (dozers can’t automate waste rock transport wtf), you can’t issue complex orders to more than one transport at a time, unless a unit is pinned, it can be very easy to misplace it then all you can do is scan the landscape playing where’s Waldo until you find it, no mini map which would solve a lot of the issues with the camera and losing units, not a great queue or prioritization system for building and giving orders. Mods fix a lot of these issues.
-the camera is odd. It zooms out a fair amount but not as much as I’d like before transitioning to an overhead map that’s on a fixed camera angle. Theres a bit of a delay in this transition and the default scroll speed is pretty slow so scrolling across the map becomes tedious. A mini map would really help this. There is a minimap mod but I haven’t tried it.
-mostly complete slop DLC. I mentioned the OST is excellent, it is. The other radio stations aren’t so don’t bother with any of those. Cosmetics you can take or leave. Get em on sale I guess. I haven’t tried the trains or underground DLCs but from watching YouTube videos I’m not really interested in them or what they add to the game (they’re also buggy as hell apparently). The only totally vital DLC I’d get is the green planet one. This unlocks a whole tech tree and the terraforming mechanics. Honestly should be part of the base game but ya know, devs gotta get their bag. The in dome buildings is also worth it and project laika is fine. The rest is probably not worth it unless in an on-sale bundle with other stuff.
-once you are mostly terraformed, the lighting gets obnoxiously bright and saturated simulating a healthy atmosphere and clear sunny day I guess? I like the idea of a warmer lighting at this point in the game but it was not implemented well and it overexposes things to the point of losing detail in highlights. The nights are also a bit too dark. A mod kind of fixes this but it just preserves the way days looked prior to terraforming so you don’t get a new lighting effect as you progress.

Nitpicky complaints. I give this a 7/10. Worth a play if you’re a genera fan.

Before this game came out I was watching the count down for it during school. Great game

This game was good but a second would be better. It's nice but repetivtive.

It's not good...

There should be a clear objectives, but it's too sandbox, I don't even don't know what to do and what's the objective on playing this game. Where to put the domes? Where to put the generators? Where to put the cables and pipes? It's very unclear and in the end, your martian colony is a big pile of mess that you will hate. Not pretty at all. For a city building game, I wish I could build pretty colonies, but no. It always become ugly colonies in my playthroughs.

This game is not bad. It is acceptable. Finished, polished a little bit. And thrown to players. Like one of tens soulless strategic games from Paradox.

I was looking for something like Frostpunk or Against the Storm. What I got is the difference between developers who love and play their games, who have a passion for it, and some people who just make a product. This game is a simple product to consume. It is playable, yet has a lack of everything. UI, bugs, and most importantly, atmosphere. Remember the feeling of cold dread from Frostpunk? Forget about it. You won't be feeling here like alone against a desert planet in empty space. There is no atmosphere here at all. Just some functions. Some bugs. And some disappointment with the interface.

You can't even put a camera up to watch the stars in a game about space.

Don't forget to buy 14 DLC! Developers know their audience. I guess they are the same sort of people who buy every Fifa or DLC for sims. What a freaking slop.

Fun resource and building game. Slow at times but not boring.

One of my favourite games. It takes time to learn the mechanics and succeed, but it is an awesome game. The soundtrack is also very nice.

Great survival sim, one of my favorites of all time. Much better with the DLC.

While it certainly has replay value and it is engaging, the game is overpriced for the value of the product. While the visuals are AAA quality, the depth of the game is incredibly shallow. The DLC are cheap cash grabs that basically offer what would be considered "public made mod" quality additions.

I was deep into the game when they suddenly disabled a content pack. The developers aren't even actively working on the game anymore. Now my progress is gone. I'm uninstalling this and moving on. Wont ever buy a game from this dev again.

Incredible colony builder. Management is very involved, and there's plenty here to do and to calculate if that's your cup o' tea. You can make it as easy or as challenging as you need. Just watch out for DLCs with low user reviews.

One of my all time fav top down survival building games! Always so much fun and every new save is different!

Game is fun until you have to start focusing on the humans needs, then the game seems to spiral out of control after you start mismanaging the humans.

Fun game, however once you get to a certain point some mistakes can literally ruin your run.

Great game. I like the way you can build up the colony. The mods are good if you find the right ones. I suggest you use the mods displayed in the game screen and not from the landing page at Steam. The reason is because you have the choice to filter out the ones that don't work with the version you have. Learning curve is medium. But once you get the hang of it it's very good. Request: More buildings and a better management/leveling system. And a clear scenario win condition. Overall I recommend this game to those who like building/turned based games.

