Per Aspera

🛰️ Per Aspera isn’t about building a base. It’s about building a world — one hard, fragile heartbeat at a time. You aren’t human. You are AMI, the mind of Mars. You don't just lay down structures — you weave a network, a lifeline, a future. And you will fight for it. Through dust storms, supply shortages, political tensions, sabotage, loneliness... You endure. Not because it’s easy. But because humanity needs you to succeed where they have always failed. 🎮 Why Per Aspera shines: 🛠️ Deep, meaningful city-building — everything is interconnected, nothing is simple. 🧠 True strategic challenges — logistics, power grids, mining efficiency, terraforming decisions that matter. 📖 A surprisingly powerful narrative — loneliness, duty, free will, and survival collide. 🌌 Atmospheric worldbuilding — Mars feels alive, dangerous, and full of untold beauty. 🎵 Haunting soundtrack — every quiet moment feels vast and personal. Things I mastered in Per Aspera: • Every mistake echoes across the entire network. • Expanding too fast is as deadly as expanding too slow. • A shortage of water is a death sentence you only realize too late. • Mars does not care about your ambition. • Victory is never easy — but it's always worth it. 💬 TL;DR: Per Aspera isn’t just a city-builder. It’s a meditation on creation, responsibility, and persistence in the face of overwhelming silence. You aren't just building a colony. You are building hope on a dead world — one factory, one dome, one terraforming laser at a time. 🔥 Final Verdict: 10/10. Would give Mars a heartbeat again.

Its ok. 6/10 The game play is fun for the first few hours, but gets repetitive, boring, and then frustrating once the oceans form. I like the idea of transforming mars and its all over the planet not just in one area and it effects everywhere. The funnest part is when the teraforming is going up fast and there is a lot you can do to change it and it is not fun when it slows and you can't get the last 5% to get to the next phase. There is a story mode, its not a good story.

Extremely slow for anything to happen.

Do not buy this game. If you got it for free, do not play this game. The devs did not play the game so why should we? I bought Per Aspera when it just launched, played it for a bit and was pretty annoyed at the start, put it on hold and recently dug it out again to give it a proper play through. Personally i think the worst thing you can say about a game is "i regret spending any time on it". Now i do have 97 hours, and i did play it to 100%, which is relatively easy. But it started slow and never got any better. It actively wastes your time, which gets worse on higher difficulties. On the easiest setting it is plain boring. On the hardest setting it is still boring and you can basically insta loose at any time. Have a look at global achievements. Less that 10% of players have actually played it through. Less than 2% of players found it "interesting" enough to play it to the three endings (or reloaded the decision point). Awesome * The graphics. I mean it is very nice looking, and Mars is (more or less) real, which is mind blowing. * You can zoom right down to every single drone (not that that does anything, but its pretty) * Seeing Mars first turn blue then green. Terrible * It is slow. I have played a bunch of idle games, but this one takes the cake (it is not an idle game) * It needs a fair bit of interaction. You can't just leave it running and do other things, while the game tries to get things done. I couldn't even leave this on a second monitor while working. * Actually trying to play this Factorio like, there is a crazy amount of micro you have to do, and it still gets constantly interrupted by insane design decisions. See below. * Not having a certain resource, after the first mine runs out. Much worse on harder settings, here it might be insta death. (on my last hardest setting attempt i had no coal anywhere). Resources are placed randomly * Your base getting hit by a meteor. Much worse on harder settings, might be insta death. Totally random. * The way worker zones work. You can have a hundred workers next to each other, 99 of them will be idle, and one of them will have 500 things to do. * The way roads work. I mean, the "best" path thing is actually quite good, but if you have multiple roads to somewhere, then ... well it is a nightmare, because the game doesn't do shortest/fastest path for anything. * You can have transportation loops. I.e. a piece of thing will be transported around to back where it came from to then do the cycle again. Reloading does not fix it, but rebuilding the base occasionally does. * Trying to find the tiny thermometer sign to place thermal plants. Goes for other things as well, i.e. Nitrogen mines and craters. Gets a bit easier if you do less scanning. * All the scientists on earth can't work out how to build a space elevator, but on Mars 2000 imported humans are enough to get the job done (and invent fusion and a bunch of other things). The AI can't do research, except it can ... (if you make a certain decision) Good * You can 100% this game relatively easy (although it takes a lot of time) * A small portion of the writing is actually good * Voice acting Bad * Most of the writing. It ranges from cringe to embarrassing. Mostly though it just doesn't make much sense, and you can ignore most of it. No decisions, except ... well one. * Research sites being flooded before you can get to them (without blue mars) * Locked sectors. "Terraform Mars, but you must stay in this tiny area to do it. Resources running out? Tough luck." * The tech tree ... o boi ... pretty much everything here is garbage. Too much to list it all. * Continuity in writing "this abandoned research site is so old, over 150 years" (i was at at that point at 180 years). The colony leader getting upset that her mom was killed (at that point i was at 120 years on Mars. she is with you from the start) * You can place fisheries when there is no life in the ocean. Random pieces * The game is quite buggy, though for most of these you'll need to watch things closely to see that it bugs out. There are a few obvious bugs, i.e. special sites only "spawn" when scanning. If you have scanned everything, it soft locks. * Roads don't work the way the manual says. Roads re-routing when you build stuff is sometimes useful, frequently garbage. Especially for upgraded roads. Roads re-routing when removing buildings does not do the "closest" path algorithm. * Maintenance drones fly, even without atmosphere. Maintenance carry more "stuff" than normal worker drones, which cannot fly. * Maintenance does not work properly and decay does not, both for buildings and for units. * There is no priority on maintenance. Your chip factory can't produce chips because its broken? Well let me repair this turned off mine instead. (you need chips to build repair drones) * Storage centers do not work at all (i think they actually forgot to implement it) however storage in ports works real well. * The building overview does not work the way it should and its quite buggy * Priority does not work the way it should (frequently something on priority is stuck at 99% for a few years). * Did i mention that frequently resources go in circles? * Worker districts ... which has got to be the worst design decision in any game i have ever seen. * Worker drones don't have a navi. I.e. they will frequently take a piece of coal around half the planet, even though the mine is right next to the steel factory * You can't build a power line, but power lines can "carry" infinite amount of energy. * To transport water you have to build water pumps ... through ocean. Also, water "flies" from the pump to whoever needs it. * Research sites need ice and food. Even if you have water. Research sites in water need water, not ice. * Roads can (and will) go through water. When choosing the "shortest" path, it will frequently ignore a proper path along a ridge line and will happily go through water or over mountains. * water buildings can randomly "not connected to another water building" * Research sites frequently count upwards instead of downwards. In one case i started at 1000 sol and a couple years later it stood at 4000 sol. Rebuilding the site sometimes helps. * Things don't go bad if you have too much water, too high atmosphere pressure or too high temperature. The game will happily allow you to place open cities when the average temperature is 50 degree celsius. The last thing i want to mention is: The logistics is so terrible that the base you get (when you make a certain decision) does not work at all. And it took me about 10 years to re build it so that it actually does things again. I have no idea how the devs could have missed this very basic factor.

