Occupy Mars: The Game

This game has mixed reviews and if you are on the fence as to whether or not to buy this game, I hope this will help. Is there bugs in it's current state? Yes. Are these bugs game breaking? No. I haven't encountered any crashes to desktop or major errors such as currupt saves that made the game unplayable. The kind of bugs I've encountered are things like resources not being consumed while crafting, certain triggers for campaign progression not firing (and I'm not sure if this is deliberate while they are actively working on this), and the pre-built heavy rover had its trailer clipped in the ground rendering it utterly unusable (no biggy, I was still able to build one and it works fine so far). Is the game hard? In the beggining, yes. Dying will result in a Game Over / Load your Save scenario. As a survival game, there are many things that will kill you, such as walking outside without a helmet, or a solar flare event that caught you offguard, far from shelter before you could build a shelter. That being said, once food production is established and your learn what you did wrong, the game becomes much easier. I found the natural flow of the tutorial slightly misleading or lacking, but you can Google most of the questions. I will say this as a beginer tip: When it says to "Secure Food", don't build a base right away and try to grow potatoes. Scavange the existing bases for Food, Abandoned Tablets and use the grinder to collect building materials. Don't mine too many rocks as it's far less efficient. And build your own ATV. It's faster than the one you repair... Is the game fun? Yes. I find so. It's an excellent true survival game with problem solving as the primary focus, rather than like many other games that turn "survival" into a first person shooter to add gameplay content. It's not a complete sandbox either, they have a campaign story. I think there's a lot of potential to add mysteries and puzzles once the devs get past fixing and/or develloping more pressing issues. Was the game released as 1,0 from Early Access too early? Yes. As the campaign cannot be completed and certain technologies are locked or broken (while I'm not that far in the game yet, I think I am story blocked, unless it's a bug?), it cannot be said that the game is complete in its current state. That being said, from the develloper's perspective, I think the game aspects are IN the game sufficiently for a 1.0 release, they just didn't make sure that they *work* yet... So should you buy the game? I'd say yes. Buying the game is what funds the game. And I think it's a game worth funding and playing, even with its current quirks or lack of ease of life aspects. They are very good devs that listen to their player base, despite a lot of negative feedback, and that in itself is worth something in my books.

I can't recommend the game at this time, there is far too many audio glitches and the devs have shown that they are willing and have the ego to lock the player into actions for months before finally relenting... oh yess I have to for some reason reopen every defunct airlock door on all the abandoned bases on planet.. honestly after the irritation the devs are causing I lost all excitement from other game announcements from them like *Urban Explorer* looks really promising but I won't touch it until I see a lot of game play footage so I can be sure the irritations of an ego needing to be validated aren't showing up in this game too. Don't get me wrong it's a beautiful game but there is things you'll start to notice are clear disrespects to your time. Please don't feed into the the hype of "game hours to completion" because that means you're paying someone else to dictate your environment and if they don't force you into a 40 hour week then the game isn't worth it... no think about it for a second if you pay $15 for a 2 hour movie ticket did you enjoy the movie just for those 2 hours or did you chat with friends about it..so on and so forth.. so if a dev forces you into a 4 or 5 second animation 6 to 8 times in an hour how upset are you going to be to see the same spit take for what now amounts to 15 minutes of the 2 hour movie. So here is the $18 review short review: don't give the devs money they are out of touch with the survival player base. May 21st '26: Over a year later and still have huge immersion breaks, for example a dust devil will chase you for hours (no exaggeration on the chase look up youtube videos of dust devils turning completely 180 degrees to come back at the player's rover, or even funnier watch one of someone doing huge slow donuts while it's follow almost exactly in between the rover tracks) or watch the sun travel across the sky at an alarming speed (no wonder a storm lasts forever, the forces involved for a planet to do a full rotation in 34 minutes is laughable). They say realism is the ticket here but there's a lot of blatant disregard. Top speed of wind on mars 100 mph sure but with almost no atmosphere that 'gale' only has the force of a 10 mph breeze here on earth, but sure 10 mph wind will blow a person around because 'survival game' but in reality you'll have a hard time flying a kite on mars. Maybe the 1.1 'rebalance' update might force me to give a thumbs up, but right now realism has taken a backseat to increasing the challenge (high resource loss, slow build/deconstruct times, drastically overpowered winds, and more all contributing to slow the player down). Walk outside during a dust storm and get thrown by the wind... no not realism, that dust storm has the force of an 8 mph breeze on earth and since our astronauts aren't paper plates that is not realistic.

