Astronaut Tim Peake is going to play Mars Horizon! 👩‍🚀

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officially The coolest selfie ever taken

officially The coolest selfie ever taken

We’ve got an awesome event coming up for Mars Horizon, our space agency simulation strategy game - a real life astronaut is going to stream our game! 🤩

We are super excited to announce that European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Tim Peake will be streaming Mars Horizon live with the Xbox team over on Twitch!

👩‍🚀 WATCH THE LIVESTREAM ON TWITCH 👩‍🚀

Tim Peake was the first British ESA astronaut to visit the International Space Station (ISS). His work during mission Principia captured the hearts and minds of millions. He has a background as a test pilot and a British Army Air Corps officer and he is also a STEM ambassador and best-selling author.

In April 2016 Tim ran the London Marathon from the ISS treadmill, becoming the first man to run a marathon in space.

One of Tim’s most cherished moments of his mission was having the opportunity to talk with the late Professor Stephen Hawking from the ISS. During their hour-long video call, they discussed many topics from their favourite music to quantum physics and the future of humanity whilst marvelling at the spectacular view of Earth from space.

Join the chat to ask Tim your questions and to win some awesome Mars Horizon prizes too! 👩‍🚀

Mars Horizon bundle giveaway

During the stream, as well as playing the game, the XboxOn team and Tim will be trying astronaut ice-cream, astronaut fruit snacks, and doing a giveaway where you can win awesome Mars Horizon prizes including:

Join us in our Discord during the stream and geek out with us over how awesome it is that a real astronaut is playing our game! 🤩

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Jemima Crow

It’s our 10th birthday! 🎂🎈

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Auroch Digital turns 10 today!🎉

This is a big milestone for us, and we’re really excited and proud of how far we’ve come. We’re planning a bigger party soon with lots of awesome activities for you to get involved in. We’ll be celebrating properly in November, so keep a look out for that! 

Make sure to sign up to our newsletter to keep up to date with all things Auroch Digital and so you don’t miss out on the celebrations - we’ll have streams, sales, giveaways, and more!

We’re super busy at the moment with everything going on with Mars Horizon and Digital Tabletop Fest. Make sure you check both out so you can see what we’re up to, and wishlist Mars Horizon if you haven’t already as a lovely birthday present to us.

Looking forward to celebrating with you all soon! 🥳🍰🎈

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Jemima Crow

Play the free Mars Horizon demo in The Steam Game Festival Autumn Edition 🍂☕

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Mars Horizon is part of The Steam Game Festival: Autumn Edition, running from October 7th until October 13th! 👨‍🚀

The Steam Game Festival: Autumn Edition is an event that shines a spotlight on games set to be released within the next six months. From October 7th - 13th you can check out upcoming releases, try them out with time-limited demos, connect with the devs, and add games to your wishlist for a reminder when they release! Here's how to get the most out of The Steam Game Festival.

Play the Mars Horizon demo 🚀

Check out the demo - available to download from the Mars Horizon Steam store page. Choose from 5 space agencies, play through Era 1 of space exploration, build your base, design rockets, and put the first human in space! 

This new demo includes all the improvements from the beta play testing and from previous demo feedback, so Mars Horizon plays better than ever. ✨

Wishlist Mars Horizon on Steam 🪐

Please Wishlist Mars Horizon on Steam to stay up to date with all the latest news and release date!

We're a small developer and wishlisting makes a big difference to how many people see Mars Horizon on Steam. If you’d like to know more we've written a blog post on how Wishlists help us.

Wishlist Mars Horizon on Steam here

Chat to us on our livestream - Allie joins the Auroch Digital space agency! 👩‍🚀👩‍🚀

A new member of the crew joins the Auroch Digital space agency! Allie joins Jem for a special livestream during the festival. This will be broadcast straight to the Mars Horizon Steam page and we will be taking questions over the Auroch Digital Discord to answer on stream.

Allie and Jem set up their own space agency and answer your questions about Mars Horizon. Join the stream to help them run mission control. Will they be more successful than Jem and Mike? Will they win the space race? Will there be crumbless nuggets?

