In 1971, seventeen years before I was born (why did the best music come out before I was born?) David Bowie asked a crucial question, one we still want to know the answer to: “Is there Life on Mars?” Now, ignoring the song’s meaning and taking it literally – I just wanted to mention Bowie – Mars Horizon 2 will task you to answer that question in a sequel to the hit 2020 Mars Horizon.
If you haven’t played the original, I recommend you do. Still, as a quick description: Mars Horizon is a management simulation game that takes you back to the space race between the US (NASA) and the Soviet Union, allowing you to change the progression of what happened, as well as the game also throws in the European Space Agency, China and Japan as playable factions. From launching the first satellite or putting the first person in space, and more, you’ll go through the key milestones of space travel. Mars Horizon 2 takes this a step further.
You’re now searching for life. Life beyond our planet. In your role as the head of a space agency, you’ll be searching for evidence across the solar system through a deep level of control, the key aspects of which can be seen below:
- 📝 You’re in charge of mission control, plan all the aspects of your missions to find anomalies, use flybys and satellites to look for them, land on planets to collect them
- 👩🔬 Manage your staff: hire, fire, train, and customise your own team of experts with different skills and roles
- 🏭 Build your base on Earth, Mars and the Moon, with important buildings like testing facilities, launch pads, and more
- 🚀 Design multi-stage rockets using cutting edge components, reusable boosters and a variety of payloads
- 📅 Decide when is best for your mission with launch windows, and then decide closer to the time the best day for launch, based on weather, and climate
- 📚 Make key decisions in tough narrative events which will make or break your mission and impact the future of space exploration
- 📈 Every mission has a different reliability with different points of failure such as fuel, guidance, engines, and more
- 🔎 Follow the clues, collect anomalies and discover biosignatures that get you closer to discovery of life – signs of life can include fossils, microbes, unusual atmospheres, and more
- 🔬 Process anomalies in the lab, and research a huge tech tree to help you in your journey
Reaching Mars was just the first step, as you can see. You will be in charge of finding intelligent life using established scientific methodology and current and upcoming technological advances. Having had input and support from the European Space Agency and UK Space Agency for the first release, Mars Horizon promises to continue having every facet of the game underpinned by research, keeping things as close to reality as possible.
I, for one, like my management sims, so this is certainly one for me. I’ll have to wait for a little though, as Mars Horizon 2 is set to launch on the PC in 2024. You can now visit the official Steam page, should you want, or sign up to the mailing list for potential access to early alphas, betas, and other news. That, or keep an eye on here, as I’ll be tracking the game.
