henke on 3/6/2012 at 17:27

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I found this thing in the AppStore, it only had a 4/5 rating, and a high pricepoint(5 bucks is high when it comes to iOS games) but after looking at a gameplay video I knew I just had to have it. I'm four and a half hours into it now and have basically finished the story, but the caverns still hold many unanswered questions. The game is very open ended, as soon as you find a way out of the caverns you're pretty much free to go "oh well, I guess someone else will come along and find out all the mysteries of the cave eventually" or you can get back in there and take care of business yourself!

You play as Dr. Liang, expert spelunker with PHDs in jetpacking and botany. Stuck far below Mars' surface accompanied only by your suit's comic-relief-AI ART. ART is kinda reminiscent of KevinSpaceyBot in Moon, perhaps mostly because his visual representation is emoticons on a screen. He will name all the plants you encounter, catalog them in your database and give you updates on your current status, for example just after the cave collapses he chimes in with "ALERT! THE CAVE MIGHT BE UNSTABLE!". "Yeah, thanks ART." Liang quips, who btw is very much the straight-man in this two-man-show. Besides them there's your foxy assistant Amani, back at the station, who you occasionally get contact with when you happen to stand in a spot where the reception is good. The only other "character" in the game is 0CT0, the robot who was sent into the caves before you and who has left a trail of camera footage behind. Trying to find 0CT0, or discover his fate is one of the main plotpoints.

The gameplay is quite unusual. It's clear right from the start that you're a scientist, not a soldier. You have no direct means of attack, except for an extremely rare exploding seed you find late in the game. Still, even then you're not encouraged to pick a fight with the wildlife as unlocking further areas of the caverns requires increasing the total "biomass" of the area you're currently in. Increasing the biomass is done by planting flora and waking up the spiders (from Mars). You'll need a complex ecosystem to really hit the highpoints on the biomass-meter and the most dangerous plants are also the ones that increase the biomass the most.

Let me give you an example of what the gameplay is like. For instance, in one area you might need to plant several "stabby-plants" (that's not the scientific name of them btw) but there's only one stabbyplant in the area and you don't have seeds to plant more, what to do? Well, you're gonna need to feed the existing plant a spider, but before you do that you might wanna make sure you don't make the spiders go extinct, so first feed the spider a seed(from some other more plentiful plant) to make it lay an egg and hatch a second spider. Ta-dah! With survival of the species secured herd the first spider into the vicinity of the plant which will then eat it and spit out a seed allowing you to plant a second stabby-plant. Rinse and repeat. Keep feeding seeds to spiders to make spiderbabys and keep herding the spiders into the maw of the stabbyplants to get more seeds. Of course you can simply also plant some other plant-types in the vicinity of the spiders which will keep spitting out seeds and the spiders will eat and multiply on their own and run straight into the stabbyplants by accident. If you set things up just right the ecolife will eventually keep growing and the cycle of life and death will go on without your help.

You're very much encouraged to experiment with the various seeds and plants and finding out how they interact with eachother and the game does a great job of making you feel like a scientist exploring things noone has ever seen before. All the data about species diets/vulnerabilities/behaviour is cataloged in your database by ART so you can look it up later.

When it comes to iOS games that arent simple puzzle-games I have many regrets when it comes to purchases. I keep hoping to find something fantastic but usually get bored and turned off by poor controls soon after I've started a game up and never touch it again. There are maybe a handfull that I've really become addicted to and kept coming back to until I've finished them, and Waking Mars is now on that list. Zooming around the tunnels with the jetpack works well on a touchscreen, especially if you have a stylus. But still, it's not perfect. And unless you, like me, feel an immediate desire to have this game right now upon seeing it, you might wanna hold off untill the (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/05/04/the-wrong-side-of-red-waking-mars/) rumored PC version comes out later this year. Like I said, it works with a touchscreen, but it would be less fiddly and more enjoyable with a gamepad or kb+mouse.

When looking up info about this game after I'd started playing it I found another interesting piece of info which might be of interest to LGS-fans. Who was the creative director of this game? None other than (http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2012/04/waking-mars-postmortem-ios/) Randy Smith. :O

Yakoob on 3/6/2012 at 20:51

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The graphics kinda remind me of those awkward 2D games with characters/enemies being low-quality photos of real people stuck on a rendered/painted background.

henke on 4/6/2012 at 05:13

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I didn't realize it was him until I read the Wired article. Nice to see that he's found a place where he can make games on his own terms after some rough times since the LGS/Ion Storm days.


If I had to guess I'd say the characters have been modelled and animated in 3D and then rendered as 2D sprites. They look pretty good, the animations of the player in particular are very natural. When you bump into walls or the ceiling he puts his arms up to shield himself and when you fall too far he falls down on one knee and takes a moment to recover. Reinforces the notion that you're just a fragile human being in a harsh and sometimes unforgiving landscape.

henke on 10/11/2012 at 19:47

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http://imageshack.us/a/img694/3541/2012110900002.jpg

http://imageshack.us/a/img339/8083/2012111000004.jpg

http://imageshack.us/a/img23/7579/2012110900005.jpg

http://imageshack.us/a/img39/2495/2012111000007.jpg

The game focuses heavily on exploration so I don't wanna spoil things by posting shots of anything too specific.

Loving it so far. Only ever played up until the "easy ending" on the iPad, but now I'm finding myself unable to tear myself away from the computer for hours on end as I make my way deeper and deeper into the mountain. I find the game is suited better for PC than it ever was for iPad not only because the controls are tighter, but also because it's feeling much more atmospheric when played on a computer.

henke on 12/11/2012 at 21:25

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Finished. 90% completion. 6 hours.

This was good. Great, in fact. Loved the story. Hard sci-fi, heavy on concepts of chemistry and biology. And honestly I sucked at chemistry and biology in school. But Waking Mars manages to explain these things in a way so that you can understand them while at the same time managing to avoid feeling dumbed down. I now have a vague understanding of concepts like acidic and alkaline. And about what it takes to sustain an atmosphere that enables life to thrive on a planet. I feel like I've learned something after playing this. Hold on... did I just... play an edutainment title?

Well played Tiger Style. Well played. Making me think I was just playing a space exploration game while secretly teaching me stuff as well. :sly: