It has been a frantic and exciting few months here in Outlier HQ since we launched Mars Attracts into Early Access back in September, but we still have a lot more we want to add to the game before we're ready for the 1.0 release!
As we said in our previous post, we have a load of new content coming in our next update on December 18, but we’re not stopping there.
We have a number of features that we’re still fine tuning, and we’ll be rolling these out over the course of the coming year. Here's a little peak of what to expect.
Right now we’re in the process of revamping our system for experimenting on your poor human captives.
We have a range of gruesome new experiments (complete with all new animations), but we wanted to add these alongside additional functionality to make sure that they had a real impact on the way experiments work in Mars Attracts.
With this revamp, humans will now have a chance of death from every experiment performed on them. To counter this, the player will have full control over which humans in an enclosure will be experimented on – letting you keep your favourite human safe from risk, or ensure that the one annoying human that you really hate gets all of the punishment.
By adding greater choice and control over how experiments are performed, we hope that this system will offer the player a lot more choice in how to play the game, and offer a further reward for efficient management.
This system still needs a little work before we’re ready to share it, so watch this space for further updates!
But experiments aren’t the only thing we have in the pipeline. After our Martian Mall map drops in a couple of weeks we’ll be looking ahead to the next new map – one we hope will provide a very different Martian setting not yet seen, as well as introducing an all new Martian special character and new challenges to beat.
We also have several new human types that we will be gradually rolling out – including the oft-requested Prehistoric enclosure that we have had a lot of fun designing! The question of how we should visualise a toilet for prehistoric humans was the subject of far more meetings than it probably should have been…
Alongside all of these, we’re still continuing to polish the game as Early Access progresses.
Our Discord community has been invaluable in identifying those bugs that somehow escaped our notice in testing, but they have also made a real contribution to the direction we have taken, and will no doubt continue to do so for the rest of Early Access and beyond. If you would like to have your say in where we go next with Mars Attracts, please join the conversation here.
Love,
Bernard & the Outlier team