Great game with a disappointing end game

[HansiSolo]

I really love the game, but find the end game phase kinda boring / frustrating.
All the wonders and improved sciences at the end: you don't really need them because there is nothing more to do.
Sooner or later all the ressources will be depleted and there is nothing more to do for me or my polulation.
It would be fine if there would be a final technology to terraform the Mars. Make it pretty hard with insane science and production costs. Once you achieved it, show a nice video of Martians leaving the domes and living like on earth, display the score, game over - that would be okay! But not just nothing...

The same with the mysteries: You solve them and nothing happens! No "congrats you did it", no score, just... nothing.

 

[Calvax]

It's definitely a good game with a lot of potential to be great. I think the issue with the end game is the fact that IMO the game is part survival base builder, part city builder and doesn't really do either well. In a survival base-builder the end game usually comes once you've finally reached a point where things are stable. Either you'll have some giant threat thrown at you or you'll naturally feel you're finished because it took you tens of hours to get to that stage. But the actual survival in surviving Mars is quite easy. There aren't many resources to manage, they're all pretty easy to get and you're pretty much self-sufficient by the mid game.

In a city-builder the end game comes when you're finally building wonders, having grown from a hamlet all the way to an incredibly well developed metropolis. That works well because there are so many stages to work through, so many new buildings/services/features to unlock. But in surviving Mars there's really not a lot to unlock as the game progresses. Most things are there from the start, or at least introduced by the mid game (with the exception of wonders). After several hours of playing you end up at a point where you're colony is as developed as it's ever going to get. All that's left to do is build copies of everything, a late game colony is just several mid game colonies side-by-side.

I hope we'll see many months and years of updates to the game to flesh it out in either way. There's certainly a lot to build on.

 

[HansiSolo]

Exactly Calvax. All you need is 3 domes: 1 for science, 1 for production and 1 for education and thats it. Any further dome is just a rather uninteresting copy of what you already have achieved.
I'm just wondering what Paradox was thinking when they made it. Any developer or test player must have run in the same situation where you think "okay and what now?".
I hope Paradox will hang on and add expansions, because this is what this game desperately needs.

 

[Calvax]

Paradox didn't make the game, they're just the publishers. The devs are Haemimont Games. We have had some announcements that they're working to bring new features of the game and being published by paradox it should be safe to assume it wont just be left in its current state.

 

[martin4444]

Well, if you play at the hardest setting with a really poor site with few resources and lots of disasters then the game is won once you get the wonders in place that gives you limitless resources. That is the goal which is not all that easy but very fun (the journey getting there making decisions) in my opinion.