"Surviving Mars: Relaunched" is a successful remake

Debora Pape

7/11/2025

Translation: machine translated

Pictures: Debora Pape

The colony builder "Surviving Mars" is getting a remake after just seven years. As a fan of the original, testing "Surviving Mars: Relaunched" is a must for me - and I am very satisfied with the new content.

The first colonist of my Mars colony is dead: died of thirst. And there's nothing I can do to prevent others from dying. The water reservoirs are completely empty. A chain of unfavourable circumstances, as is so often the case. My young colony is still vulnerable: Underground water supplies are kilometres away and I haven't had a chance to lay pipes to them yet. Then came the dust storm.

During the days-long storm, I can't filter any water out of the air and my tanks are emptying at lightning speed. I feverishly try to build the pipeline quickly - only to realise that my supplies of machine parts are not enough to build the water delivery tower. The rocket with supplies from Earth can't land as if there's a storm. My nerves are on edge. At the end of the sandstorm, only five out of 15 colonists have survived and they are so stressed that they can no longer work. Cool, cool, cool.

Even 300 hours of experience don't seem to help against such tragedies. I love it. Thank you, «Surviving Mars»! Or rather: «Surviving Mars: Relaunched». Because I'm experiencing the water drama with the remake of Colony Builder.

Remake of a seven-year-old game

«Surviving Mars» was originally released in 2018 and has been one of my favourite building games ever since. Hardly any other sandbox game gives me such a hard time even after hundreds of hours of play.

The Bulgarian developer studio Haemimont Games delivered two more major DLCs in 2019. In 2021, another studio, Abstraction Games, took over the development of two more major DLCs. When Haemimont Games announced at Gamescom this year that it was bringing «Surviving Mars» back from the brink, I was delighted.

But why a remake? Haemimont justifies this mainly with the change of game engine. The old engine would have severely limited the possibilities for new content. And with the newly introduced political system and many new buildings, this is not only available now in the remake: further DLCs are planned for the coming year. As part of the overhaul, the graphics have also been polished up and old DLCs and the interface optimised.

If you don't know the original, I'll summarise the gameplay here. The new features of the remake can be found below.

«Surviving Mars»: Survive on Mars

In «Surviving Mars» the name says it all. The game knows thousands of ways to put a spanner in the works of my Mars colonisation plans. However, the first steps on Mars are still harmless: with the help of semi-automatic drones, I prepare for the arrival of human colonists.

I make sure there is enough power and set up an initial life support system. This includes a living dome that needs to be supplied with oxygen and water. I have my drones set up a mini-city in the dome: Buildings for accommodation, services and leisure activities as well as for growing vegetables.

I let my first colonists fly in from Earth as soon as everything is ready. They will serve as labourers in the service, production and research buildings. If these pioneers feel comfortable, they will have offspring and my colony will grow. I connect further domes with passageways. Initially, I still need a lot of support from Earth, but the aim is to reduce the supply flights and overcome bottlenecks myself.

This all sounds very simple, but my colony is quite fragile depending on the difficulty level set. External circumstances such as a cold spell, dust storms or unfavourable meteorite impacts quickly cause bottlenecks. Often enough, however, I don't see problems coming in time.

It doesn't even have to be a direct failure of the oxygen supply that kills my colonists. Every resource has its purpose and often even a small shortage leads to a chain reaction, at the end of which the life support fails. Maintaining the balance is the difficulty in «Surviving Mars». Because every playthrough feels different, it never gets boring.

If you prefer to colonise in peace, you can switch off disasters when creating the game and activate various facilities that make bottlenecks almost impossible.

«Relaunched» has been graphically enhanced

After starting «Surviving Mars: Relaunched», I am greeted by the familiar soundtrack and the menu navigation is essentially the same. Haemimont has slightly adapted the game interface: Some information is now in a different place and the construction menu has been rearranged. Nevertheless, I find my way around immediately.

Of course, a remake also needs polished graphics. That wouldn't have been necessary - the Mars environment of the original game still looks great even seven years after its release. The new engine allows for better lighting and shadow effects, for example. Overall, «Relaunched» appears desaturated in colour. I like the slightly more subtle look, even if the old one never bothered me.

What I don't like at all are cold regions and cold waves that now no longer lead to a largely closed ice cover. Perhaps Haemimont has realised that there is hardly any ice on the surface of Mars in reality. However, this is not entirely consistent either: now a patchwork of icy and non-icy areas covers the surface of Mars during cold waves. That looks better, but this mixture looks very chaotic to my eye.

