Per Aspera

I wish I could give this a purely neutral rating. Its.. Ok. As a city builder, the game play is sufficient. No real novelty in the problems to solve compared to others of the genre, but no issues either. Its entirely adequate. The main issue that makes this an unfortunate negative review for me is the story elements. Its the most bland uninspired writing imaginable. Its the sci fi equivalent of water you have boiled too much. There is nothing to latch on to and the character of everyone is so insanely vanilla. World building also is vanilla too. Not even vanilla. 1 part vanilla 99 parts water. Frankly the game would be better without the voice over at all, so i guess play sandbox or something? Im going to keep playing it because like i said, the core gameplay is solid and maybe the story elements will get better.

Ok Game.
Get on sale.

Good game

Nothing to see here. Just a roque schizo AI running a mars colony after watching to much brainrot on tiktok with memory issues.

Great mechanics, but poor UX/UI design. Water pumps are a major disaster though as they get constantly flooded when water raises - so you have to keep moving them that is just a very boring grind.

Good if you're really interested in the story of colonizing mars

Logistics kills the fun for me. Bots can't complete anything in decent time, and it doesnt matter neither where and how much you place them. Half the game spent sitting on 1000's of basic resources lacking something like steel because bots can't deliver it in time. Another thing would be that the game is too slow. I literally played only on 16x and never went lower in my whole playtime, unless game forced me to x1 when event happened(god, why did you do that)

Stupid bots aside - the game is good, i would probably've had fun if i didnt have to endure logistic nightmare enforced on me. Every single step you do actually changes the planet and it looks amazing.

Addictive gameplay!

i am god

Great with a fascinating concept, would absolutely recommend it!
Wish there was more content for sure.

Its ok. 6/10
The game play is fun for the first few hours, but gets repetitive, boring, and then frustrating once the oceans form.
I like the idea of transforming mars and its all over the planet not just in one area and it effects everywhere.
The funnest part is when the teraforming is going up fast and there is a lot you can do to change it and it is not fun when it slows and you can't get the last 5% to get to the next phase.
There is a story mode, its not a good story.

w game

colony builder with a lot of potential which it then sacrifices to tell a mediocre story

Bought this game cuse it looked interesting and it absolutely was! its also very relaxing with a pretty interesting story to the campaign.

I got this for 2 dollars on a sale and for the price its great. The graphics and the storyline are immersive and great. It doesnt hold much replay value aside completing the story, because the game despite trying to look strategic requires very little micro or calculation and its almost impossible to make a mistake which could lose you your game.

At current time, I cannot recommend the game. Still cannot

this is an ok city builder. The tutorial misses a few things so for a long time I was only developing engineering technology because i'm too dumb to realize there were other pages for example.

I enjoy the story/theme with AI taking our jobs its kinda fun to play as an AI discovering itself :p

Hmm. it was fun till it wasnt. Definitely not the most intuitive combat controls.

Started out okay, but then got to a point where it wanted me to launch a satellite but I couldn't because there was no spaceport free and I couldn't build one. Also I don't understand how to research other highlighted sites in the general area. I click on build research centre but nothing ever gets built. I find the voice of the AI rather annoying. I'll give it another go at some point but to me it is a bit meh.

Nice, especially on sale. Enjoyable and takes around 20h to finish the story, which is surprisingly good. Can have quite a bit downtime though where you just sit and wait for something to finish.

The gameplay is simplistic; short production chains, trivial "combat", often repetitive building. Sounds and music are nothing special, they do their job. The story tries to be deep, but the twists just aren't that interesting and the torrent of messages gets annoying quickly. The art style is great, I liked the sketchy presentation of the Martian surface. The game offers just enough fun and challenge for the time it takes to complete it. It doesn't overstay its welcome and can be finished in a day or two. Recommended on a deep discount, if you're a fan of the theme and genre. Otherwise, your money is better spent on something more complex.

Nice story, great graphic, Mars looks stunning and I'm missing one thing - list of the buildings to easily manage them by type. UI for charts and env management could be also better.

Is gewd.

buy it on sale ig

Lots of fun and nice story

Pretty good. Got my first colony to fail slowly as all the worker drones got damaged and couldnt produce anymore anymore drones. Another failed attempted at a mars colony.

A little more on the passive side but still good progression system with lots of different ways to progress.

i love this game so much

This is a seriously fantastic game! Its easily one of the top RTS/Base Builders Ive played, ever.
Per Aspera really puts the 'science' in science fiction, and is extremely challenging. Even on easy mode the expansiveness of this game will have you scratching your head at what to do next. When my base gets really big I have to slow down speed regularly and even pause and reassess my whole base frequently. The different phases of terraforming almost make it feel like multiple games within a single game at times, as the goals really vary (ie; expansion and resources early, with much more atmospheric management later, and a healthy dose of research stations to see whats what.)
Overall, despite not having particularly very many hours in this game so far, I give it a solid 9/10 with Blue Mars included. Its incredibly thought provoking and I found it very mentally stimulating. Praise be to teh devs for this fantastic gem!

mind warping i like it

i've been on a hunt for a martian resource manager that scratches that specific itch and so far per aspera is killing it. also pleasantly surprised that the story is pretty engaging esp for a sim and god damnit troy baker you cant keep getting away with playing father figures i am SOBBING

This game is very similar to Surviving Mars however this game... feels better even though they are technically different games this one is less of a Paradox Games Nightmare filled with bad DLCs and a small or non-existant pool of gameplay and interesting lore to comb through which this game has both of the latter in full force and that just makes me happy!