Come chat to the crew in Discord to find out

Join us on the Auroch Digital Discord 🎤

Now that you've played Mars Horizon you probably want to talk about the game with someone. Where can you go? Join the Auroch Digital Discord and you'll have lots of people to chat all things space and Mars Horizon!

You can find out more about getting Discord here and you can join the Auroch Digital Discord here.

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Jemima Crow

Mars Horizon is at PAX Online X EGX Digital!

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This year PAX Online and EGX Digital have combined forces to bring you PAX X EGX - a new digital show floor experience. Populated with the latest and best games, delivered by the most respected digital brands. Come check out our booth and listen to our talk!

PAX Online X EGX Digital - 12th - 20th September 2020

Mars Horizon’s PAX indie booth!

This year we’ve got a Mars Horizon Indie Booth, check it out here! In Mars Horizon you lead a major space agency and guide humanity to Mars in this strategy simulation game. Construct a base, design and build rockets, conduct missions throughout the Solar System, and write your own history of Space exploration. Created with support from the European Space Agency.

EGX Digital talk - we chat space and gaming!

Even better, we are giving a talk during the show where Dr. Tomas Rawlings, CEO of Auroch Digital, will be chatting to Jem and Mike from the Auroch Digital team about how playing games can help you get into space and the space industry  

Don’t forget to wishlist Mars Horizon if you can’t wait to build rockets and win the space race. Mars Horizon will be taking off on a platform near you later this year. Follow us on social to stay up to date with the latest news: Facebook    |    Twitter    |    YouTube

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Jemima Crow

Boardgames about Mars: What do they get right and what do they get wrong? Auroch Digital's panel at The UK Games Expo

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The UK Games Expo is the largest Hobby Games Convention in the UK, which is now in it's 14th year. Because of Covid, 2020 sees the show going Virtual for the first time ever. Using a range of different technologies UK Games Expo are makig as much as possible of the traditional expo available from the comfort of your own home.

  • UK Games Expo - Virtually Expo

    • Date: Fri 21st August - Sun 23rd August 2020

    • Times: Friday 6pm BST - Midnight / Saturday 9am BST - Midnight / Sunday 9am - 4pm BST

Even better, we are running a panel discussion during the show! Our gaming panel will cover “Gaming and Mars - What do the games that use Mars as inspiration get right and what do they get wrong?” hosted by our own Tomas Rawlings with 3 incredible experts from different areas of gaming and space.

You can join this event by watching the UK Games Expo Twitch channel. You can also use your mobile device to watch via the Twitch app Click here for more information for Android devices or Apple devices

Gaming on Mars - Panel guests

Dr. Tomas Rawlings (Moderator)
CEO of Auroch Digital, Co-designer of Mars Horizon: Blast Off!

Dr. Tomas Rawlings is the CEO at Auroch Digital. As well as running the studio, he is an experienced, award winning games designer who has created games from original titles to well-loved IP such as Games Workshop, and Star Wars, and Lovecraft’s Cthulhu. He is a well known speaker and consultant on gaming who has also worked with major organisations such as the Wellcome Trust, the Royal Society, UK Parliament and the BBC.

Dr. Jacob Fryxelius
Game Designer at FryxGames, Creator & designer of Terraforming Mars

Dr. Jacob Fryxelius is one of 5 brothers of the Fryxelius family that work for FryxGames. His doctorate is in chemistry (artificial photosynthesis) and he previously spent many years teaching science. He is also a veteran gamer. Jacob is a creative game designer, mainly focused on card games, and brings his science background into the games he makes. He designed the hugely successful Terraforming Mars boardgame which has since had 5 expansions and been adapted into a videogame too.

Dr. Sian Proctor
Professor at South Mountain Community College, Geoscientist & Analog Astronaut

Dr. Sian Proctor is an American explorer, scientist, STEM communicator, and aspiring astronaut. She is a geology, sustainability and planetary science professor at South Mountain Community College.
She does a lot of exploration and education outreach, as well as television appearances and she was a finalist for the 2009 NASA Astronaut Selection Process.

Paul Smith
Robotic Exploration Programme Manager at the UK Space Agency

Paul Smith is from the UK Space Agency. His work focuses on the robotic exploration of Mars and the Moon. His areas of expertise include the Mars Rovers, Mars missions, the future of Space Travel, colonising other planets, resources in space (e.g. mining asteroids, generating water from lunar regolith etc) and more. Paul joined us on a recent stream Mars Horizon which you can check out here!

