I stumbled on Mars Horizon over the summer when it was in Beta and I instantly felt a sense of loss when the time ran out. I’ve been very excited to see what this game was in it’s final form so let’s dive in.

Mars Horizon puts players in the drivers seat so to say of a major space agency, taking mankind from the dawn of the space age right up until colonization of Mars. As the head of this organization, you’ll be tasked with setting research goals, planning space missions, receiving and allocating funds, and nurturing diplomatic relations with other agencies. There’s a whole lot of strategy and management but there’s also a little luck involved.

Many missions, especially later in the game, have multiple stages to them and each stage has you you allocating electrical resources to various tasks in an effort to perform tasks. For example: you spend electrical points to buy communication points, which can then be spent on trajectory points as you accumulate a predetermined number for each task. It can be a daunting walk through mathematics especially for those of us who aren’t exactly the best at it.

My biggest takeaway from my 20 or so hours I’ve put into Mars Horizon is that space exploration wile fun is hard and full of failure but it’s what you do with that failure that will set you up for success. Striving to be the first nation to accomplish major milestones will keep you motivated to reassess, rebuild and try again. If space exploration was easy, everyone would be doing it. The other big note is just how incredibly fun it is. I can’t begin to tell you how much space junk is out there because I was in a rush to be 1st nation to send man to space, or land on the moon. To be totally honest, I think there’s a small town of people out there right now. I literally had 3 launches that went badly. 2 of them were lost like Major Tom and another one literally exploded on liftoff with only a 2% chance of failure(pro-tip: This is an achievement). Sometimes things just go wrong but still I pressed on.

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What Auroch Digital did with Mars Horizon isn’t particularly “ground breaking” but what they did manage is to capture the essence of what it must be like to be in charge of such an important organization. Sure the timelines aren’t realistic but who wants to sit through a long development years of engineering just to get 1 rocket tested? They also captured the minds and imaginations of anyone who has ever dreamed of becoming an astronaut. What I think I would like is a bit more direct communication and guidance with the puzzles. What I mean by that what benefit or consequence does my agency gleam from success or failure and how can I better focus on making using that information in the future. Perhaps that’s taking the game deeper than the developer wanted to be more accessible to a younger audience but maybe they could have another mode where people who like to get right down into the nitty gritty can play too.

Graphically, Mars Horizon isn’t going to light your eyes ablaze but it’s still quite nice to look in it’s simplicity. There’s still a quiet beauty to the graphics and the art direction is fantastic as is the well designed UI. Auto HDR on Xbox Series X does help to delivery rich vibrant colors.

Both my daughter and I have put in some serious miles in Mars Horizon on our quest to colonize Mars. We’re both absolutely enjoying our time with it. It’s getting us talking about space and space exploration and I think that’s a huge win and a goal they had set out. It’s easy to get sucked in and realize you’ve just played for 3 or 4 hours and without even realizing it.

Mars Horizon is out now on Xbox One, S/X, PS4, PS4 Pro, PS5 and Steam

Pros:
– Great gameplay
– Gives a good sense of what it takes to manage a space agency
– Simple but well made UI
– Accessible game
– Simple yet pretty graphics – Auto HDR on Series X is beautiful
– Would love to see more in this series

Cons:
– Unclear as to how failure and wins affect the game. Would be nice to have more insight into that
– In the early moments of the game, the race to space feels very fast. I’ve yet to beat the Russians or China getting man into space