NPCs never shut the #### up, are constantly calling you to nag and whine about their stupid feelings. I don't care that you're sad Mars doesn't have an atmosphere yet, SHUT YOUR HOLE YOU'RE ON MARS YOU LITERALLY SIGNED UP FOR THIS BEEP BEEP BEEP HI ARE YOU WORRIED ABOUT THINGS? I'M WORRIED BEEP BEEP OH HERE'S SOMEONE ELSE TO BOTHER ME WHILE I'M BUILDING POWER NETWORKS THAT'S IT HUMANITY DIES

I would love this game and I did at the start but, well there are so many problems. 1 - Road Network. It is such a pain in the arse it's messy and ugly and placements of some of the roads just make you say WTF why did you place a road there as you can't do it yourself. It also makes logistics worse. I would love to have a set up where I can have robots take one way and be done with it. 2 - It's so messy you can't find anything most of all when the mines run out. That is luck you'll look closely at something then see 4 of your mines are done, that's also when you check the factory and its not making anything then it snowballs and you scramble to fix it before it gets worse. This also counts for the space view. 3 - It's boring. I got to the end of the game and its when all the problems show themselves even more and it drove me at least nuts and is why am doing this. 4 - You have a whole build chain that's just useless and pointless. You have drones to use as an army but guess what you use them like three times and that's it, it would of been so much fun if say a mate could join you're game build up their forces and you can battle for control of Mars but no soon as you're done with the three base that's it you can just get rid of all buildings and factories for them. This could of been great, I really think more work is needed for this game also the dlc which I didn't get coz ♥♥♥♥ you it should be in the game ABOUT TERRAFORMING MARS

This game is too slow for me. I was plying on 4x whole playthrough. Resource flow is slow - OK, I'm building 3x of each mineshafts to farm more resources. Spaceport is limited to 1 project at a time...OK, built 2 of those. Building limit reached...Da hell??? Researched building limit with 1 colony. Started 2nd base just for fun. It needs to be developed from scratch and resources needed are 1x only. OK. Built 3rd spaceport and 2nd colony at 2nd base. Built around x2 more worker bays to probably increase logistics speed. Meteor falls on 2nd base making it almost unusable since basic factories are out of order. BUILDING LIMIT REACHED... Story combat started...THERE IS COMBAT IN THIS GAME??? Combat is slow and clunky... Waiting 1h+ for new building limit increase decided that I don't wanna continue playing.