Surviving Mars preview: Sci-fi meets Sim City in this upcoming strategy game for PC and Xbox

Surviving Mars is an upcoming sci-fi survival simulator set on the infamous crimson planet. You must get together your drones, harvest resource, and build colonies fit for man dwelling house. Only beware, dust storms, shooting star showers, and all other sorts of hazards wait the citizens of the new Mars, and you need to manage every aspect of the colony to go along them happy, sane, and ultimately, alive.

I've been playing Surviving Mars for the past few days and am finding it to be utterly engrossing so far, as I battle my way towards a bigger, more stable colony. Our total review is coming soon for Xbox I and PC, but until and so, get an idea of how the game works with these exclusive screenshots and a Q&A with Haemimont Games' Boian Spasov, who is Surviving Mars' atomic number 82 designer.

Jez Corden, Windows Central: Why did you guys choose Mars? And not say Surviving Venus or Surviving Europa?

Boian Spasov, Surviving Mars Lead Designer: Many of the states in Haemimont Games grew up devouring whatever sci-fi novel we could get our hands on. And practically every renowned sci-fi author has his own take of the red planet — its secrets, its threats and, quite often, the prospects of colonizing it. With time moving frontward the old dream of a human colony on Mars becomes closer and closer to reality. It is no wonder that Elon Musk managed to capture the hearts and imaginations of and then many with it. A potential Mars colony speedily becomes a question of "when", not "if".

We wanted to pay homage to the classics and at the same fourth dimension to be part of the zeitgeist, to offering our have on the challenges and wonders of Mars and the feel of making humanity a multi-planetary species.

There are a few space survival games on the market similar (at least superficially) to Surviving Mars, but I always observe myself missing the creativity you can get out of a game like Cities: Skylines, placing trees and creating different types of areas inside your civilisation, whereas some of the more "survival"-styled city builders tend to focus on the danger and management aspects. Will there be room for creativity in Surviving Mars?

While survival is the main focus of the game, there is certainly a lot of room for creativity in Surviving Mars - you can place decorations, modify the looks of buildings and vehicles and rename your colonists, domes and rockets equally yous see fit.

As is the instance with Cities: Skylines, we promise that user-created mods on PC will improve the customization and adornment options immensely.

Will Surviving Mars exist enhanced for the Xbox One X? And if so, what sort of enhancements tin can players await?

The additional power provided by the Xbox One 10 let us run Surviving Mars in full (non upsampled) 4K resolution. The blood-red planet looks really good in high res, peculiarly when played from a comfy burrow in front of a huge screen.

Recently, Cities: Skylines received modding support on Xbox One, then nosotros wondered if that was something you might bring to consoles as well in the hereafter?

This is certainly something that nosotros would very much like to exercise in the future. The Modding potential of Surviving Mars is huge and we would like to bring our mods to every bit many platforms equally possible.

Can you lot tell u.s. a little bit more about how the mystery system works?

The Mysteries are our way to tell stories inside the game. Each mystery is a huge sequence of scripted events and custom mechanics, oft taking the playthrough in a surprising direction. They accept many hours to be completed and nosotros hope that they will keep surprising the players even when they feel they are familiar with the core of the game.

**In other city builders, y'all have things like conditions and different types of terrain to make each new game experience a niggling different. Considering each Surviving Mars game will have identify on Mars, how will each game feel different? What sort of dynamic systems does the game accept to that effect?

The inhospitable Martian weather is very much a gene. Dust storms, dust devils, cold waves, meteor showers - in that location are enough of threats to keep you on your toes.

As for some of the other dynamic systems that you can interact with - y'all can scan for resource deposits, discover and clarify anomalies, research breakthrough technologies that alter the game dramatically and build tunnels to achieve previously inaccessible areas on the map.

How "difficult" is Surviving Mars in terms of survival? Tin can you become yourself into a "Game Over" situation if you don't look after your colonists properly?

It is certainly the most difficult urban center-builder that I have always designed. You can lose the game past losing all your colonists, but the situations in which y'all have to cede part of the colony or resource dedicated to a time to come project to button through a crisis are also very common.

You say that Surviving Mars is based on existent world scientific discipline, merely there are sci-fi futuristic elements for solving some of the science community'due south expected problems involved with Mars colonization. How do you residuum the real globe aspects against some of the more sci-fi fantastical stuff?

In all honesty, it is a tough balancing act. Nosotros strive to go on the core of the game plausible, but evidently compromises are sometimes made for the sake of either gameplay or aesthetics. As I already said, there are some truly fantastic elements in the mysteries, even so the mysteries are optional and can be disabled by players that want to keep things equally realistic as possible.

Space exploration is an incredibly interesting topic given developments with SpaceX and across. Does video gaming have a role to play in engaging society with this sort of science? How practice yous guys arroyo that if so?

I'd similar to retrieve that in our pocket-sized way nosotros are inspiring people, sparkling interest in the topics that we are exploring within our games. Who knows, maybe someday an astronaut or the next Elon Musk-like visionary volition say: "It all started with a video game".

Is at that place any form of "stop game" in Surviving Mars? or does your colony simply expand forever?

Surviving Mars is a sandbox game and thus it differs from some of our previous projects, like the Tropico series. There is no predefined end game date - you tin play as long as you like. There is likewise no story campaign beyond the scripted content provided past the mysteries - nosotros discussed the idea and found out that it does not fit well in our desired sandbox formula.

Games published by Paradox ofttimes come up with the expectation of robust post-launch support, is that something y'all have planned for Surviving Mars? What could future content look similar?

Absolutely - you can expect the zealous mail service-launch back up that you lot tin run into in other titles published by Paradox. Nosotros volition not carelessness the game on release and at that place will exist free updates addressing bugs and incorporating the feedback we received. Since a season laissez passer has been announced, it is no cloak-and-dagger that expansions are planned as well. The specifics for them are still under wraps at this point, though.

Thanks a ton to Boian Spasov for taking our questions!

Surviving Mars is shaping up to exist an excellent edition to the Xbox One, PC, and PS4 for city-building fans. Stay tuned for our full review, or preorder the game right now for $39.99.

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New changes

Microsoft will begin testing experimental Windows 11 features with Insiders

Microsoft has today appear that information technology'south changing upwardly the mode in which information technology flights preview builds of Windows 11 to Insiders registered in the Dev or Beta Channels. Going forward, both channels are to be considered the "active development co-operative," only for different kinds of feature testing.

Source: https://www.windowscentral.com/surviving-mars-preview-sci-fi-meets-sim-city-upcoming-xbox-one-strategy-game

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