I’ve mentioned this before, but my style of gaming is an obsessive one. I like to binge games until I’m absolutely sick to death of them, then move on to the next thing. I don’t like to play in short little daily sessions.
But Surviving Mars has truly tested the limits of this obsession. In fact, Surviving Mars is so addictive that I had to put myself on an anti-Surviving Mars timeout.
In case you haven’t heard of it, Surviving Mars is a space colonization game by Haemimont Games AD, who also make the incredible Tropico series (which I also really love). In Surviving Mars, you touch down on the Red Planet with a limited batch of supplies, and you must establish a colony there. You can occasionally phone Earth for resupplies, but your goal is to become self-sufficient, creating a maze of biodomes in which your brave settlers will survive and thrive.
If that sounds really good, well… it is. The thing is, it’s too good. If I start Surviving Mars in the morning, the next thing I know it’s 10 p.m. and my eyes are blurred as I’m ugly crying over some stupid accident that killed off a bunch of my colonists. If I play Surviving Mars, I forget to eat. I forget to sleep. All I can think about is the next phase of this massive, massive settlement project.
So, as much as I love this game, I won’t allow myself to fire it up. I uninstalled it, and I stopped looking at updates a long while ago (as it turns out, there actually haven’t been any updates in a long while, so I haven’t really missed much).
If you love games where you micromanage tiny little buildings and even tinier people (like SimCity and Cities Skylines), then you’ll probably really enjoy Surviving Mars. Just be careful, because you can easily lose days, if not weeks, to its hyper-addictive management gameplay.
Personally, I can no longer partake in its wonderous game world. I know my limits, and Surviving Mars is on the other side of a line that I won’t let myself cross.
But maybe I could install it just for a day and mess around for a bit. The next time will be different, I swear…
