OCCUPY MARS: Prologue Preview for Steam Early Access

Occupy Mars: Prologue is a highly technical and immersive open world survival game demo developed by Pyramid Games and published by PlayWay and Pyramid Games. The prologue is an introduction to the world of Occupy Mars and gives us a sweet taste of how the full game’s mechanics will be like.

As a member of Alpha Base, one of the first successful Mars colonies, it is your duty to collect data and resources while quickly learning how to utilize your environment and equipment in order to ensure your own survival as well as working toward the successful colonization of the Red Planet.

In this prologue, the game takes place in Gale Crater where you start with limited supplies. The player is tasked with conducting mining missions to secure enough raw materials so that you can craft and operate essential life-sustaining equipment. Occupy Mars offers a hearty amount of different mechanics and interactive controls which give it a semi-realistic feel for what Martian colonists would have to go through in order to survive. There are multiple vital meters which players need to keep track of including: health, oxygen, hydration, hunger, stamina, and suit power. The majority of the gameplay is centered around learning how to power up, operate, and maintain different equipment while watching out for dust storms, temperature drops at night, and sleep deprivation.

Occupy Mars does a wondrous job at making the player feel immersed in the role of an Alpha Base member. From the start, the player must learn to act quickly and accordingly to the urgent situation at hand. The player is required to manually connect and disconnect tubes and wires, use digital interfaces to adjust electrical output and input values, incubate and harvest fruits and vegetables, and even learn to use soldering tools to fix broken hardware. This aspect is a huge strength of the game and has high potential to incorporate other fun and interesting gameplay mechanics into the full game.

Some of the game’s biggest strengths and opportunities also lie in the bleak, mysterious atmosphere of Mars. It would be incredibly thrilling to be able to explore the ruins of abandoned structures or craters and be rewarded with a nice item or resource (the game, however, already lets you use a power cutter to mine resources off old structures). Thankfully, Occupy Mars: Prologue rewards its players for exploration as there are upgraded tools that are found scattered around points of interest on the map.

In the time I spent playing, I only encountered one glitch that made me unable to exit the rover and I had to force the game to shutdown. One criticism is how difficult it is to operate the rover in 1st-person point of view, however, this headache is immediately resolved by using the 3rd-person point of view. Another criticism is when you wake up after sleeping, a calm tune begins to play but most times, it would abruptly cut off and the regular background music would resume too quickly. Lastly, when crops wither and die, there should be a much quicker way to get rid of the dead plants.

Although Occupy Mars is still in its developing stages, it is quite clear that the developers at Pyramid Games are passionate about their exciting project and are eagerly listening to their community. 

Check Out the Occupy Mars Steam Early Access Trailer:

Occupy Mars: The Game is expected to release on Steam Early Access later this year (2020). You can wishlist the game right now. 

For more information, please visit: https://occupymarsgame.com/

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