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Jemima Crow

Video game crunch: What is it and is it a problem?

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Phrases that get thrown around a lot in discussions about the video games industry are “crunch culture”, “crunch time”, and “crunch crisis”.

But what is crunch in video games? In this brief blog post we’re going to gather up a lot of the thinking about it, and give our perspective.

As a word of caution, as with any piece that features opinion, this is going to be heavily biased by our experience, our thoughts as a group of people, the past successes and failures of the studio, the way certain laws work in our country, and so on. For example, we’re based in the UK, so we don’t rely on employment in order to continue receiving health insurance to cover private medical bills, a factor that might heavily influence a person’s motivations for accepting crunch in, say, the United States. Ultimately crunch is a thing that affects human beings, so by its nature much of what will be discussed is subjective and we’re not here to judge people for their feelings toward the topic - we’re just presenting some of the threads of thought on the matter and then stating our opinion.

How is video game crunch defined?

We’ve looked through dozens of articles on the subject and spoken with plenty of colleagues, and no one seems to fully agree upon a standard definition of “crunch” - it means different things to different people. For some it’s “working long hours”, others it’s “working long hours repeatedly”. For some it’s “forced overtime” and others include any overtime, even if it’s theoretically “optional”.

Our aim here isn’t to come up with a cast iron definition, instead it’s enough for the scope of this short piece to set out a variety of viewpoints so you can see for yourself that the common thread that runs through all of them is “working more hours than planned”. We’ll keep using the word “crunch” here, just bear in mind that it has multiple meanings, depending on who you ask.

Where does video game crunch happen?

video game crunch screen.jpg

A really big misconception is that crunch can only happen at very large video game studios - that it’s the big bad giants of the industry with the multi-million selling franchises doing all the crunch. And that’s just not true.

It can be smaller teams too: the indie studio with limited resources but big ideas, the passionate university students running out of time to submit their end-of-year project, the solo developer working 100 hours a week to finish their experimental masterpiece.

Big or small or somewhere inbetween; crunch can happen.

Is crunch a good or a bad thing?

While there’s generally a consensus that crunch can be negative, which we’ll get to in a moment, there’s disagreement over whether or not crunch can have some positive effects as well (and additionally, if those positive effects are ultimately worth it).

The core benefits of crunch usually boil down to the following;

  • If people at a studio work more hours then, quite simply, there are more hours to spend on trying to make a game better, and a better game is preferable to a less good game. People really care about the things they make, and some may want to put extra time into a project to get it working exactly the way they want it.

  • Some individuals on teams report crunch being a good bonding exercise. There’s a “being in the trenches” mentality that promotes cohesion and lasting friendship between team mates.

  • Crunch can be paid work, or additional annual leave can be provided as part of working overtime, benefits that employees may see as being desirable (and, therefore, a net positive).

However, it’s also possible to provide counterpoints to the potential positive effects of crunch mentioned above;

  • Working longer hours demonstrably leads to work of a lower quality being produced - if you’re tired, you make mistakes, and that applies to writing code, doing art, making design choices, doing rigorous testing, and every other element of making games.

  • There are arguably more pleasant ways to enhance the cohesion of a team than working long into the night. Besides this, being away from friends and family can cause stresses and strains at home that leak into the workplace and, in turn, damage relationships at the studio.

  • Paid overtime and extra holiday is all well and good, but for some disciplines and career levels that extra money doesn’t make a lot of difference - a lead at a AAA studio is fairly well-paid already. But for others the additional money is almost a necessity: a junior tester in London or San Francisco may regularly struggle to make ends meet, ergo overtime becomes less “optional extra cash” and more “part of a wider problem that isn’t being addressed”. And sure, extra holiday is fine, but if you’re using crunch to meet deadlines, are you really going to have the opportunity to use that annual leave?

There are many more problems created or exacerbated by crunch beyond the obvious one we’ve actually yet to mention, i.e. decreased quality of life through spending more time at work and less time outside of work.

