Surviving Mars Gets Green with New DLC!

STOCKHOLM - May 16, 2019 - Paradox Interactive and Haemimont Games today announced Surviving Mars: Green Planet and Project Laika are now available on PC, Mac, Linux, Xbox One, and PlayStation®4. Players can purchase Surviving Mars: Green Planet and Project Laika for $19.99 and $5.99 MSRP respectively, or the Green Planet Plus bundle that includes both for $23.90 MSRP. To celebrate Green Planet’s launch, all Surviving Mars owners can download the free Armstrong update, which adds landscaping tools, new special projects, additional buildings, a revamped Research UI, and more to the survival management game.

Purchase Surviving Mars: Green Planet and Project Laika on the Paradox Store.

Surviving Mars: Green Planet is the second major expansion for Surviving Mars, giving players the power to turn the Red Planet green and open the domes with the introduction of Terraforming Parameters. These Terraforming Parameters add new layers of strategic depth to Surviving Mars and are affected by new terraforming buildings, completing special projects, and seeding vegetation across the planet’s surface in hopes of making Mars capable of supporting human life. Additionally, Mars has become pet friendly with the Project Laika animal pack that brings a variety of pets and livestock to the alien world - but keep an eye on those pets because some of your colonists’ companions may surprise you.

The free Armstrong update continues the mission to enhance the core Surviving Mars experience for everyone. Armstrong adds a host of gameplay features, including landscaping tools that allow players to change the topology of the planet’s surface to fit their needs.

Armstrong Update includes:

• 5 Landscaping Tools and Buildings: Flatten terrain, create ramps, change surface texture, and construct rock formations to fit your colony’s needs. Landscaping does not require research and is available at the start of the game. Make sure you monitor your resources while landscaping the planet, all that displaced rock and dirt has to go somewhere!
• 3 Special Projects: Now you can capture meteors, launch high-speed comm satellites, and even launch a SETI satellite. These special projects become available when the first batch of Planetary Anomalies gets discovered and do not require previous research.
• 2 New Buildings: Players can build a Large Dumping Site and Rocket Construction Site for their colonies. The Large Dumping Site is available right away and gives you a place to put all the excess Waste Rock while the Rocket Construction Site allows you to build rockets after you have researched Advanced Rocketry.
• 20 New Events: These events add more variety at the early stages of the game, so be on the lookout!
• New Research UI: Revamped research interface.

 

Surviving Mars: Green Planet features include:

• Terraforming: Terraform Mars and make the hostile planet habitable for humanity. Each decision you make while managing your colony can affect the Terraforming Parameters, which includes Atmosphere, Temperature, Water, and Vegetation, and ideally brings them closer to habitable levels. Monitor your progress on a planetary scale with the Planetary Overview UI. Once you’ve made the atmosphere breathable, open the domes and let your colonists breathe Martian air!
• Green Mars: Seed the surface of Mars with various lichen, grass, shrubs, or trees and watch as they begin to turn the Red Planet green. Low maintenance plants like Lichen can improve the soil quality to help more complex plants grow while Trees produce high seed yields for your colony to harvest. Be sure to monitor your soil quality levels to keep your plants healthy and growing.
• Special Projects: Take on seven challenging Special Projects like melting the polar caps, capturing ice asteroids, launching a space mirror, and more to begin shifting the Terraforming Parameters. Be careful, these projects will have a lasting impact on the planet and will trigger natural disasters!
• 7 New Terraforming Buildings: Construct seven new buildings that can help you terraform the planet or capitalize on the changes. Use the GHG factory to release greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, the Forestation Plant to boost vegetation production, the Water Pump to fill a man-made lake bed, and more.
• Climate Calamities: Terraforming a planet can have unexpected consequences. If you release too many greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere you can trigger acid rain which reduces soil quality, or if an asteroid slams into the planet it will cause a Marsquake that can disrupt your colony’s production. 

Project Laika includes:

• Animal Farm: Breed up to eight different farm animals in the Martian Pastures including Cows, Chickens, Pigs, and more. Farm animals can be raised for food in the new In-Dome Ranches or Outside Ranches, depending on their size, and consume more water than crops.
• Martian’s Best Friend: Animal Pack features 25 different pets, ranging from your usual suspects like cats, dogs, and rabbits to some unexpected critters like llamas, penguins, and platypuses. Once you terraform the planet enough, pets will go outside to explore nearby bushes and trees.