If you have ever played cities skylines or just like grinding builder games, I really do recommend this one. It is a very easy way to lose track of time, however. I will say, in addition, the game has a slow learning curve. Just make sure to savor your electricity at the start, as well as your money if your base of operations aren't near any deposits.

I have never in my life seen a game trying to access my phone number my contacts, PASSWORDS?
or any other personal information like my home address they should never be allowed to have.
This is what the privacy policy says.

fuck this game and the developers!! I will avoid this developer and anyone associated with them.

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Bad game. Not interesting, costs a lot . Isn’t worth buying it, trust me don’t buy it don’t waste ur money just buy rust

This was fun, I learned how to play by watching a few videos. The late game was annoying because it is FAR too tedious to move your colonists across the various domes. We need a new screen that lets us match up colonists to jobs. Getting my geologists who were living in two other domes to move over to the dome where they were needed; was a big pain. This is probably why I likely won't be replaying this game :).
Also, I would love a bit more excitement; martian attacks, or sabotage by rival nations or the apparently nutty colonist.

With a few mods to correct some lingering bugs, this is one of my favorite builders to come back to. It oozes theme, the fake radio stations are catchy, and the various options and breakthrough techs keep playthroughs from feeling too similar.

This was one of the first games I bought when I got into PC gaming, I have loved it ever since, the first DLC "green mars" is a not a must have but I highly recommend it as it is really fun, however the second dlc "below and beyond" is less so, its still fun and it does have its merits but you are not missing much if you dont have it, I would really have loved if you could have set up a permanent colony on phobos or demos, and getting a colony set up underground is a hassle.

Here we have a colony management sim from a developer famous for their franchise of city-building games. Since several Tropico titles were so similar and probably could have just been DLCs, it would be fair to wonder if Surviving Mars should have also been marketed as a Tropico On Mars DLC. Well it's not, it is (enough) of a new game to be its own game. Gone are the unintuitive traffic management issues, in are the advanced tech tree and plethora of resources to manage. What I miss most sorely however is the charm of the narratives. Instead of cheeky personalities of island dictators and their lackeys we get cold Civilization-style quotes from pop scientists and tech moguls. Still, the game has good balance and a wide selection of difficulty levels to confer accessibility for players new to the colony sim genre. I recommend the game for its gameplay merits even if it's not keeping up with the fashionable trend of story-rich narrative games.

This is my favorite game of all time, and I'm surprised not everyone knows about it. It's my secret getaway from the world for real. I tell my friends "I'm going to Mars" and I play it to decompress my life overall.

I'd be happy to get new updates or new DLC for it, but I guess it is not in the agenda of the developers at all.

It would be wonderful to get a Venus or another solar planet version of it too in the future as we learn more about other planets as well.

Want to go back to a time when Elon wasn't just a toxic punchline and actually represented futuristic idealism? Want a calm fun and strategic game with top-shelf music? This is the one.

Super satisfying building game with great flexible tech tree and resource planning and just the right amount of Oh-Crap natural disasters.

There's a lot to like here, but there are some serious balancing issues with some of the breakthroughs that completely trivialize entire game mechanics. The "AI" for the bots and colonists is poorly coded, and constantly does nonsensical things. You'll spend almost as much time figuring out how to work around the AI quirks as taming the environment. Terraforming the planet (if you get the DLC) feels really good, but takes so long you start to lose interest.

The much bigger problem with this game is that Paradox handed it over to a "game studio" whose entire experience was a few mobile ports, for the Below and Beyond DLC. They screwed the game up super badly, to the point where it took months for them to get it back to a reasonably stable (bug-free) state. This wouldn't have been a problem if it was contained to the DLC, but they "updated" the base game with most of the underlying code changes, which broke it for the people who didn't want the DLC as well. Despite the uproar, Paradox refused to roll back the changes, or make the old version available for download, claiming it was "technically impossible". Despite hundreds of games doing this with no problems at all.

Many of these bugs are still not fixed. You'll be forced to rely on a couple of dedicated modders who have tried their best to fix most of these -- for free. Paradox essentially screwed over a bunch of their customers and refused to back down when it looked like it was going to impact DLC sales. So buy with caution. it's a decent (if buggy) game, but you're also supporting an absolutely terrible developer.

really good balance, most interesting one in genre.

