Mars Colony: Frontier

I have played all of Howard Dortch's Mars games. Frontier is entertaining, engaging and with the game options included, can be guaranteed to be different each time you play. It is a more streamlined version of "Challenger" which, if you haven't played, can get so detail oriented at times it borders bogging down in the all the minutiae. Frontier offer you the chance to build your own base using an economy-based system of play. You can even compete against other players (live or AI) to be the best operating base on Mars. With story lines that have graduated from "Challenger" to include Mars quakes, missing persons, and others that I won't spoil, it's easy to see the hard work Howard and his team put into this game. I think this game got a raw deal from gamers when it first came out. They rated it based on what they wanted it to be rather than what it was - and it is a fun, playable game that seeks to draw inspiration from the good people at the Mars Society and more specifically Dr. Robert Zubrin. If you are looking for "little green men shoot 'em up" this isn't it. If you're looking for realism, physics, planetary science, botany, geology, and survival then you've found a great game…

Like its companion game, Martian Colony: Challenger, Frontier is a good simulation of how living on Mars would actually feel. Unfortunately, in order to add multiplayer, the developer seems to have felt it was necessary to dumb things down a bit. Several things have been simplified, when it comes to maintaining your base, and that's too bad. It was what I loved so much about Challenger. Other things were added, and there are some story elements, but unfortunately they aren't very satisfying. The developer was away for a few years, dealing with an illness, and just recently announced that he intends to do some updates to these games. I hope that's the case, because Frontier is clearly unfinished. Despite that, I still enjoy it, and I've played through it several times, so I recommend it. Just know that it's not quite all there yet.

The first game was really good . . . and then they made this. This is so bad in comparison I want to throw the first game away in shame for ever having supported this company.

thanks for the great games and a great role as teacher. sadly he left us on December 24, 2025 after longer health issues

Although unpolished, this is a very good game if you want a relatively realistic simulation of how it would be like to live in a Martian colony. Graphics are barely acceptable, and the UI is less than perfect, but the gameplay is solid. I came to this one after Mars One and Mars Colony: Challenger. This one is easier to play compared to those two but I also recommend them. Mars One is freely available on the developer's website.

It would have been a good game if there were some updates. But since I bought it about 3,5 years ago nothing changed and I don't think it will get better with time. Some tasks need too much effort because of the lack of or downright bad programming. It also gets very boring and some tasks are just too labour intensive like you have to drag your mouse from place to place just to get some minerals from one container to another instead of a button or shortcut. Also being able to only hold 8 things in inventory is not enough and you spend hours running around your base if you don't build it careful enough as you can't change your base layout after it is build. It's really a shame, as the idea of the game is actually really good.