And these additional problems include damage to mental and physical health, demotivation for projects, dissatisfaction with place of employment and, for companies, losing skilled employees through them seeking employment at other studios or even other fields outside of games.

Is crunch optional?

video%2Bgame%2Bcrunch%2Boffice.jpg

Some studios state that crunch is purely optional for them. Let’s assume that the management at the company that states this is actually being genuine - they really do only want the people who want to crunch, to crunch, and would be absolutely fine with employees choosing not to, with no repercussions.

The first issue is that, realistically, employees can never truly know that statement to be true, often assuming that it’s being said as a wink-and-nod agreement that, actually, no, the company really does expect you to work late. If you’re a junior, new to the company, or are a contractor, there’s not a lot of incentive to assume crunch is optional and, in doing so, jeopardise your job.

Another is that company-wide crunch can often be an informal cultural issue, rather than a formal work policy. Statements from management about crunch being optional is often paired with claims about those who do crunch “working harder” than those that don’t. The logical implication here being, of course, that those that don’t crunch aren’t working as hard as their colleagues who do. Are those people letting the team down? Will those that don’t crunch be passed by for promotion as they don’t demonstrate the ability to “work hard”?

In some company cultures with crunch, team members - often leads - will regularly be the first ones in and the last ones out, racking up a lot more hours than juniors. Sometimes they’ll do “heroic” amounts of crunch to get something done. In the process they’re subconsciously telling their colleagues that if they want to make a good impression and achieve a lead role, that they had best start working more hours.

In these examples, though crunch may be theoretically optional on paper at companies that accept it as part of their business, in reality there is a very strong set of motivating factors for a person to engage with crunch.

What causes crunch?

There are a lot of factors, but the common throughline is, at a basic level, a lack of time.

A variety of factors go to cause this lack of time, with the following being some of the more common;

  • A new feature request being made, or a pivot in the direction of the product, without budget being appropriately provided.

  • Poor estimation of the amount of work required to make a product, i.e. overpromising and underestimating.

  • Signing a project that is known to be undoable without crunch, as the budget allocated to do the work is not enough, but is signed anyway due to financial necessity at the company.

  • A significantly large unexpected issue, with no budget allocated ahead of time to deal with such events.

  • Inadequate production methods at the studio, leading to mistakes being made, work being created inefficiently, and so on

Where does Auroch Digital stand on crunch culture?

We’re not fans of crunch.

That said, we’ll admit that at the studio in the past we’ve done small amounts of crunch in a focused manner in order to hit a very important deadline. It’s been extremely rare, and always a last resort, but it’s not something we’re particularly proud of, or keen on repeating.

And it was crunch that could have been avoided. So as a team we’re committed to continually improving the ways we work to ensure the chances of it happening again are dramatically reduced, and we’ll continue striving to make our studio and culture the best it can be.

Learn more about how we combat crunch in our video about working for our studio:

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Peter Willington

How realistic is Mars Horizon? We ask real space agencies 🚀

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Thanks to everyone who played the demo, wishlisted the game, and tuned into our livestreams during the Steam Game Festival! We've had lots of great feedback from our community to help us keep improving Mars Horizon.

Watch the Mars Horizon streams

As well as showcasing our demo we also asked experts from the UK Space Agency and the European Space Agency how Mars Horizon compares to the real thing - watch the livestreams below!

  • Andrew Kuh, Head of International Spaceflight Policy from the UK Space Agency, tells us about working for a real space agency, micro gravity, and bacon sandwiches in space!

Watch the UK Space Agency Mars Horizon stream

  • Emmet Fletcher, Head of the ESA Branding and Partnerships Office at the European Space Agency, tells us about the astronauts he’s met, designing spacecrafts, and ESA's collaborations.

Watch the European Space Agency Mars Horizon stream

Mars Horizon podcast episodes

Want more Mars Horizon goodness? We've got a podcast with lots of interesting episodes about the game including episodes on:

Wishlist Mars Horizon on Steam

If you haven't already, please take a few seconds to wishlist Mars Horizon on Steam! You'll be the first to know when the game is released, plus you'll be helping out a small developer (we've written a blog post on how Steam Wishlists help us out a lot.)