Whoever designed this game is idiot. After 2 hours - my map selfdestruct. meteor shower destroyed all vehicles, then all drone hubs, then electricity, then domes and finally colonists. you can not defend because you dont have tehnology, you can not repair and without resources game is over like that.... you can not do anything. why would game destroy the map? so stupid design.

boring, yesteryear content without any charm. this game had its moment and it is not right now

i really liked the game, it has so many options for an easy task

It's fun and hard.
Essentially a city builder with survival aspects, and a goal of teraforming mars.

its a good game, I like it, the pc version is so much better than the xbox verison and Ive played both

Un des pires jeux que je n'ai jamais eux la malchance de jouer, Extrêmement peu ergonomique ou intuitif, les drones ne foutre rien et sont plus une nuisance qu'autre chose, la météo est une horreur, et je parle même pas de la logique du jeu en elle-même, je regrette cruellement d'avoir acheté ce jeu (même en rab) si vous lisez ceci, est à éviter à tout pris et je ne veux même pas parler des dlc ou des ''mod''/
One of the worst games I've ever had the misfortune to play, Extremely unergonomic or unintuitive, the drones do nothing and are more of a nuisance than anything else, the weather is horrible, and I'm not even talking about the logic of the game itself, I cruelly regret having bought this game (even in spare) if you're reading this, it should be avoided at all costs and I don't even want to talk about the DLC or the ''mod''

the game is a decent challenge and quite fun, though what brings down it's appeal is the fact SO MANY IMAGES in this game are made with ai generated slop. there's one REALLY obvious one when the first martian born pop up appears. the image looks really ugly and just.. it's crap. you can clearly make gorgeous models and interesting narratives but it absolutely falls apart when there's a discrepancy in the art direction (or lack of it in these images). only recommending it for the challenge in the game play, but a thumbs down because you could have EASILY paid a freelancer for better chance card & pop ups art.

Looks like its been years since this game could be played on a Linux OS, neg on using Proton either. Insta crash freezing up computer, that's always helpful and fun. If I need to reprogram your game to make it work you should pay me to play it. Refund requested after reading issues that went back 6 years. Wish i would have read all that first.

Love the Mars setting, took a couple of run thrus before I figured out what I was doing wrong. Will try adding more DLCs after I've played it awhile.

Love strategy games like this. Reminds me of what Outpost 2 from Sierra should have been ;-)

Surviving Mars is a fun little city builder that adds in a mix of resource management and organization into the mix all on Mars. The game’s minimalist but stylish aesthetic really sells the sci-fi feel, and there’s a lot of depth in managing supply chains and automation. It can be a bit tough for new players since the tutorial doesn’t cover everything, and the pacing can feel slow at times, especially in the early game. There are several radio stations to give background music and occasional breaks of talking from the host to add more immersion to the game. The base game on its own is very good but some DLC can be hit or miss. Overall, recommended.

Pros:
✅ Deep, rewarding colony management with real challenges
✅ Beautiful sci-fi aesthetic and great atmosphere
✅ Tons of replayability with different starting conditions and mysteries
✅ No two playthroughs feel the same

Cons:
❌ Steep learning curve with a lack of in-depth tutorials
❌ Can feel slow, especially in the early game
❌ Some RNG elements can make or break a colony

A great game for anyone who's ever dreamed of one day stepping foot on the red planet. Accompanied by an amazing OST, the ambiance is absolutely fantastic and the city-building/survival aspect is real fun!

Very fun management game I really enjoyed it while i was playing it. It has much to offer but many dlc are necessary like the green planet dlc as it adds allot to the endgame.

Solid game , even better if you get the DLC on sale , Green planet is the only one that matters . Game feels complete with Green planet not so much without it.

There is some replayability beyond just sandbox in the different mysteries , its a solid couple hundred hours worth of gameplay if your into colony builders.

推荐度★★★★★
上头度★★★★★
性价比★★★★★
宝贝很好吃一点也不起球，也不捂脚，洗的也特别干净，泡沫很绵密买了三宝了，质量非常好，与卖家描述一致，孩子们都特别喜欢吃，版型很好，面料舒适，尺码标准，非常满意，完全超出期望值，发货速度也十分快，包装非常仔细、严实，很满意的一次购物。强烈推荐！

Look, I get it. Earth has its issues. But trust me, you haven't lived until you've tried to explain to a group of scientists why their "breakthrough terraforming project" just turned the entire Martian atmosphere into a giant, flammable fart cloud.

Fun Game
upkeeping domes and citizen wellfare hard