We’ve added a new mission which includes the Perseverance Rover and the Ingenuity Helicopter, y’know, that mission that NASA recently sent to Mars? You can now play that mission yourself in Mars Horizon!
New Spacepedia entries exist for this mission, you’ll be able to find out all about the Rover and helicopter as well as viewing their models at your leisure. Alongside this there are new narrative events where important decisions will have to be made. And finally, There are new cinematics for these payloads meaning you’ll get to see the little helicopter making its way across its new home!
Reusable Vehicles
We’ve also added a reusable Wyvern Upper. This is an awesome addition to the game because we’ve been able to demonstrate some of the new reusable vehicle tech which is moving into the mainstream in real life space exploration. If you do well enough to unlock the Wyvern Upper, you’ll be able to re-use it which will save you both time and money! Keep an eye out for the brand new cinematic for this too, we’re really proud of it.
New game modes - Sandbox and Iron Core
Sandbox Mode - The ultimate customisable Mars Horizon experience 👩🚀
HIGHLY requested by the community, we’re now offering a Sandbox Mode for Mars Horizon players! You’ll be able to access Sandbox Mode from ‘Customise Experience’ in the main menu, meaning you really can experience Mars Horizon however you want.
What Sandbox Mode opens up for you:
Unlocks ALL upgrades
Launches NEVER fail
Unlimited mission gameplay battery
FREE building moving
Removing obstructions is FREE
Starting funds
Starting support tier
A save icon to identify these sandbox saves at a glance
Iron Core Mode - The toughest way to play Mars Horizon 💪
We’ve added a new special game mode where you can’t cheat by save-scumming. Iron Core mode will save after EVERY SINGLE TURN whether you want it to or not. Like with Sandbox Mode, a save icon will identify these Iron Core saves to help differentiate it. This is the toughest way to play Mars Horizon to date, there’s no going back!
New Custom Agency logo - Our lovely Aurochs! 🐮
Recently we redesigned our studio logo, we absolutely love our new Aurochs. Check out our blog post to read about how and why we redesigned. We are so proud of our logo we want you to be able to take it to Mars with you so check it out in the custom agencies screen. Please send us your screenshots if you use it.
Improvements to gameplay
As well as all those lovely new additions we’ve made a lot of improvements to gameplay, take a look at the following list to find out what’s new and what’s changed!
The menu header highlights now loop, as per community requests, so now you can cycle through headers more easily
In-progress missions are better highlighted in the UI - we’ve added a pulse, a clipboard, and a research icon which are displayed when appropriate, so it’s always clear what missions are underway in your list
Made the ‘Complete Task’ button in mission gameplay more obvious when it appears - now it’s highlighted and pulses slightly - it will be ghosted when it’s not applicable so it will be much more clear when you can finish a mission early
Catch Up Mechanic - when you fail a mission the previously used parts will become cheaper and also build faster. A game changer! It makes catching up after a failed launch feel more manageable and it can lead to some great last minute changes in your fortune
The agency icon size for the solar system screen is now on a slider for accessibility
Bonus reward communication now improved, there is now an animated font and more ceremony in the results screen when these are achieved - this makes getting a Mission Bonus more rewarding!
We’ve made your rivals’ failures more obvious - they are now going to pop up red, pulse, and they’ll have a unique icon next to them in the Solar System screen in the News Ticker. Now you can get a feeling of smug satisfaction when you notice a rival experiencing a setback!
Improved the drift icon - in response to community feedback, we’ve made it more clear to know if it will swing to the left or right by the addition of indicator arrows
China’s space shuttle now has an arm-based deployment cinematic, so now you can watch Chinese payloads being plucked from the cargo bay and positioned in space
Vehicle packs coming to console
Mars Horizon: Expanded Horizons is coming to PC and consoles and so will also bring our previous vehicle updates to consoles as well.
If you’re yet to pick up Mars Horizon on Switch and want to give it a test launch - now you can! Alongside the update there’s a free Mars Horizon demo that will be available for everyone on Nintendo Switch!
