Mars Attracts

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[b]Mars Attacks[/b]–inspired twist on the tycoon/park-management genre, where you run a [i]Martian[/i] amusement/prison park by abducting, experimenting on, and showcasing humans for other [i]Martian[/i] guests. The dark comedy and retro-futuristic humor are consistently highlighted as strong points. The art direction and tone capture the campy sci-fi vibe of the franchise, blending park management with grotesque, pulp-inspired humor that many find entertaining. There’s a nostalgic pull for fans of classic sims like [i]Theme Hospital[/i] or [i]Zoo Tycoon[/i]. Even in Early Access, the core systems — building parks, managing staff and finances, balancing human happiness versus experimentation — are engaging and offer strategic depth beyond the surface silliness. [b]Mars Attracts[/b] is shaping up to be an original and entertaining park management sim with a distinct, darkly comic identity. It’s well worth trying especially for fans of management games and quirky indie titles — but expect some roughness and incomplete features due to its Early Access status. [h1]7/10[/h1] DISASTER | BAD | MEDIOCRE | OKAY | [b][u]GOOD[/u][/b] | GREAT |AMAZING| MASTERPIECE [quote] Reviewed on: Win11 Home 64-bit, Intel i5-11600K, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB PRIME, 32GB DDR4-3600 RAM, 2 x Kingston NV1 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD, Internet Broadband 1000/1000 Mbit [/quote] [quote] If you like this review, then please consider giving it a thumbs up. I've also reviewed other games that you might find interesting. If so please follow [u][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/27418263/] Top of the Chart.[/url][/u] [/quote]

I really wanted to like Mars Attracts, but right now it just isn’t there yet. The idea is genuinely interesting, a Mars Attacks-style park builder where you run a “human zoo” sounds unique and fun. And to be fair, the theme and humor do land. There is a good game hiding underneath all of this. The problem is the execution. The UI and controls feel clunky and unintuitive, especially when you’re trying to manage your park efficiently. Simple actions can become frustrating, and it ends up feeling like you’re fighting the game instead of enjoying it. On top of that, performance isn’t great — I ran into stutters and bugs that pulled me out of the experience more than once. Content-wise, it also feels a bit thin right now. You can see what the game is trying to be, but a lot of systems don’t feel fully fleshed out yet, which makes the gameplay loop lose its appeal faster than it should. Yes, it’s Early Access, but at this price, I expected something more polished or at least more engaging long-term. There’s potential here, but in its current state, it’s too rough and incomplete for me to recommend. Verdict: 4.5/10 (for now) This is the latest gamepaly https://youtu.be/2b-E9ghDs3w

Just to get the big caveat out the way first - this is an early access game and at the time of writing there's still quite a lot to be added, but it has so much potential it's worth buying in early (and buy the Supporter's Edition - it's not much extra and worth it for the Featurette if you want to get to know the devs and their plans for it). I'm betting that Mars Attracts will become a big sleeper hit. It is licenced (impressive for an indie studio) and it's got all the dark humour of the film. The focus of the game is around collecting humans to display, experiment on, and deconstruct using a similar, but slightly less annoying, mechanic to Two Point Museum, and there are other parallels with that game (the use of a grid rather than freeform and a similar cartoon style, etc). There's also the usual stalls and decorations, and some rides - although the devs are saying rides are very much secondary, so don't expect to be constructing rollercoasters down the line. Also at the time of writing, there humans from five eras to collect - Ancient Egypt, Rome, the Vikings, the Wild West, and the Space Age (the latter unlocks earlier with the Supporters Ed). With four maps that take a good few hours to get through (my game 'ended' somewhere into the fourth map). The experiments and tech tree are there but you can see there's loads more to come, some systems aren't implemented yet, and although I didn't find any bugs, there are some very minor glitches. But don't let that put you off. Ok, for the price you're not getting a complete game, but Mars Attracts is great fun and I'm going to be checking in on it regularly and looking forward to new content. So please consider supporting the devs early as I have a feeling this is one that's just going to grow on anyone who likes these sorts of games.

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I mean you get your very own human zoo. What's there not to love? I mainly like to take the old people and watch their grandkids cry. Leave them wondering if and when they will be next.

Already a very robust game while in early access, Mars Attracts answers the question nobody was asking: what if Zoo Tycoon was Mars Attacks themed? As with many early access games, you are bound to run into a few bugs, but the dev team is very responsive to bug reports and is actively patching the game. I've already sunk several hours in, most of them in the very early stages of early access, and as of March 2026, the game is feeling so much more fleshed out. Can't wait to see where things go from here!

Great game so far! a couple of little bugs in the Early Access game but nothing game breaking after 10 hours of game play. Mouse rotating could do with some tweaking, speed a little too fast, hopefully something the devs will look at in the future. For an early release there's a generous number of levels and huge amount of content. I've sunk 10 hours in over two days and would happily sink another 5 in tomorrow. Love the concept and looking forward to seeing what comes next

So here’s the thing… I really wanted to like Mars Attracts. If you’re an 80s/90s kid, this game is absolutely a nostalgia trip. The throwbacks are great, the vibe is there, and it’s set in a universe that honestly deserved way more attention before the IP basically got forgotten. But as a game? It just didn’t hook me. The gameplay itself is fine — nothing offensively bad, but also nothing that felt new or exciting. Where it really started losing me was the UI and controls. A lot of things felt confusing and non-intuitive, and I spent more time feeling frustrated and unsure of what the game wanted from me than actually enjoying the park-building part. And then there’s the big issue: performance and bugs. I had repeated crashes, stuttering, and major CPU usage spikes for no clear reason. I get that it’s early access, but it still felt like I was fighting the game more than playing it. One thing I will give it credit for: the music is great. It fits perfectly and actually feels like it belongs in this world. Bottom line: I can’t recommend it right now. If the developers fix the bugs and smooth out the UI, I could see this being worth revisiting later — but at the moment, it’s too clunky and unstable to justify full price. Verdict: Not recommended (for now). 4.25/10

I was a little skeptical going in. At first if feels really underbaked. Like you're building cubes of concrete to hold Greco-Roman peasants licking hamster water drippers. Human zoos are cheap and gaudy peep shows. it is all really square and angular and it's impossible to make anything that looks better than baby's first zoo tycoon. this is intentional, it's old school campaign driven where you have to unlock pretty much everything. Where it goes from there is hard to describe and I honestly believe transcends the source material and its own genre tropes! It is a rock solid theme park builder. It has a solidly fun, very objective oriented campaign mode with the usual degree of pleasant plot. You rocket towards a ton of variety in everything from shops to rides to exhibits. That's all table stakes. Anyhow, you start making pretty human zoos. good help is expensive so you start hiring war criminal scientists to watch them from a guard tower. instead of feeding times you have scheduled alien probings (the humans are expected to bark for the crowd). that's fair! you're feeding them. you start sending raiding parties to abduct human groups that you start grinding into Ed Gein human skin thrill rides. the pro-human martians yell at you to improve concentration camp conditions and this is the laziest/easiest board member faction to side with, actually. it's a much more pitch black satire of capitalism than it comes across at first. my main point of feedback so far is that the humans submit far too easy and it would greatly enhance the game if there was more of a constant war of wits between you and the allegedly lazy humans. (the devs say this is the next update!)