Per Aspera (2020)

The level of detail in this game is incredible, and it looks gorgeous. I don't know how scientifically accurate it is, but it was very satisfying to complete the terraforming process of Mars.

There are a few things that need to be improved. Certain management aspects were not explained, such as the need for a drone hive before you can build assault drones and the relationship between ports and shipyards. I was not aware of the building management tool tab until at least a quarter of the way through the game, which would have been very useful in finding buildings. Even then, it would be great if you could cycle through icons for building types (maybe hold tab and up or down arrow or click a building etc.) to make them easier to find. It is nearly impossible to find my worker factories. It would be nice to know why my colonists are leaving. It would also be nice to have better prioritization of resources. It can be incredibly frustrating to require one resource out of dozens left; you see a worker bringing that resource, but then it's left somewhere else, and the worker moves on. I don't understand the logic of it. Maybe have two different levels of priority.

Still thank you for a great game. I can't imagine how difficult this must have been to make.

Played for 1 session during a free trial on Steam. This game reminded me a lot of Outpost and Surviving Mars. The early game was fun as I micromanaged my factories to only run as needed, and researched for deeper mines. I did not even look at the other research branches so had no idea I could research landing other bases. So I spread all the way to the Chinese base and silo over land. When the enemy base attacked, my base was way too spread out to properly defend. It took a while to recover from that destruction. I had absolutely no idea how assault drones worked and was getting frustrated that my new defense towers were not getting numbers above them. Eventually I fully rebuilt and had defense towers covering everything, but the enemy never attacked again. I had 2 CO2 plants going, and was slamming asteroids into the surface whenever I could. Then by sheer happenstance I accidentally clicked on a unit of assault drones and sent them to attack the enemy base. Oh I thought that number represented the power of the defense towers. I could not replicate what I did and had to look it up online; I thought there was a combat mode button but it was simply clicking on the number. I wiped out their base easily, though it would have made more sense to capture it if that was even possible.

At this point the game was beginning to become tedious. Keep spreading more and more to mine more resources and build more research stations all while managing power, workers, maintenance and logistics. I built upgraded road networks all over, though probably should not have built them to mines. The last thing I did was build a hyperloop building, though I did not play long enough to see how it worked. I later watched videos and they linked up like sim city subway stations. I found the story so intriguing that I watched (or just listened to while gaming) nearly 30 hours of someone else playing on YouTube. Most of it was unnecessary to watch because the story was on the first 5 episodes and at the end. The story was great. It was especially impressive to have such a great story in this type of game. I do not know which story path I would have taken, but I wanted to be the good AI that completed the mission. The game was clearly very well made though the gameplay is not among my favorites, so I do not see me playing this game unless it is free.

7.5 to 8.0/10

Starts out super fun, with a really interesting story (a 4x with a story is an interesting beast!) but the game really grinds to a halt around 2/3 of the way to terraformed, and you have to redevelop everything.

You go longer and longer periods between story beats, doing repetitive tasks (scrapping old mines, building new ones elsewhere), with no clear idea as to whether you can do it quicker or if this is just how long it takes.

The story is SUCH a strong point, although the timing of triggering some of the events is a bit off - I had a moment of reflection about how I should handle the existence of an enemy base...after already having destroyed it. The game's a little off-balance, I feel—it takes far too much time/resources to cover the planet in plants and convert CO2 to O2, but the defense & offense options available to you make the existence of enemy bases no credible threat whatsoever after the first one. It's easily possible to research the entire tech tree long before getting to Stage 5.

I'm now playing maybe a couple hours at a time, mostly idly, waiting for the atmosphere to change sufficiently to trigger the next story beat - it just kinda stopped being fun, but I want to see where the story goes. A shame, because the early parts of the game are so fun.