Epic Games Store goes on sale every week a free game, which you can add to your library without any attachments. This week’s offer is Surviving Mars, the space distance city builder game about … survive on mars. It will be available until March 18.
Surviving Mars, if you haven’t played it, it’s more or less exactly what you imagine when you think about it Cities: Skylines Goes To Space. Your goal is to create a sustainable human place on Mars. You do this by obtaining resources (metal, concrete, etc.) to build life support structures (food, water, oxygen, energy) to support domes of various sizes that can accommodate human life. If you liked it Cities, you will like Surviving Mars, too. (Both games are published by Paradox Interactive).
Unlike Cities, But, Surviving Mars pose an additional focus on people, rather than structures. You can arrange the manifesto for all the rockets you send from Earth to Mars. All the people you can choose from are randomly generated, down to their traits and vocations. Want a bunch of alcoholic botanists who like to play video games? Or how about hypochondriac party animals that work 25 hours a day? In your version of Mars, anything is possible.
At its core, Surviving Mars understands that good urban planning is not just about roads and buildings and budget cuts. These are people. It’s funny that you have to go to space to learn this lesson.
Killer melodies are there too.
In other news about “games you can get for free”, Metro 2033 is currently available at 100% discount a la others PC showcase, named after a 19th century power source. It will remain at this price until March 15th.
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