The full game is coming to PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch in 2020. You can also sign up for the Mars Horizon mailing list to stay up to date with the latest developments and announcements

Wishlist Mars Horizon on Steam

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Auroch Digital

Marketing and Community Managment for Auroch Digital in Bristol, UK.

Mars Horizon is part of The Steam Game Festival - including a free the demo! 🚀

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Mars Horizon is part of The Steam Game Festival: Summer Edition, running from June 16th @ 5pm GMT until June 22nd @ 5pm GMT! 👨‍🚀

The Steam Game Festival shines a spotlight on games set to be released within the next year. You can try out demos, connect with the developers, and wishlist the games for a reminder of when they launch! Here's how to get the most out of The Steam Game Festival.

Play the Mars Horizon demo

Check out the demo - available to download from the Mars Horizon Steam store page. Choose from 3 space agencies, play through Era 1 of space exploration, build your base, design rockets, and put the first human in space! 
Please Note: The Mars Horizon demo is a shortened version of the Mars Horizon beta. It does not include any beta feedback changes implemented into it - we are still working hard on these!

Check out the Mars Horizon demo

Wishlist Mars Horizon on Steam

Please Wishlist Mars Horizon on Steam! That way you'll be the first to know when the game is released. 

We're a small developer and wishlisting makes a huge difference to how many people see our game on Steam. If you’d like to know more we've written a blog post on how Steam Wishlists help us.

Wishlist Mars Horizon on Steam here

Chat to us on our livestreams!

We're doing 2 special livestreams during the festival. These will be broadcast straight to the Mars Horizon Steam page and we will be taking questions over the Auroch Digital Discord to answer on stream. Make sure you join us for even more Mars Horizon goodness!

Make sure to join the Discord to give us your questions

Make sure to join the Discord to give us your questions

  1. UK Space Agency AMA and livestream
    Wed June 17th 3-5pm UK Time / 4-6pm CEST / 7-9am PT

    Andrew Kuh, Head of International Spaceflight Policy from the UK Space Agency, joins us as we play the Mars Horizon demo. He'll talk about what it's really like working for a space agency and tell us more about human spaceflight. Give us your questions for Andrew in the Discord.
     

  2. European Space Agency AMA and livestream, plus Mars Horizon feature reveal
    Fri June 19th 3-5pm UK Time / 4-6pm CEST / 7-9am PT
    We'll be joined by Emmet Fletcher, Head of the ESA Branding and Partnerships Office at the European Space Agency. He'll be telling us all about the challenges missions face in real life and chatting about what its like working with rockets and astronauts. We’ll also be playing the full version of Mars Horizon and revealing the final 2 space agencies featured in the game. Give us your questions for Emmet and the devs in the Discord.

Join us on the Auroch Digital Discord

Now that you've played Mars Horizon you probably want to talk about the game with someone. Where can you go? Join the Auroch Digital Discord and you'll have lots of people to chat to.

You can find out more about getting Discord here.

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Auroch Digital

Marketing and Community Managment for Auroch Digital in Bristol, UK.

The Irregular Corporation is publishing Mars Horizon!

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We’ve got some very exciting news on Mars Horizon - we’ve signed to a publisher! The excellent people of The Irregular Corporation are now our publisher for Mars Horizon and we’re over the moons (of Phobos and Deimos) about it. Read more about it in their official announcement!

The Irregular Corporation: “We are publishing Mars Horizon!  We’ve got some really exciting news to share with you today. We are pleased to announce that we have joined forces with Auroch Digital to help them lift off their game, Mars Horizon to PC and consoles!  We are thrilled to begin working with the talented team, starting with a closed beta on PC happening in just 3 days time...so get your space suits ready!“

We’re really excited about working with The Irregular Corporation and sharing our game with their community, as well as our own. We’ve got loads of great stuff coming up so stay tuned. Check out The Irregular Corporation on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, or jump into their Discord to say hi.

We’ve also got a brand new announcement trailer to celebrate the announcement!

Sign up here to stay up to date with all the latest Mars Horizon news, including the release date!

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Auroch Digital

Marketing and Community Managment for Auroch Digital in Bristol, UK.