In addition, dust storms no longer look so dramatic: instead of significantly reduced visibility due to fine sand as in the original, a storm is hardly noticeable visually. You can see this in the first screenshot at the top.

Politics are now being made on Mars

The biggest gameplay innovation in «Relaunched» is the political system. Initially, Martian politics are still determined by a council on Earth. I can take part in this, but my options are limited. The council passes laws that apply to all Mars colonies. Most of the laws are buffs that improve a certain gameplay detail.

If I want to get a law through the Council, there must be enough votes in favour. If there aren't likely to be enough, I can use negotiation to gain votes: Promising to build a certain building or complete a certain research soon can earn me some votes from the other council members.

As soon as at least 30 people live in my colony, «Relaunched» (far too) discreetly informs me that I should build the «Martian Assembly» building. This makes the Earth Council history and Martian cross-colony factions take over. Each faction has its own agenda: The «Green Mars Coalition», for example, is working towards terraforming and ecological technologies. The «labour collective» is committed to the comfort and safety of the colonists.

I can now determine the form of government of my colony, have access to significantly more laws and must try to maintain a political balance despite my own goals. For example, the faction «Martians first» is angry when I fly in new colonists from Earth. Dissatisfied factions can withdraw their consent to laws or even produce terrorists: all colonists belong to a faction and are in favour of it.

The political system can be strongly influenced by the new assembly. Given the right majority, I can determine how children are influenced as they grow up, how political opponents are dealt with and how much power the assembly has in general.

If my colony continues to grow, I can declare myself completely independent of Earth. However, with around eleven hours of testing spread over two game states, I'm not quite there yet. The political system certainly makes an interesting impression and whets the appetite for more.

Lots of new buildings

«Relaunched» also offers a much larger selection of buildings. There are now smaller or larger versions of many service buildings.

For example, the infirmary, which previously counted as a small building and as such took up three of a maximum of ten building spaces in a dome section. Now there is also a medical station, which is only one construction site in size. It employs fewer people and doesn't offer as much space for patients. This gives me more room for manoeuvre when building domes, especially if I only have one or a few domes at the start of the game and therefore less space.

I particularly like a small residential habitat that can only accommodate five inhabitants. It makes it possible for the first time to build and operate a remote mine site for mining precious metals. The habitat requires no water or oxygen supply. I only need to provide food. However, the inhabitants of the habitat have to do without any services and amenities.

In addition, completely new building types have made it into the game: for example, a «Earth embassy», a detention centre and various unique ministries that reinforce the laws that have been passed.

Other new features and changes

New additions include further adjustable parameters at the start of the game. There were already many options here in the original to approach each round of the game differently. Depending on the selection, there are different advantages and disadvantages as well as unique buildings and vehicles. The new parameters add further flavour to the game.

The two DLCs that are not from Haemimont itself have been revised by the team. These include the Mars trains from «Martian Express» and the option to land on asteroids and explore the underground cave system. I have only played both DLCs in my «Surviving Mars» career and therefore can't really judge the overhaul.

Is «Surviving Mars: Relaunched» worth it?

As an owner of the original, I can get «Relaunched» for 20 euros. The new features are worth the price to me. There's also the prospect of further DLCs that will only be released for the new version.

If you don't own the original, you'll have to pay 40 euros for «Relaunched». In return, you get a varied sandbox game that offers plenty of content, from undisturbed colonisation without disasters to almost masochistic difficulties in the building game.

However, there are also a few limitations that dampen my enthusiasm. I would have liked a little more variety in the maps. They are the same as in the original and I have seen each of them a thousand times. According to the studio, the building menu has been organised more logically, but has the opposite effect: sometimes the large building versions appear in the menu of the small versions, sometimes it's the other way round.

On the other hand, it would have been worth optimising the achievable goals. There are achievable milestones for each round of the game, which are rewarded with research points. There are also mission objectives that depend on the game parameters. Now there are also political objectives. And all of these objectives are distributed across different screens in different menus.

«Surviving Mars: Relaunched» will be released on PC on 10 November 2025 (via Steam, Epic Games and Microsoft Store). The version for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S will follow later. The game was provided to me for testing purposes by Paradox Interactive for Steam.

Debora Pape

Editor

Debora.Pape@galaxus.de

Feels just as comfortable in front of a gaming PC as she does in a hammock in the garden. Likes the Roman Empire, container ships and science fiction books. Focuses mostly on unearthing news stories about IT and smart products.

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