Space. Vast, desolate, beautiful, and ridiculously unforgiving. Once you leave the sanctity of our home planet’s atmosphere, and indeed, even just a few miles up or so, this becomes abundantly clear. Tharsis is a new game by Choice Provisions which hopes to capture that feeling of being hopelessly stranded with no aid coming. One part tabletop, dice-rolling simulator, another part sci-fi, and yet one more part survival horror, find out if this game has what it takes to take you to the final frontier.
Take a Turn for the Worse
Tharsis is a turn-based strategy game. You start with a crew of up to four astronauts, embarking on a manned mission to Mars. Some sort of radio signal has been picked up, and you’re answering the call. Problem is, your crew has been placed on a spaceship that NASA would never allow. Parts fail all the time, endangering everyone aboard. There’s the occasional meteorite strike (and indeed, one sets the game in motion), but for the most part, dangers involve something going haywire in a section of the ship. The task sounds simple — survive ten weeks on your journey to Mars in a turn-based strategy tabletop-like game whereby you roll the dice to seal your fate. Three hours in, and I had hardly made it past week six before losing…over and over and over and over again. Tharsis is a tough game. It’s both tough, and unfair. Not only do you have to plan the utilization of scarce resources, but you also have to be just plai...