Paradox Interactive and Haemimont Games put a colony builder on PC, Mac, Linux, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on March 15, 2018. Eight years on, it still asks a plain question: can you keep people alive on a planet that wants them dead? Surviving Mars answers with dust storms, domes and a resource chain that never quite stops pinching. It is a strategy game about logistics first and wonder second, and that order is both its strength and its limit.
Trailer, via IGDBcom.
Pick a Sponsor, Then Pick a Grave
You choose a sponsor — the United States, Europe, India, China, Russia, an International Mars Mission, or fictional outfits like the Blue Sun Corporation, SpaceY, the Church of the New Ark and Paradox Interactive itself — then a commander profile. Each gives slightly different benefits plus a unique building and vehicle. A rocket lands carrying drones, prefabricated buildings and rovers, and you build outward from there.
The catch is what Mars will and won’t hand over. Metals, rare metals, concrete, water and sometimes polymers come out of the ground. Food, fuel, machine parts, electronics, power and oxygen do not. You manufacture them or you import them. Money moves only between colony and sponsor, and rare metal exports are the main way to earn it.
The Dome Is the Whole Game
The core loop is a dome. Build it, run power, water and oxygen to it, then bring colonists from Earth. Every colonist carries traits, flaws and a specialization, so each one fits certain jobs and fails at others. Morale, comfort, sanity and health shift with how you play.
That is where Surviving Mars gets its teeth. Happy colonists may father Martian-born children. Unhappy ones become Earthsick and return to Earth, or turn rebel. Tourists fill domes too — they don’t work and they don’t stay. Research splits across physics, engineering, social, biotechnology and robotics.
Dust Storms Do Not Negotiate
Mars runs on real Martian data here, and the game generates dust storms, meteor storms, cold waves and dust devils. A colony coasting on a healthy power margin can lose it in a single storm. The game also dangles weird black cubes that appeared out of nowhere.
Haemimont keeps the camera pulled back — bird’s-eye, isometric — so you read the whole settlement at once. It suits the genre. It also flattens the place. You are managing a diagram more often than you are standing on a planet.
What Came After Mars
| Feature | Surviving Mars | Surviving the Aftermath |
|---|---|---|
| Release year | 2018 | 2019 |
| Setting | Mars colony | Post-apocalyptic Earth |
| Status | Original | Spiritual successor |
Two more followed: Surviving the Abyss in 2022, and on November 10, 2025, a spin-off, Surviving Mars: Pioneer, plus a remaster, Surviving Mars: Relaunched. That is a long tail for a game that launched as a single-player sim with no multiplayer ambitions.
The Numbers
- Release date: March 15, 2018
- Developer: Haemimont Games
- Publisher: Paradox Interactive
- Platforms: PC (Microsoft Windows), macOS, Linux, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
- Genre: City-building survival, strategy, simulator
- Modes: Single player
- Perspective: Bird’s-eye / isometric
- Critic aggregate: 7.4 out of 10, from seven outlets tracked by IGDB
Where It Lands
Surviving Mars is a good game with a narrow idea of fun. The sponsor and commander choices matter, but only slightly — they shade a run rather than define it. The real pressure comes from the resource list, and that list is genuinely well built. Importing electronics because your soil has nothing to offer is a fine, grinding kind of problem.
The colonists are the best part and the least used. Traits, flaws and specializations suggest stories, but the game treats people mostly as inputs with moods attached. Earthsick departures and rebel turns land as mechanical outcomes, not events you remember.
What holds up is the survival math. Storms, cold waves and dust devils punish sloppy planning without feeling arbitrary, and the tech tree across physics, engineering, social, biotechnology and robotics gives a run real shape. The Martian-data modeling keeps the place concrete rather than decorative.
It is not a game that surprises you. It is one that outlasts you, session after session, until the dome you built is a machine you understand completely. That is a modest achievement, and a durable one. The remaster and spin-off that landed in November 2025 say Paradox agrees the colony was worth revisiting.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.