As much as I like this game, as much as I've enjoyed it over time, I hate to say that I cannot recommend it. But the campaign has been broken since the official release, and after making a big post promising fixes and progress, the dev team has gone dark for over a month at the time of this writing. If they come back and do something meaningful, I may reassess, but at present, spend your money elsewhere.

Its a clunky game, but I love it. Somethings I think they can improve. 1.) no oxygen output in hanger for Heavy Rover 2.) the wires and tubes all over, its clunky and visually bad 3.) its like every vehicle does not have proper physics and driving over a few bumps is rough 4.) i can walk off a cliff and I turn into a rag doll and die. -- same cliff with a truck and I'm indestructible and make to to the bottom no problem, but a motorbike i cant even make it to the cliff without going ragdoll off the bike from a pebble... 5.) if you have input ports for air/water/power on the outside of a building, there should be plugs built in on the INSIDE to access these resources. But i need to build a battery hub to get a plug on the insdie to get a power port to recharge suit, a CO2 scrubber to fill a O2 bottom to get oxygen even though Im piping oxygen into the base, and a sink to get water. Just some ports on the wall as standard output ports would be better, but at maybe a slower speed?? 6.) helmet setup is funky... nuff said

This is such a hard review to write as I don't like giving negative reviews but after 70 hours on the game I feel I need to. I have followed this game from early access and it started to look like it was going to be a fantastic game and in some ways it is, GOOD POINTS: Story line is OK now they fixed it. Fun for multiplayer (this kept me playing way longer than I would have on my own). Unfortunately that's where it stops. BAD POINTS: There are a lot of clipping glitches which is really annoying trying to gather resources from rock in particular. The graphics are at best mediocre, with such lovely engines already out there it could have been improved easily. The UI is very clunky and often difficult to see what you are actually interacting with. The base building, while in part is fine, is just in my opinion not very well thought out and you only need 3 main buildings to finish the game. Possibly get by with 2. I built all of them just to build them and most served no purpose at all. The progression is again fine but could have been a lot more in depth and utilised some more of the buildings available. The mars rover needs more reach as you have to keep moving closer to the rocks to pick up and drill and the more you drill the rocks fall away the more you need to move the rover. I may revisit this game in the future as they keep updating but for now it will be shelved.

Yikes. The textures are awful, looks like a bunch of jpeg walls inside the base. It feels rather clunky too, I can't stand the way they did the interface as an all "tablet on your arm" thing. Inventory item? Open tablet. Take off your helmet? Inventory and move it from helmet slot to inventory. Interaction is rather limited too. Lots of RP style "*looks at you*" and stuff. During the tutorial phase I couldn't really get the feel of it, then when trying to escape a destroyed base, I bumped into everything, a time limit trying to get me to leave the base but a bunch of doors locked closed with no clear way to get out. Death by radiation before I could even get the time limit to expire while running into lots of dead ends and lumpy barely passable areas. Seriously guys, this is Early Access to the max. Its like. Alpha 0.1 access. A first draft game. Or close to it. ---------- Devs, if you want to improve things, you need an interface that doesn't force the user to go through their arm all the time. You don't need some total reality immersion kit to make a game feel good to play. In fact many of these things are kinda tedious. The tutorial made no sense too with the O2 scrubber and random arrows on the fuse box? What? Explain something rather than just leaving these things a mystery. Provide a path to follow for escaping in the scenario of escaping the base, don't just let people run around randomly trying to find a way out of a broken base with lots of debris you can collide with. To me, this feels like very early access, like in the early Alpha access. I didn't get very far. I mean, I love testing games, but this was too rough for me to even get a feel for. I'm not paying to play something this rough when I can't even be sure my input will absolutely go somewhere. Sorry, I gotta refund. If I knew I was gonna be able to work with the dev to provide direct input, I'd probably stick around, give detailed feedback. Report bugs and help with balancing and whatnot. But nah, as it stands, absolutely not keeping this. Maybe I'll try again next time it goes on sale. The amount of basic one sentence good reviews bothers me though. I feel like someone hiked up the review scores during its sale period?...