The Surviving Mars season pass includes the Green Planet expansion and Project Laika animal pack. The Armstrong update is free to all players who own Surviving Mars. To find out more about Surviving Mars head over here for upcoming news and community activities.

About Paradox Interactive

Paradox Interactive is a leading global publisher of strategy games for PC and console. The company has developed and published a world-renowned catalog stretching back to 1999, with players hailing from all around the world.

The publisher’s steadily-growing portfolio includes firmly established franchises such as the critically acclaimed Europa Universalis, Crusader Kings, Hearts of Iron, and Stellaris series created by Paradox Development Studio, the Age of Wonders series created by Triumph Studios, as well as award-winning titles such as Cities: Skylines, Pillars of Eternity, and more from a network of partner studios. Paradox is the owner of the World of Darkness IPs and is publishing Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2.

Paradox’s head offices are located in Stockholm, Sweden. Our development studios are located in Stockholm, Malmö and Umeå, Sweden, in Delft, The Netherlands, in Seattle, Washington, and in Berkeley, California. We share a passion for gaming and gamers, and our goal is to provide deep and challenging games with hours of gameplay and endless variety to our ever-growing community.

For more information, please visit our forums and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.


Article by Susan N.

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Surviving Mars - PC Review

Paradox Interactive launched a highly anticipated game similar to Cities: Skylines, entitled Surviving Mars. This is a beautifully thought out game that has its own level of complexity. In fact, when playing the game before its official launch, I found myself restarting twice because as they say... mistakes were made!

Gameplay

Surviving Mars is a city builder that takes place on Mars, which presents its own set of challenges. On one hand, it's fairly easy to understand, without throwing the player into a tutorial – a fact that was discussed on a Q&A Twitch livestream (see Final Thoughts for the VOD link). On the other hand, this game can be really challenging – hence why I started over twice...

The first thing to note about this game is the easy start button. With this mode, players don't get to choose their landing location on Mars, and it is the closest thing to a tutorial. And while Surviving Mars has a hints section to guide a player along, the game doesn't hold your hand. Though, I didn't mind the lack of a tutorial since the general concept isn't difficult to grasp. Some players would certainly take that into consideration but frankly, any avid player of this genre should not need a tutorial, so I don't feel like it's a necessary addition.

I really enjoyed figuring out how to create a sustainable colony on Mars. It's a tall feat because players have to manage power, water, and other resources to ensure their colonists' survival. Sometimes these resources are quite a distance away, forcing the player into strategically placing buildings to get the most out of their resource use.

On my first playthrough, I wasn't thinking about building placement and it was ultimately one of the reasons I had to restart. By deliberately erecting different buildings without strategizing, it fast tracked my understanding of what worked and what didn't. I'd say this is a concept that makes Surviving Mars quite punishing. So, the key to success is to plan accordingly!

At the beginning of any scenario, you choose a sponsor and a character class – at least, that's the best way to describe it. These determine the available budget you have as a player and how difficult the game will be. The player then chooses a landing location, which isn't restricted to the suggested ones on the screen. Regardless of your choice, the difficulty is determined by the class, sponsor, and landing location. Surviving Mars is more difficult because of four types of environmental hazards with varying degrees of difficulty. Having multiple challenges will increase the total difficulty percentage. I'm warning you... It's an insane idea!

Something unique to this game that I haven't seen in other city builder games, is that the technology tree is random! You have five different disciplines which you can research technologies and there is a sixth one called breakthroughs, which is only unlocked by scanning anomalies found on Mars. This adds a whole other difficulty level. While to some, this randomize feature makes Surviving Mars much harder, I find this to be a refreshing concept and appreciate its nuanced complexities.

Despite having restarted the game twice in order to talk about a lot of features, I thoroughly enjoy playing Surviving Mars. It has a solid tech tree, the ability to pick specific colonist traits, different resource gathering techniques through use of drones or transport carriers, and challenges dealing with building placement. Compound these elements with the natural disasters component, this game provides a different experience on every playthrough.

