My body betrayed me last month, trapping me in my bed when it wasn t sending me rushing to my poor, overworked loo. I couldn t sleep, I couldn t work and so I turned to management games to take my mind off the virus squatting inside me. Juggling budgets, disasters and production chains might not sound particularly relaxing, but there s also a swathe of low-pressure sims that serve as a brilliant panacea for stress.
Surviving Mars‘s initial foray into off-world colonisation is bearing fruit, as developers Haemimont have announced Space Race, its first expansion grown on Martian soil. While the original game was purely a story of mankind struggling against a hostile environment, the Space Race expansion sounds a little more realistic – this time you’ve got AI-controlled corporate and national rivals. While you won’t be declaring war on anyone, you’re still in competition, and there’s always the option to headhunt talent from rival colonies. Below, the reveal trailer.
Surviving Mars, a colony-building and management game akin to Sim City except the entire planet is a disaster that never stops happening, will get its first expansion later this year. Called Space Race, it puts the greatest nations and most powerful corporations on Earth against one another in a competition to acquire and control the Red Planet's limited resources.
Players will compete with AI-controlled colonies backed by Earth-bound sponsors to become the dominant power on Mars. You can trade with them, render aid, or jerk them around by luring important colonists to your side. Each sponsor has its own unique vehicle and building, as well as different challenges to be fulfilled on the road to colonization. And there will be new "narrative events" cropping up, "that help reveal the realities of life in the dome and challenge your management skills."
Surviving Mars: Space Race is available for pre-purchase on Steam for $12/£9. Owners of the Surviving Mars season pass will get it automatically.
Paradox Interactive has announced Space Race, the first big expansion for its space colony construction and management sim Surviving Mars. It's set to release "soon" on PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4.
Space Race takes the core colony building set-up of the base game, and introduces a new competitive twist. You'll no longer be working to establish a thriving colony in isolation; instead, as you expand your own interstellar settlement, other AI colonies will be competing for control of Mars' limited resources, to claim anomalies, and to reach certain progress milestones, all in a bid to become the planet's dominant superpower.
However, while colonies are all in direct competition, a certain degree of interaction may be beneficial. You can, for instance, trade with competitors, respond to their distress calls and issue your own, or even steal their most promising colonists for your own nefarious ends.
