City-builder Surviving Mars Announced By Paradox Interactive

In a recent announcement from the publisher Paradox Interactive, there's a new colony-building game coming next year called Surviving Mars.

As the title of the game suggests, the game sends players up to the Red Planet to brave the harsh, unknown conditions that Mars features. Paradox Interactive has partnered with Haemimont Games, the developers behind the Tropico series, to create the game, and the two partners gave some insight into what the game would be like, and perhaps more importantly, what it would not be like.

"The new game challenges players to plan and build a functioning colony on Mars, balancing habitants' basic survival needs with sanity and quality of life, all while dealing with the hostile environment of the red planet," a press release about the game's announcement read.

It seems that the "surviving" aspect of the game will play into the gameplay much more than other traditional simulators based on farming or creating families. Player choices will certainly have an impact here, but instead of deciding future careers or how much money a character will earn, the existence well-being of the community you build will hinge on how you choose to interact with others and manage the limited resources that Mars has to offer.

"We feel that strategy and management games are at their best when they let the player experience the unique story being told by their decisions, and Surviving Mars is going to have that in a big way," said Gabriel Dobrev, CEO of Haemimont Games. "Your colonists aren't just working to improve production, they're struggling to survive, and their conflicts and concerns are intense. Surviving Mars lets you understand what your colonists are dealing with on an individual level, and coming up with creative plans for those needs will be a new challenge for our fans."

The CEO of Paradox Interactive, Fredrik Wester, added that the company has been looking forward to working with Haemimont Games for some time now and that they look forward to expanding on the building community that they've attracted from their 2015 game Cities Skyline.

Surviving Mars is set to be released in 2018 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.