Race to Mars (Early Access)

Race to Mars, a game that many hoped would be similar to Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space or Buzz Aldrin's Space Program Manager but failed like NASA's attempt to get Vanguard 1 into space. Like the above mentioned games, RtM is set at a space centre compound where you get to hire and fire engineers, build a Satellite program and other small things but you cannot do the point of the game, get to Mars or even leave the Earth. At this time of writing, the version of the game is at 0.6.7 and there really isn't anything to write home about compared to the past where there was more to play. In 0.6.7 you start with four buildings, two scientists and sixty million dollars.

To build new buildings, you pick the orange building icon on the lower right side of the screen, to move forward a turn, click on the lower left corner button.

R&D seems pretty straight forward although somebody forgot to correct Advances to Advanced and change Baloons to Balloons, more spelling errors were spotted throughout the game as well. To get a project going you click on Aerodynamics and under months left pick one of your two scientists and start_research. After Aerodynamics is researched, click on the orange building to build Assembly Building so you can start towards launching Weather Balloons. Here's where we run into problems, to get to planes you need Mission Control and Runway but if you build them, you go bankrupt and it is game over. So we try Weather Balloons, you will need a Mission Control, Assembly Building and Launch Pad but you run out of money again and it is game over. But here is the kicker, you can't do missions anyway because as you can see under 'New Missions' is 'WORK_IN_PROGRESS'.

So basically you get to hire and fire people, sign some contracts, do some research, build some building and go bankrupt and the game immediately crashes. There are stories that the game is still being developed but apart from the announcement in the game change log nothing has happened and developer Intermarum is gone and One More Level is silent about its plans. The word is that another development taken priority but you'd think they'd finish a game that had hundreds if not thousands of customers waiting first. This has been another game where gamers who trusted developers and publishers in Early Access game development have been left with a game that was way below what was promised and financially out of pocket as well.