UI/Controls

I like the UI in this game because it isn't busy. Although, there are some things that could be improved upon which I will mention later on.

The different panels are easy to understand and valuable colony information can be easily viewed. In terms of its functionality, most of the game can be played with just a mouse. I consider this to be both good and bad. Players can do everything in Surviving Mars using only their mouse because of screen scrolling.

However, the only downfall was an issue that only I had to deal with. You see, as with many games like Cities: Skylines, the zoom ability is bound to the mouse wheel. This is all well and good until your mouse wheel dies. So while other games have the option to change keybindings like the zoom feature, Surviving Mars does not have that option. If it wasn't for the Home button to reset the camera, I'd have been a goner!

A handy tip: if you aren't clicked on a building or unit, you can right click to bring up the build menu! This makes mouse only gameplay simple.

Graphics

I can't talk about this game without talking about the graphics. Haemimont Games certainly did a great job in creating a futuristic look. The notion of having citizens live inside domes is not a new concept, but is an idea that we've contemplated for years. It doesn't take leaps and bounds to consider the same type of engineering for life on Mars. Everything from the piping to the power lines look relatable to players.

I appreciated elements like the obvious the passage of time. Shadows descend upon the colony as the sun moves. When a pipe bursts, there is animation for the water spray – which can be hard to see at times. Even small elements like being able to watch the drones pick up one resource unit at a time amused me greatly. (What? The drones are cute, okay?! Don't judge me!) These decisions created a beautifully conceptualized and pleasing final product.

Oh, and let's not forget that the main opening screen background images changes every few seconds. Goodbye screensaver and hello beautiful space pictures (Can we have more?). I swear, they thought of everything!

Music and Sound

Surviving Mars killed it when it came to music and sound design. First, consider that all of the tracks are licensed by Paradox Interactive, so it stands to reason that they created music befitting the game.

Upon loading, players are are met with a lovely piece that starts off quietly. It then incorporates drums and synthetics which serves as the backdrop to the inevitable piano melody. The song is a fantastic intro and I was enthralled by it. Though, it will never be as epic as Civilization V's "Baba Yetu" composed by Christopher Tin, this intro was meant to inspire exploration. I was rather impressed.

In game there is a base music loops that doesn't distract the player from its challenging gameplay. And I say that because certain video games have annoying soundtracks over time. The looped music in this is not like that at all, but should you find yourself bored of it, there is a radio feature in Surviving Mars. The one I've listened to has pseudo broadcasters. For me, these short breaks add to the atmosphere of the game and reminds players that they aren't in Kansas anymore!

Final Thoughts

I absolutely love this game, even if I feel a little lost sometimes. It has a level complexity that is appealing but presents itself in a logical manner. The games concept as a Mars city builder is alluring to those of us that enjoy this genre.

That said, after watching the Q&A session on Twitch, I found myself questioning some of the thoughts people had. I came up with a short list of improvements because I honestly want this game to continue to grow like its predecessor, Cities: Skylines.

1. A mission objective screen would be handy (separate from the milestones). I have one to research 100 technologies by a certain date and don't know where to find that information.
2. When bringing a rocket from Earth, some of the vehicles are listed as 'stripped'. I'm unsure if this is a bug.
3. The pathing is weird even if you provide methods of travel like tunnels.
4. Having similar vehicles and buildings put in groups at the bottom of the screen would be more pleasant to the overall look of the UI.

Anyways, all of that said, I love this game and give it a 9 out of 10. There are things the developers said they'd improve in future updates. I appreciate that they are listening to community feedback and it is an element I appreciate from the staff at Paradox Interactive.

Previously I spoke about a Q&A stream hosted by the developers and that can be found here. In this VOD, staff talk about future plans as well as answer a variety of questions. Feel free to take a look.

How do you guys feel about this game? Let us know in the comments below!

Game Information

Platform:
PC
Developer(s):
Haemimont Games  
Publisher(s):
Paradox Interactive  
Genre(s):
Survival
Simulation
City Builder
Mode(s):
Single Player
Other Platform(s):
NA

Source:
Provided by Publisher

Article by Susan N.

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