The dream team are back - Eira and Allie will give you an early look at Expanded Horizons showing you sandbox mode on the Mars Horizon Steam Store page. They will be joined by Stefan, one of the devs on the Mars Horizon team. He will be advising and mocking them in equal measure as well as sharing his experiences making the game.
Expanded Horizons Sneak Peek Livestream
Date: Friday 11th June
Time: 3.00pm UK Time
Phew, we told you it was our biggest update ever!
We can’t wait to see what you come up with in your Sandbox and Iron Core saves, and to see people exploring the universe with our Aurochs logo. Please make sure you share with us the chaos or the precision over on our Twitter or in our Discord!
The next of our free Mars Horizon updates is now available on on PC (Steam and GOG!) This time we’re bringing the Vega Rocket, Himawari Satellite, and Akari Satellite to our game!
All content updates will be coming to console as well, we will give updates about this when we can.
Future Mars Horizon updates! 👩🚀
We have more exciting things planned for the future that we will announce here on Steam, across our social, in our Discord, and to our Mars Horizon mailing list once we have more information to share. So make sure to follow the game or sign up to be the first to hear about these. For now, we hope you enjoy taking on the space race with these all new vehicles.
This update is called 'Distant Observations' and features two observation payloads the Himawari and the Akari, plus ESA's Vega rocket.
Small, versatile, and efficient — the Vega launch system is Europe’s way of launching light satellites to multiple orbits in a single launch. It's a cool addition to the game and looks spectacular standing on the launch pad ready for action.
The Himawari and Akari are both Japanese payloads but with very different purposes. Himawari series satellites provide data observations to support weather forecasting, where as the Akari was an infrared astronomy telescope designed to survey the entire sky and help further our understanding of the universe around us. It's neat to have one advanced observations payload pointing to earth, the other out into space!
Our first free Mars Horizon update has now landed! We’re bringing the SPOT Satellite mission and Rockets Nippon 1 and Nippon 2 to our game! Read on to learn more about these and why we are excited to bring them to Mars Horizon.
All content updates will be coming to console as well, we will give updates about this when we can.
Future Mars Horizon updates! 👩🚀
We have more exciting things planned for the future that we will announce here on Steam, across our social, in our Discord, and to our Mars Horizon mailing list once we have more information to share. So make sure to follow the game or sign up to be the first to hear about these. For now, we hope you enjoy taking on the space race with these all new vehicles.
We're adding the SPOT, which is an earth observation satellite used by the European Space Agency (ESA). The purpose of the SPOT series of satellites is to improve the knowledge and management of Earth by exploring the planet's resources, detecting and forecasting phenomena involving climatology and oceanography, and monitoring human activities and natural phenomena. Since the launch of SPOT 1 in 1986, the series of satellites have been providing high-resolution, wide area optical imagery for the European Space Agency (ESA) which it shares with its partners around the world. It's a great payload to use in Mars Horizon for earth observation missions, and also gives an ESA playthrough a little more flavour!
We decided to add the Nippon 1 and Nippon 2 because they were so fundamental in what would become the Japanese Space Agency's earlier successes. These liquid propellant rockets assisted Japan in launching satellites from the 1970's all the way up to the present day, and are perfect for undertaking low payload weight request missions in Mars Horizon in a Japan playthrough.
MacOS users, you asked and we listened, you can now join us in running your own space agency! If you’re planning on entering the space race remember to share your highlights with us on our social channels 🚀
In Mars Horizon you lead a major space agency and guide humanity to Mars. Construct a base, design and build rockets, conduct missions throughout the Solar System, and write your own history of Space exploration. Created with support from the European Space Agency, the UK Space Agency and published by The Irregular Corporation.
Firstly, the team behind Mars Horizon want to say a HUGE thank you to you all for supporting us during the launch of our game. It's been incredible! Thank you to everyone who has bought and played Mars Horizon, posted about it on social, reviewed it, recommended it to friends, watched streams, shared screenshots, and chatted to us in our discord.
We've loved watching you play our game, hearing your stories, celebrating your milestone victories, and sharing in the dismay of those failed rocket launches. A lot of love, hard work, passion, and space nerdery went into making our game.
