Terraforming Mars: The Kotaku Review

Mars is inhospitable. Let’s change that.

Terraforming Mars is not a new game, having been released in 2016, but I still thought it was worth reviewing here in 2018 because a) I just played it and b) it’s so damn good.

A game for 1-5 players, Terraforming Mars puts players in control of futuristic corporations who are all working at the same time to alter the climate of Mars, and in doing so make the Red Planet a little bit nicer for humans to live on.

Players take turn spending money on actions, which range from building things to calling in asteroid strikes, while at the same time harvesting resources like titanium and plant matter from their company holdings.

Turns aren’t designed to reflect days, or even weeks: a single turn comprises an entire generation (you build cities and mining colonies, not individual structures), because the end goal here isn’t to dig a few rocks out of the ground and send in some colonists, it’s to affect severe and lasting change to Mars’ atmosphere by increasing the oxygen levels in the air and raising the surface temperature high enough to support plant (and later animal) life.