It’s been a while, Commander! Today, your definitely human assistant Lina will give you a glimpse into the mysteries and narrative adventures that await you on the Red Planet. While there are no new surprises in this department, we hope that you’ll enjoy (re)visiting our handcrafted stories, which add a bit of spice, humor, and/or fright into your colony building experience. Seasoned players of Surviving Mars (2018) can use this opportunity to freshen up on their knowledge of the Martian mysteries and events.
Introducing fantastic narratives in a sandbox city building experience – especially one that’s focused on colonizing a whole other planet with a mostly realistic approach – is not the easiest of tasks and one could argue that it’s not even the best fit for the game, but way back in 2016 we firmly decided that we wanted to include some flavor and explore the “fiction” part of the “science-fiction” genre. Thus, the mysteries were born, weaving a net of events that take you on a quest to explore the secrets of the Universe, face humanity’s shortcomings or battle with the unknown.
The twelve mysteries of Mars have three main goals:
to tell an interactive story;
to spice up the mid-late game;
to provide a unique challenge.
Each mystery – which you can specifically select while creating your game, leave to random chance or completely turn off – comes with its own set of distinctive visual and gameplay elements. You’ll see changes in the environment and experience new disasters, discover special anomalies and interact with alien objects, unlock new technologies and constructions. Some mysteries will take you on a deep narrative journey, while others will be a bit more pragmatic and present you with practical tasks, crucial for your survival.
You can experience only one mystery per playthrough and don’t expect it to present itself from the get-go – we’ve tried to make sure that you and your colonists are ready for the challenge. As much as anyone is ever ready for alien artifacts manifesting from thin air and forming cults around them… Spoiler alert!
A shameless plug of Lina’s favorite mysteries: Spheres and St. Elmo’s Fire. Try them and thank me later, okay?
But wait, that’s not all! In addition to the grand mysteries, spanning tens of Sols and fundamentally changing your playstyle, there are hundreds of one-time or short-chain events (526 events and event follow-ups, to be precise – trust me on the count, I’ve tested them all). Maybe a depressed genius will ask you for some time off, or you’ll walk into an unexpected party; maybe a colonist will come across a strange artifact in the red sands, or a rival colony will organize a rover race across the Arcadian plains. Whatever the situation, you’ll be in control of some decisions, which might have unexpected results.
Events are triggered based on specific circumstances in your colony and while you’re likely to see some of them recurring though your playthroughs, others will feel unique and rare. Event conditions can be as broad as “pass the founder stage” and as specific as having certain terraforming parameters at certain values and a colonist with this or that trait present in a Dome with these and those buildings in it. Try having a biorobot colonist who experiences a sanity breakdown. Or see what might happen when there’s a genius renegade in your colony, and you’ve built two or more Drone Hubs, and two or more Shuttle Hubs, and have over 1M Funding, and a rocket has landed on Mars. Or, if that’s not your cup of tea, you can disable all random events from the game rules when setting up your game (but then you won’t have the pleasure of encountering the Flat Mars Society and where’s the fun in that?!).
With the addition of the Below and Beyond content, you get two more layers of maps to play on, as well as more mini mysteries, anomalies and events to experience in these new environments. Most notably, you will encounter two random buried wonders in the Martian Underground, which will take you on an ambitious journey to research and utilize them. Your colonists will also face different dilemmas and problems in the Underground and on the asteroids, which will require your attention and timely decisions.
But wait, that’s not all (second edition)! There is one last element to the storytelling, which is as important as anything we’ve crafted over the years: it’s you! (I hope you’re not lactose intolerant because the cheese is strong in this one.) You are the ultimate narrator in the tale of colonizing Mars, of discovering its secrets and telling the stories of its colonists. And I’m very much looking forward to all your wild adventures and unexpected takes on the events in your colonies, the awesome mods we know our community is capable of creating, the fun videos and mind-boggling challenges that you will undertake. See you in the great unknown, Commander!
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