Regardless of guarantees from sure Twitter-owning billionaires, it doesn’t seem like we’re going to be sending individuals to Mars anytime quickly. However worry not, intrepid explorers, as a result of we will nonetheless enterprise to the crimson planet in Ship Us Mars, an upcoming space game from indie builders KeokeN Interactive.
Ship Us Mars is the sequel to the studio’s debut title, Ship Us The Moon, which launched again in 2018. Set 10 years after the occasions of the primary sport, Ship Us Mars continues the story of a doomed Earth, ravaged by local weather change. We observe Kathy Johanson, a younger astronaut who has joined a mission to trace down the Arks. These huge ships had been constructed by the lunar colony within the first sport, and so they have the ability to reverse local weather change and save the Earth. Kathy’s father was onboard the Arks after they fled the moon, so she additionally has her personal motivations for wanting to trace them down too.
We had the possibility to play a brief preview of Ship Us Mars earlier this month, trying out two separate sections from mid-way into the sport. The primary of those sections passed off inside one of many Martian colony buildings, whereas the second was out on the Martian floor within the wreckage of an enormous crashed spaceship.
The primary of those two sections – exploring the Martian base – felt very acquainted, rekindling quite a lot of the identical concepts and ideas that the primary sport had explored. The plot follows on from Ship Us The Moon, as we observe what occurred to the lunar colonists after they deserted Earth and ventured off into the solar system to discovered their very own society. The story is revealed by way of audio logs and hologram recordings that present the interior politics and struggles occurring inside the breakaway faction, serving to you piece collectively why they fled to Mars and, extra importantly, the place they’ve all disappeared to.
There may be quite a lot of ambiance constructing (considerably paradoxically given the setting) as you discover the detailed environments full of refined storytelling. There are collectables to seek out, and holograms and audio logs to uncover that every one assist to unravel the thriller of the now deserted Martian colony.
These early segments made the expanded scope clear from the off, as we received to expertise forwards and backwards dialog between Kathy and one other member of her crew. This time round, KeokeN has employed movement seize tech to carry Kathy to life throughout conversations, and the outcomes we noticed had been very spectacular.
Outdoors of the mocap, one of many greatest additions this time round is the climbing mechanics which had been launched within the first phase. These actually got here into the forefront through the second stage of the demo as we needed to scale an enormous wrecked spaceship to succeed in the bridge.
Whereas quite a lot of video games function climbing, it’s normally mechanically easy and barely requires you to do greater than press a button to magnetise your self to the wall. Ship Us Mars takes a way more concerned strategy, requiring you to truly management your arms utilizing a mixture of each joysticks and triggers. Certainly one of your pickaxes must be connected to the wall always, otherwise you’re going to seek out out that Mars’s 38% of Earth gravity continues to be simply sufficient to splatter your physique after a protracted drop.
This provides quite a lot of stress to the climbing sections, as one flawed transfer may see you plummet to your loss of life.The fixed worry that you simply’ll let go of the flawed set off on the flawed time makes these sections surprisingly nerve wracking.
There’s a commerce off right here although – the climbing positively feels quite a bit clunkier and slower than in one thing like Tomb Raider, the place Lara can shimmy and swing her method throughout partitions with ease. This does kinda spoil the pacing whenever you’re supposedly climbing in opposition to the clock because the ship you’re scaling falls aside, however the payoff comes from the elevated stress and from what we performed, it appears to be well worth the commerce.
Once we weren’t doing our greatest Lara Croft impression, scaling cliff faces and ruined space ship hulls, there have been additionally puzzles to be solved. Many of the puzzles we encountered throughout our preview had been variations on redirecting laser beams which…. properly it’s not probably the most unique idea in gaming, however there have been a number of neat wrinkles that stored the puzzles attention-grabbing.
There may be additionally a Hardspace Shipbreaker-style laser cutter that can be utilized contextually to chop away particles and open panels. It’s a cool addition, although it appeared fairly contextual throughout our preview session. Whereas we didn’t get to check them, we additionally know that car sections will likely be making a comeback, together with the addition of scuba diving and zero-G sections – you even get to fly a space shuttle at one level, which sounds rad.
Once we spoke to Koen and Paul Deetman again in Might, they talked quite a bit about how they needed the sequel to amp issues up. Ship Us The Moon was a incredible space drama with an attractive story, however the decrease funds and smaller crew meant that quite a lot of intelligent nook reducing was wanted – you by no means actually noticed anybody’s face, or interacted with different characters besides by way of radio communication, and it was mechanically fairly easy with a number of puzzle varieties that repeated all through the sport.
You’ll be able to positively see this larger ambition on show right here. The environments are greater, new mechanical challenges have been added, and the scope of the sport has been expanded quite a bit too – Ship Us The Moon clocked in at round 4-6 hours relying on how a lot exploring you probably did, and whereas we don’t have precise numbers for the sequel, KeokeN claims that it’s a considerably longer sport expertise.
There’s a little indie sport jank nonetheless floating round – Kathy doesn’t have a falling animation so when she does drop off a wall it seems to be kinda odd, however these are minor flaws round what in any other case appears to be a really stable core.
There are nonetheless some telltale indicators of that sport’s smaller growth crew on show, however Ship Us Mars seems to be prefer it’s all set to increase upon the sensible basis that the earlier sport set, and we will’t wait to see the total launch when it launches on February 2, 2023 for Xbox Sequence X/S, PS5, PS4, Xbox One, and PC by way of Steam and Epic Video games Retailer.
