Deliver Us Mars Review – The Fate Of A Father

Deliver Us The Moon is one of the few indie games released in the past few years whose popularity only increased over time. When the game was released in 2018, it did so in a somewhat incomplete state with an abrupt ending that soured the entire experience. Developer KeokeN Interactive eventually gave the story a proper ending with a free DLC, thus making their game one worth playing for all those who love solid narrative-driven games and space settings. Almost five years since the game’s release, the Dutch developer has finally released its highly anticipated sequel, Deliver Us Mars, which improves on almost every feature of its predecessor, from story to gameplay.

Much like in its predecessor, the Earth is dying in Deliver Us Mars. Over the years, humanity has ravaged the planet and exhausted its resources, leading to climate change, widespread shortages, and desolation. Humanity’s only hope are the ARKs, massive ships that have the power to restore the planet’s plant life and atmosphere. Unfortunately, these ships have been taken away by a mysterious group called Outward, who led them to Mars, leaving humanity to their fate.

In Deliver Us Mars, players take control of Kathy Johanson, a promising young astronaut of the World Space Agency who has been trained hard by her father Isaac to become one since she was a child. Her first journey in space, however, is only partially a happy occurrence, as she has personal stakes in the mission to Mars to recover the ARKs. Her father, who abandoned her years before the story to go live on the Moon and escape the imminent destruction of the planet, is apparently alive and part of the Outward group that has stolen humanity’s last hope.

The double layer of Deliver Us Mars’ story works incredibly well to create a compelling and engaging narrative. Woven into the tale are multiple flashbacks that build up Kathy’s relationship with her father and her sister Claire, who’s also part of the mission to Mars, showing how Isaac’s actions had quite an impact on both his daughters. While Claire seems to have moved on, however, Kathy clearly hasn’t, giving players a very good reason to push through the many puzzles to see if Kathy will follow her heart and join her father or if she will follow her mission dutifully. The family drama woven into the space opera story Deliver Us Mars tries to tell works extremely well, resulting in a much more relatable tale than its predecessor. While it is narrated similarly, with cutscenes, holograms, and optional collectibles, it’s way ahead in every possible way, also thanks to the superb performance of all voice actors.

When it comes to gameplay, Deliver Us Mars is a step ahead of its predecessor as well, despite the formula being pretty much the same. Exploring various linear locations, Kathy will have to solve puzzles to reach a set goal and move the story forward. Puzzles are quite varied, ranging from puzzles that involve cutting parts of the environment with a wrist laser to activating switches in a certain order, using the drone AYLA to align parts of a circle to unlock holograms, setting up beam lasers properly to power devices and so on. Puzzles are simple and intuitive for the most part, so it’s unlikely anyone will be stuck on one of them for long. In case this happens, Kathy herself will provide hints on how to solve one, thankfully not as quickly as in other recent games like Horizon Forbidden West and God of War Ragnarok.

While all these puzzles don’t move the experience much past the boundaries set by Deliver Us the Moon, there are a few new gameplay elements that do in an interesting way, such as the climbing mechanics, whose controls try to mimic real climbing effectively for the most part, and even some vehicle riding sections with a rover. These sections, however, are as linear as the rest of the game is, so they ultimately don’t do much to make the experience feel not too much on rails. Many of the puzzles also involve some menial tasks that almost feel like a distraction from the excellent story, At times, I felt like Deliver Us Mars would have been much better without puzzles to interrupt Kathy’s search for her father on Mars.

Where Deliver Us Mars definitely feels lacking is its very uneven visuals. Some environments look great with tons of detail, while others do not. Same with the character models, as they look alright for the most part but leave something to be desired, especially regarding animations. Facial animations are as uneven as the environments, while other animations are incredibly stiff. For a game that strives to be immersive, having characters literally slide in place when a button prompt is pressed is hugely detrimental.

Performance, at least, doesn’t disappoint, for the most part, as the machine used for the test (i7-10700 CPU, RTX 3070 GPU, 16 GB RAM) did not have trouble running the game at 4K resolution, high to epic settings and no ray tracing at 120 FPS. Things are not perfect, however, as there are random stutters, mostly during cutscenes, that ruin immersion quite a bit. With other technical issues like Kathy getting stuck in mid-air, hair physics going haywire in cutscenes every time the camera changes, and a disappointing ray tracing implementation, it’s clear how the game needed a little more time in the oven.

Deliver Us Mars is an improvement over its predecessor in pretty much every way, featuring an excellent, more relatable, and personal story and expanded gameplay that fans of the original will enjoy. The linearity of the experience, the mundanity of certain puzzles, and the technical issues, however, prevent it from being an unmissable masterpiece.

PC version tested. Review code provided by the publisher.

Deliver Us Mars

With an excellent and mature story going over current themes, Deliver Us Mars is the game to get for those looking to be immersed in a believable and personal space opera. While the gameplay is a definite improvement over that of its predecessor, the simplicity of some puzzles (which often feel like a distraction from the story), the excessive linearity, and the many technical issues prevent the game by KeokeN Interactive from being a proper masterpiece.