⚠️ REZENSION: Occupy Mars 1.0 – Willkommen im Klick-Gefängnis ⚠️ Titel: 1.0 Etikett-Schwindel – Ein "Käse-Garten" für Masochisten Ich wollte dieses Spiel lieben. Ich wollte den roten Planeten bändigen. Aber Occupy Mars 1.0 hat mich stattdessen zum unbezahlten Praktikanten am Waschbecken degradiert. Ein weiser Nutzer schrieb treffend: "Ich möchte so spielen, wie ICH will – nicht so, wie IHR es mir aufzwingt!". Hier ist die Liste meines Wahnsinns aus 500 Tagen Mars-Alltag: 1. Die 14-Stunden-Waschbecken-Nötigung: Für die Rakete braucht man 850 Methan. Da echte Automatisierung ein Fremdwort bleibt, bedeutet das: 3.400 Flaschen händisch füllen. Bei 5-6 Sek. pro Flasche starrst du 14 STUNDEN (echte Lebenszeit!) auf ein virtuelles Waschbecken. Und der Clou? Du hast einen Methan-Brunnen direkt vor der Tür, aber die Entwickler waren zu faul für eine Abfüll-Logik. Also: Zurück ans Waschbecken, Astronaut! 2. Ressourcen-Erpressung & Der 93% Material-Tod: Zerkleinerst du einen 800-Unit Alu-Fels per Hand, landen mickrige 50 Units im Rucksack. Wo sind die restlichen 750 hin? Verdampft! Das Spiel zwingt dich zum hölzernen Rover-Kran. Zeitverlust gegen Materialverlust – eine reine Gängelung, um die Spielzeit künstlich aufzublähen. 3. Das Flaschen-Drama (Mathe für Verzweifelte): Eine einzige Wasserflasche kostet 10 Alu, 4 Eisen und 6 Si. Da man beim Hand-Abbau fast alles verliert, reicht ein riesiger Fels für gerade einmal 5 Einweg-Flaschen. Für das Raketen-Ziel müsste man den halben Mars umgraben. Ein Astronaut, der so mit Ressourcen umgeht, wäre nach zwei Tagen tot – hier nennt man das „Hard Science“. 4. Das Reparatur-Inception-Gate (Garage des Grauens): Den Rover kurz gegen die Garage gesetzt? 50% Schaden. Bauzeit der Garage: 2 Min. Reparaturzeit: 20 Minuten Echtzeit mit Klebeband auf der Maustaste! Und der Wahnsinn: Ich musste währenddessen 4-mal das Reparatur-Tool selbst reparieren, um die Wand fertig zu kriegen! Der Hightech-Rover-Schweisser kann nämlich nur bauen, nicht reparieren. Zu dumm für eine Naht! 5. Audio-Terror & Die Sisyphus-Ausrede: Der absolute Tiefpunkt: Ab 50% Ausdauer dröhnt ein permanenter Herzschlag-Ton. Akustische Folter, nur weil man arbeitet! Dazu hörst du den Rover-Schweisser noch in 4 km Entfernung in voller Lautstärke. Die Antwort der Devs? „Sisyphusarbeit, das zu fixen“. Wer im Forum nachfragt, wird gerne mal gebannt. Kritik-Resistenz Level 100. 6. Sound-Steinzeit & Blechdosen-Feeling: Während das jahrealte Stationeers Sound-Dichten physikalisch berechnet, klingt hier alles gleich billig. Der Schritt auf Metall ist so ohrenbetäubend, dass man am liebsten barfuss gehen würde. Und dann das Scanner-Chaos: Er springt eigenmächtig um und verliert Ziele, weil das UI meint, besser zu wissen, was ich gerade suche. 7. Welt-Logik & Story-Löcher: Die Alpha-Basis explodiert, man rettet sich per Rakete und landet gefühlt 2 km weiter wieder? Physikalisch unmöglich. Dazu Basen-Spam alle 500 Meter – strategisch völlig sinnfrei. Man findet Alien-Eier, aber es gibt keine Aliens oder echte Wendungen. Alles wirkt hohl. 8. Der 11-Jahre-Abgrund (Space Engineers): Es ist beschämend: Das über 10 Jahre alte Space Engineers bietet echte Freiheit und Automatisierung. In Occupy Mars wartest du stattdessen 4 Minuten (auf NVMe!), bis der Spielstand lädt, nur um beim Drücken von F4 (Feedback) einen Game-Crash zu erleben. Fazit: Ein hohles Endgame ohne Logik, Respekt vor deiner Zeit oder funktionierende Technik. Wer Freiheit und echte Simulation will, spielt lieber Space Engineers oder Stationeers. FINGER WEG! ⚠️ REVIEW: Occupy