Frequently Asked Questions: Mars Horizon

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This is the official FAQ for Mars Horizon. We’ve collected the most commonly asked questions and will keep adding more, so check back regularly.

If there's anything you think we need to add just let us know on Discord or send an email to MarsHorizonfeedback@AurochDigital.com.

Expanded Horizons Update FAQ

  • Will old saves work with the new update?

    • All quality of life changes will work in old saves but they won't include the new vehicles, Sandbox, or Ironcore. To get the updated vehicles or to play new gameplay modes you will need to start a new game

  • How do I get to Sandbox Mode?

    • Sandbox mode is accessible from 'customise experience' in the main menu.

      Start a new game > Choose your space agency > on the next screen choose Customise Experience to get to the sandbox options

  • How do I get to Iron Core mode?

    • Iron Core mode is accessible from 'customise experience' in the main menu.

      Start a new game > Choose your space agency > on the next screen choose “Iron Core mode”

  • Are Achievements disabled in Sandbox mode?

    • Yep, they’d be too easy to get otherwise!

  • Are there any new achievements?

    • Yes there are 3 new achievements with Expanded Horizons

Mars Horizon FAQ

  • What is Mars Horizon?

    • Mars Horizon is a strategy simulation game about leading a major space agency and guiding humanity to Mars. It allows you to write your own alternate history of space exploration, building rockets, launching payloads, assembling your launch centre, and directing missions from the control room. The team has made the game truly authentic as it was created with support from the UK Space Agency and the European Space Agency.

  • When was Mars Horizon released?

    • The game was released on 17th November 2020.

  • What platforms is Mars Horizon available on?

    • Mars Horizon is available on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. It is also compatible with the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.

  • Can I stream the full game?

    • Yes, please do! You can stream the game or upload videos of it. We love to see people playing our game in real time. Drop a link to your streams or videos in the coverage section of our Discord.

  • I'm playing on Nintendo Switch and I can't play with JoyCons attached?

    • On the screen asking you to select joycons and to press L+R, just press A instead.

  • Where can I report bugs?

    • If you’ve found a bug check out this link which gives more detail on reporting bugs as well as finding any associated log files which helps us a lot to track down issues.

    • Please send bugs to this email address: MarsHorizonBugReport@AurochDigital.com - please let us know which platform you are reporting for.

  • How can I find my Steam save file?

    • C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\some_numbers_here\765810\remote\saves

  • Where can I talk to someone from Auroch Digital?

    • If you just fancy a chat, head over to our Discord (find out more about getting Discord here)

    • If you’re press or an influencer, send an email to Marketing@AurochDigital.com

    • If you’ve got feedback or suggestions about our games, why not leave a review!

  • Is there a tutorial?

    • The game has a detailed tutorial created based on feedback from the beta. You can also drop into our Discord if you need any help and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.

  • Where can I get more information about Mars Horizon?

  • I want to speed the game up and/or don’t want to do the mission control part?

    • You can use auto-resolve on request missions to speed things up a bit (this skips the mission gameplay part).

    • This option is available after a successful launch, though you need to have the option on (check the "Auto-resolve" setting in Options)

  • I’m finding the game too easy/hard?

    • The ‘Pioneer’ mode is the normal difficulty, which should be fine balance-wise (though obviously some will find it too hard, some too easy).

    • For example you can changing the difficulty to "Explorer", or customising the difficulty for "Missions" if you’re finding that part of the game especially hard (you can edit individual difficulty settings by pressing "customise" on the Difficulty Select screen)

  • The random number generator of the game (RNG) seems off? I keep failing missions?

  • Is this game like Kerbal Space Program (KSP)?

    • A bit. Both games share a theme (space) and authenticity in what they portray, but while KSP is focused more on the physics of building spacecraft and piloting them, Mars Horizon is much more about the strategy and management of running the agency and the strategy and tactics of Mission Control.

    • For example in our game, there is rocket design, but it is much more modular (which reflects the real-world approach, so we discovered!) and our game has areas like diplomacy between agencies (again, based on real research with space agencies).

    • We do know that there are plenty of fans of KSP who play Mars Horizon (there’s fans of KSP on the dev team too!) but each game does it’s own thing.

  • How many squares does each base building occupy?

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Jemima Crow