Terraformer Expedition to Mars

This isn't one of those games that you sit down and click away with one eye open and half a brain engaged -- this game is HARD. Not hard like impossible for bad reasons, or stupid puzzles. You're marooned on Mars with no support, no other people, and no plan but to survive. How easy would that be in real life? And you have an entire planet to deal with, and explore. You have to change Mars itself into Earth using pretty much nothing as starting equipment. It's a long, long process and you have to really THINK about what you're doing the whole way. This game isn't for the average 6 year old IQ who just wants to blow stuff up. You have to build and maintain everything you need to live, keep it all topped up, hope you are able to grow enough food to survive, bust your butt to ensure you can get enough fuel to just keep from freezing, keep the air flowing, and keep every bit of lichen, or bacteria, or shrub alive in conditions harsher than anything Earth has to offer. Making Mars into Earth isn't easy, but man is it worth it.

Update - The developer hasn't even been on Steam for a while, so it looks like there will be no bug fixes or improvements. I wouldn't recommend getting this, even at a major discount. There are space survival games that work much better. Original Review: The concept is great, but the game isn't ready and they really shouldn't be selling it yet. Basic mechanics such as digging work only sporadically making the game nearly unplayable.

Graphics: For a large voxel, i.e. minecraft type game, when smoothed, looks really good, when in construction mode, blocky, still looks fairly good. Sound: Monotnous. At the moment, I've only noticed one track playing which is very ambient. The breathing you get naturally is annoying, but can be tuned out. Options: There are no real options at the moment, other than resolution, windowed/fullscreen, texture, and anti-aliasing. Definitely a point that needs worked on. Gameplay: For 3 arks in this game, the first two are relatively quick, and the third part, is just waiting. Overall lack of depth. Bugs: It is still beta, but I would say it feels more like a late alpha. Lots of glitches to the game. Certain people get horrendous lag in certain areas. Dissapearing items, and such forth. Overall: I would recommend this game with one caveat, if you want a polished execution of a game, at this moment, this is not the game for you. But, if you want to have some fun, in an adult form of minecraft, this game could be worth your while. Overall, if you are not sure of the game, I'd wait a while till you buy it, but definitely keep an eye on it

I really want to like this, but I can't recommend it without serious stability improvements. Constant CtDs and no autosave make this an exercise in frustration, and annoyingly if you're interested more in the terraforming aspect there's no way to avoid a fairly tedious dungeon crawl early on. Infrequent updates don't help - going months between patches is not acceptable when your game is this unstable. This could be a great game, but at the moment it's a bug ridden mess with a terrible UI. Given the apparent lack of developer attention I wouldn't risk money on this while it's in Early Access. Edit: retried after release. Crashed to desktop within 10 seconds of starting. Don't bother.

Needs SERIOUS WORK Also take off "mars" so you can add dlc like Titan IO etc

UPDATE (7/26/2018): GAME IS 99% PROBABLY DEAD, I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND YOU BUY IT. Glitchy, buggy, and rough around the edges. If the developers keep up the work it might be interesting, but for now it's a little too unstable, a little too difficult to control, and a little too unclear about how to play or craft to be playable. Invest if you dare, but realize that this is an extremely early alpha at best right now. UPDATE (11/19/2015): The game continues to be plagued with bugs which will cause random and frequent crashes to desktop. I wish I could play this game but I can't. Crafting a shovel seems to have a 25% chance of crashing the game, even after several months of waiting for this issue to be fixed. Crashes while loading are also common, as well as a bug where you can jump, hit the ground, stay in a floating animation, and forever be unable to jump again. This and many more bugs make the game unfortunately unplayable, and as such I can't reccomend it, since it appears these bugs will be with us for a long, long time. UPDATE (2/8/2016): Good and bad news. The good news: game is stable now- I didn't experience a single volatile crash in about fifteen minutes of trying it out. The bad news is that everything else about the game is still the same. The tutorial is still underwhelming and doesn't explain how to do much of anything besides craft a pickaxe or open our inventory. The third person camera still clips through the planet. There appear to be absolutely no changes or additions besides improved stability (although that may just be luck) from when I last played in November. Level 1 pickaxes can mine the brown dirt near the crash site but not the tan-gray surface dirt, and I still don't know why and will probably never find out. I still don't know what a bucket is for, or how to use it. Our astronaut even still has empty eye sockets that creep me the hell out and make me wonder if this isn't Mars but instead some sort of spherical purgatory. I cannot reccomend this game.

Worthless. This 'game' is horribly buggy and updates are extremely rare. Do Not Buy.

Still buggy, I'd call it late Alpha rather than early Beta. But really quite fun. Caution - this game is HARD.

Unfinished and abandoned. Dev's been offline for a year. Nice concept, but completely unplayable.

If you are space/mars exploration enthusiast, this game will leave you sweating and gasping for air. You will come to appreciate the availability of oxygen, water, and food (which most of the time is just a spacesuit-not-needed-bus ride away). If you are not a space/mars exploration enthusiast, you will sweat and gasp even more (and possibly experience mental breakdown at some point), but even in your despair, something amazing will happen. You will discover a new kind of appreciation for your life on Earth (because you will realize how ****ty everything is millions of miles in every direction from Earth). Self-help taken to the next level.