Mars 1.0 – Welcome to Click-Prison ⚠️ Title: 1.0 Label Fraud – A "Cheese Garden" for Masochists I wanted to love this game. I wanted to conquer the Red Planet. But Occupy Mars 1.0 demoted me to an unpaid intern at a kitchen sink. As one wise user put it: "I want to play MY WAY, not YOUR WAY!". Here is the log of my madness from 500 days of Martian life: 1. The 14-Hour Sink Ordeal: Building the rocket requires 850 Methane. Since automation is a foreign concept here, you have to fill 3,400 bottles by hand. At 5-6 seconds per bottle, you’ll spend 14 HOURS of your actual life staring at a virtual faucet. The kicker? You have a methane well outside, but the devs were too lazy to program a bottling logic. So: Back to the sink, astronaut! 2. Resource Extortion & The 93% Material Death: If you mine an 800-unit Aluminum rock by hand, you get a measly 50 units in your backpack. Where did the other 750 go? Vaporized! The game forces you to use the clunky rover crane. It's a choice between wasting hours or losing 93% of your loot – pure bullying to artificially inflate playtime. 3. The Bottle Drama (Math for the Desperate): A single water bottle costs 10 Alu, 4 Iron, and 6 Si. Because you lose almost everything during hand-mining, a massive rock yields just 5 single-use bottles. To fuel the rocket, you’d have to mine half of Mars. An astronaut managing resources like this would be dead in two days – here, they call it "Hard Science." 4. The Repair-Inception Loop (Garage from Hell): Bumped the garage with your rover? 50% damage. Building it took 2 mins, but repairing it? 20 minutes of real-time with literal tape on your mouse button! The joke: My welder kept breaking while repairing. I had to repair the repair-tool 4 times just to finish the wall. The "smart" rover welder can't repair; it only builds. Too dumb for a weld seam! 5. Audio Terror & The Sisyphus Excuse: The absolute low point: At 50% stamina, a permanent heartbeat sound starts. Acoustic torture just for working! Plus, you can hear the rover welder from 4 km away at full volume. The devs' response? "Sisyphus work to fix it." People complaining on the forums often get banned. Criticism resistance: Level 100. 6. Sound Stone-Age & Tin Can Physics: While the years-old Stationeers calculates sound density based on atmosphere, everything here sounds cheap and loud. Walking on metal is so deafening you'd rather go barefoot. And then the scanner: It switches targets on its own because the UI thinks it knows better what you're looking for. 7. World Logic & Story Gaps: Alpha Base explodes, you escape via rocket, and land... 2 km away? Physically impossible. Plus, useless tiny bases every 500 meters – strategically nonsensical. You find alien eggs, but there are no aliens or actual plot twists. It all feels hollow. 8. The 11-Year Gap (Space Engineers): It’s shameful: Space Engineers (released 2013!) offers more freedom and actual automation. In Occupy Mars, you wait 4 minutes (on NVMe!) for the game to load, only to have it crash when you press F4 for feedback. Verdict: A hollow endgame with no logic, no respect for your time, and broken tech. If you want freedom and real simulation, play Space Engineers or Stationeers. STAY AWAY!

There's been a bug in the game for a few years now where after day 100 your load time becomes astronomical. Rather than fix that they decided co-op was more important. I can't in good conscience recommend it knowing the dev team can't properly prioritize. Once that bug gets fixed then I'd change my recommendation. As it stands that's a no from me.