Dissent on Mars

I really wanted to like it, it's such an interesting and unique concept, but it just isn't very good. I am going to try to stick to reviewing the game it's trying to be, the game it wants to be. A lot of negative reviews of this game focus on what they expected it to be, a Rimworld-esque colony sim. I feel like it's unfair to judge the game based on that, because it's not *trying* to do that at all. What it's actually trying to be is a bigger-picture political simulator, in which the player designs a society - its economic system, government, etc. - and observes how those decisions play out by putting a bunch of simulated people in the society they built and watching it go. There are not many games out there which do what this game is trying to do, and I *really* wish this one had succeeded, because that core idea is very solid and has a lot of potential, but after making a few attempts and experimenting a bit, I am sad to say that it does not pull it off. The first and most fundamental problem is that there's very few options. There are a lot of menus in the new game screen, with dropdowns for selecting different kinds of resource allocation, property ownership, workplace m…

Boring. Hardly anything to do. Not worth $27 let alone $5. Just a heads up. You are being ripped off.

TLDR: This game is too shallow for what it's trying to be, and too expensive for what it does have, don't buy it. This game isn't Rimworld. It isn't trying to be Rimworld. What it is trying to be is a political-economic simulator. Unfortunately it fails at being a political-economic simulator. I've always loved games with a realistic economy, games with player run economies like Eve or Prosperous Universe, or simulated economies like X4 or Capitalism Lab. I don't like multiplayer, so I've mainly played singleplayer games. Unfortunately, X4's is a space game first and foremost, and Capitalism Lab is too abstracted and high-level. I thought Dissent On Mars was the single-player agent-based economic simulator I was waiting for, but it just sucks. The primary problem is that even in the fully free market economy, the player is required to intervene, primarily when placing new buildings. Regardless of the options you choose, practically everything is determined by the player. Land use, resources, homes, regardless of it being a free market or a cooperative ownership. Ownership of homes and workplaces must be determined by the player, even in a free market, colonists cannot buy/sell …

Ok to start with i know from the screenshots and comments its hard to tell what exactly it happening with this game so thats all i plan on doing since the others make it clear why the game is bad. All you do in the game (after planning where the buildings are placed) is to repeatedly make economic plans for your town/village/whatever. You tell each person where and for how long they work there. Each person has things they are good and bad at but that does not seem to matter as if they have no passion for the job then they hate it making them unhappy to do said job. Each person has an allotted time they can work each day. They make items and as far as i could tell each item has a single use (if they make a bed they use it once to sleep and another must be crafted...like why?) they get money for making each item that they make and then they use said money to buy items they want/need. Honestly the game does this so poorly with little in the way of UI to track people struggling or needing adjustments and with you having to craft an economic plan every single day for ALL of your citizens it just winds up being a confusing, fatiguing mess of frustration and annoyance. Give it a pass an…

I'm not usually a fan of this style of game because of mine own slow processing dial up style brain. But this has changed my mind. I love the style and artwork. 10/10

Nice idea in principle, but needs quite a bit more work, which will never happen cause the devs abondoned this.