The Mars Agenda

It's a good idea but not well executed. You have a guidebook that is meant to take you through puzzles, and our intention was to have one person playing the game, and another person working off the guide on their tablet or printed out. In reality the puzzles just amount to pushing button sequences that are given to you directly in the book. The biggest challenge comes from figuring out where to go, since the map is unclear and there is no compass. If you do try this game and don't want to use the in-game guide, be sure to download it *off the company's website*, because the PDF included with the game is out of date.

As another reviewer suggested, this game did not receive the necessary testing in its later missions. Instructions become confusing and vague, objectives are given that are like finding needles in a haystack. The tranquil pleasures of the early game are dispersed, as though by a Martian storm.

[quote][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/9686972/]Follow "[b]First Person Exploration and Puzzle Games[/b]" for more games like this![/url][/quote] A first-person puzzler about repairing a research station on Mars. The puzzles in this game primarily involve finding things using an unclear map, and then following unclear instructions. To add to the stress, you're only given about two minutes of oxygen while outside the stations, which you can refill using a very slow animation inside the stations. To make matters worse, the game cycles through very fast night/day cycles. During night, it gets so dark you basically can't see any terrain at all. Ultimately I found this game to be an exercise in frustration. The main difficulty to the game is all the annoying, unnecessary elements I mentioned above; but if those were removed, the game would consist of literally just following instructions. If you're a huge fan of puzzle and space games, I'd say get this one on sale. Otherwise, there are better options out there for both niches.

In a word: disappointing. The concept is good: simple puzzles requiring cross-referencing a manual with what you see, a bit of time pressure to manage, atmospheric setting and music. The execution is lacking. Manual-puzzle games rely on the manual being a little obtuse, to force the player to think it through. This game does that, but some of the later puzzles are a bit *TOO* obtuse, forcing me into trial-and-error to solve them. Bad design. Such games also rely on the manual being accurate: this was not true for some of the later missions. The early missions seem quite well polished, and play well, but the later missions give the impression of barely being tested at all: inaccurate instructions, missing components, frequent bugs. There are only 13 missions, and minimal randomness when repeating missions; replayability is minimal. Puzzle design is so-so: reasonably creative, but nothing that particularly delighted me. I bought this at 65% off, and still didn't feel like I got good value. From start to finish the entire thing felt like it was created during a 24-hour code-a-thon event.

5.5 hours for full completion, a lot of time was spent redoing missions because of vague manual descriptions or bugs Plays similar to a single player version of their other game Rockets Are Super Hard or maybe more widely known, Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes where you have a random puzzle and have to look up the solution in the manual. I bought it on sale so it was less than a dollar. Even at full price it's a pretty good bargain game. Game appears to be no longer supported so you're likely to run into a few bugs or frustrating instructions in the guide. Many of the frustrating instructions are clarified by the limited posts in the forums.

Yeah. The game itself is nice and relaxing to play, which makes it quite nice to just sit back and idly do puzzles. The main problems I have with this game are mainly the lack of a distinct art style, which makes the repetitive landscape quite boring to look at sometimes, and the fact that the game is sometimes a walking simulator. The difficulty of navigation just exacerbates this, though floodlights and the like are used nicely. The puzzles themselves are quite lacking too, lots of them being just looking at the guidebook and directly following those instructions rather than figuring out anything for yourself. Also, there's a few optimisation issues surprisingly. One thing I noticed was that sometimes on the pause menu, black circles begin to appear on your screen. The rest of the game works fine. Also, this thing takes up more of my GPU than other far more graphically intense games. Kinda surprising to be honest. All in all, the puzzles and visual style of the game are lacking.