Very enjoyable for the full 20 hours I put into it. Fun city building mechanic, fun storyline, and the "realistic" difficulty was fairly easy but I probably wouldn't have been happier with the higher difficulty.

The only thing that caught me was that the research tree had a scroll bar I didn't notice until the very end. It cuased my last 2 hours to drag a little bit as I had to catch up on my missing technology.

This game has more dialog and phone calls than my marriage. Just STFU and let me play already. I had to play this one with voice audio off and skipped all the conversations. All of them. The entire ecosystem fell on its face because maintenance drones are the stupidest AI in the game. No wait the stupidest AI in the game would have to be the worker drones, yes those little time vampires have the combined IQ of my fish tank. Game was fun until it was not, that was a period of about a week. Had great starting replay potential but this one goes into the dust vault.

I love this game

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ok

got it on sale and it was totally worth it!
loved the pace, the story, explorations.
really nice terraforming visuals.

Liked the storyline. Nice mix of building and problem solving. Tech tree advance made sense.

basically they turned the kim stanley robinson trilogy into a city-builder. there's a ton of production value here in the voice acting, the UI, and the general visual design. but it's pretty lacking in gameplay mechanics, game system transparency, and the logistics model.

buildings don't clearly show their production/consumption rates. the worker-territory system is limiting, buggy, and a huge step down if you're used to other logistics games with more sophisticated controls

still, it's compelling. there's a long core game loop of dealing with the consequences of your own actions. like, ice is a limited resource, which pushes you to flood mars, which in turn forces you to retreat from the rising waters, but then opens up liquid water as a resource.

if you're willing to deal with the logistics jank it's worth at least one playthrough

fun game, chill and intense at time. Makes me wish we would stop trying to kill each other and satisfy the rich fuckers and get off this planet and become explorers.

I want very badly to like this game. It's a fascinating terraforming journey, with challenging logistical issues, long-term planning, complex interplay of mechanics, and the pleasure of watching Mars turn from a frozen airless wasteland into a verdant world. It's also a coming-of-age story of a cybernetic intelligence doing the best she can, despite her mission and existence becoming political almost as soon as she booted up.

Unfortunately, these experiences are ruined by a pair of game-breaking transport bugs and a painful and easily fixable quality-of-life issue involving storage, which are still unfixed over a year after I reported them despite a much-touted anniversary bugfix update, as well as a host of minor QoL issues. There are also some missed opportunities with story-gameplay interaction, but the transport bugs and storage headache are the real problems.

If you do go ahead and buy this game, you need to keep a paranoid eye on your construction projects to make sure progress is actually being made on them. Also, be sure to get the Blue Mars dlc as well as the base game, as many resources will be lost to you without it.

Until this game can be relied on to actually build what you order built, I can't recommend it.

An exciting economic strategy game with a pleasant gameplay.
The game evokes associations with dreams of the future and colonization of Mars, as in the 1990 film" Total Recall".
Main save - before plot selection to see all three endings.
Simple and pleasant achievement system.

The AI for the worker drones in this game are MIND NUMBINGLY stupid. They will literally do anything EXCEPT what you tell them to do. I ended up in a situation where the worker bots refused to make more worker bots, and since they die from wear and tear they quickly started dying off. I found myself down to my very last worker drone, which still won't build more workers despite be constantly putting priority on building worker drones and turning off half of the base to get it to do what I want.

This has been a problem since launch and the developers STILL haven't fixed this issue. Don't waste you time and money on this game. It sucks

So far at 9 hours in I'm enjoying this game quite a bit. I enjoy expanding the base and keeping the production balanced, which is easy enough (for now). The story is quite interesting as well, which I didn't expect. The developers have done a good job making the story tie in with the progression of the game, while keeping things mysterious and interesting. I can't wait to find out what lies beyond! Per Aspera!

This game is fun and feels like a video game version of the board game Terraforming Mars.

In general, I enjoy city building/resource management games, but sometimes they get to a point where I'm not quite sure where else to take my city and I lose interest. The addition of the storyline to Per Aspera really creates a fantastic balance in my opinion. I never had the opportunity to get bored or lose interest because I always wanted to see what was coming next. Even now, as I've completed the primary storyline, I want to keep building and fully colonizing Mars.

Regarding the Blue Mars DLC, I'll echo what many others have said in that yes, they probably should have just included it in the base game. But it's a neat addition and I'd certainly encourage you to pick it up along with the base game, especially if it's on sale.

Playability, graphics, storyline, mechanics... I'm impressed with all of it. I'll be looking forward to seeing what's next on the horizon for Tlön Industries.

So they made it too Mars and got a colony going. Is this a different timeline where Elon Musk didnt exist ?

weird elon cock sucking and just generally pretentious

I highly recommend you go into this game blind. Buy the game and start to play. It is so masterfully paced that I can't stop playing. It is the definition of that "one more turn" type of game.

Started playing to build a mars industry, Finished for the story. Absolutely awesome game 10/10