We also want to say a big big thank you to everyone who has reviewed Mars Horizon so far. We are a small studio and reviews help a lot with getting our game in front of new audiences. We really appreciate you taking the time to do it!
The Steam Awards 2020 🏆🚀
If you'd like to continue supporting us and our game, the Steam awards have just opened up! We'd really appreciate any nominations you'd like to give to Mars Horizon.
What would you like to know about Mars Horizon?👨🚀
Jem and Allie are going to be answering your questions about Mars Horizon as they carry on the Auroch Space Agency (ASA) playthrough. We've got the dev team on hand in mission control too ready to answer your questions.
Are there any hints or tips you'd like to know? Questions about the development or working with space agencies? Drop by and get your questions answered.
📆 Friday 27th November ⏰ 3.00 - 4.30pm GMT / 6.00 - 7.30pm CET / 9.00 - 10.30 am PT 🔗 twitch - irregularcorp
We have pushed a new patch live for Mars Horizon! It covers adjustments to the AI in the Hard and Very Hard modes, as well as improvements elsewhere in the game, especially in the styling of the auto-resolve feature.
Additionally, there are a myriad of fixes throughout the game included in this patch - all of which you can find detailed below!
We had this patch live on the experimental branch over the weekend and have now set it live for all to play, we do hope you enjoy the changes!
Improvements
Adjusted the difficulty of “Hard” and “Very Hard” modes - these changes are as follows:
Modified AI behaviour so that they’re less aggressive in Eras 1 and 2 on Hard/Very Hard
Increased AI research costs on Hard / Very Hard
Reduced AI mission rewards on Hard / Very Hard
Reduced AI funding on Hard / Very Hard
Increased Player funding on Hard / Very Hard
Decreased the build cost of the Medium and Large launchpads.
Restyled the “Auto-resolve” button so that it is more clearly interactable.
Added background music to the Moon Landing cinematic.
Optimisations to the Base Scene cursor performance.
Improvements to the Pluto textures.
Increased weighting for Modular Space Station request missions so they appear more frequently.
Fixes
Fixed an issue where the Vehicle construction approval popup would display the wrong completion times for a reusable Vehicle.
Fixes for Mission Gameplay tooltips not displaying correctly in languages other than English.
Fix for a “Modular Space Station” event spawning too early.
Fixed issues that prevented some achievements from being unlockable.
Fixed an issue that could prevent AI difficulty from changing mid-game.
Fix for Venus Orbit rule variations.
Some minor fixes to the Mission Payload reliability rolls.
Several fixes for German, French, Spanish localisations.
Fix for a typo in Spacepedia.
Fix for the “Milestone Challenge” displaying broken text.
Fixed an issue where an empty notification popup could block your progress.
Fix for the “new” icon remaining after viewing request missions.
Fixed an issue where Crew could get stuck in a “cannot be assigned” state.
Fixed an issue where the Moon was referred to as a planet in a narrative event.
Fixes to Building removal validations.
Fixed an issue where certain Vehicle combinations would not find the correct Vehicle preview texture.
Fixed an issue where the game some devices would conflict with game input.
Fix for rotating Buildings not correctly updating the UI.
Fixed an issue that could prevent localisations from loading correctly.
We're very busy behind the scenes sorting issues for people, chatting on social, dropping into streams, and trying to make sure everyone has the best Mars Horizon experience possible.
Once again, a huge thanks from the Mars Horizon team.
Good luck with your mission to the red planet Commanders!
Mars Horizon is a strategy simulation game where you lead a major space agency as you guide humanity to Mars. Construct a base, design and build rockets, conduct missions throughout the Solar System, and write your own history of Space exploration.
Tim was the first British ESA astronaut to visit the International Space Station (ISS). His work during mission Principia captured the hearts and minds of millions. He has a background as a test pilot and a British Army Air Corps officer and he is also a STEM ambassador and best-selling author.
Visiting the European Space Agency Hear about Auroch Digital's visit to ESA to show off Mars Horizon to ACTUAL rocket engineers and scientists
Why we must work together to land on Mars Dr Alice Bunn, International Director at at UK Space Agency. explains how space agencies co-operate and collaborate, why this is so important, and how this collaboration will help us get to Mars.