alt Hacker NewsShow HN: I created a Mars colony RPG based on Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars books
I built a desktop Mars colony survival game called Underhill, in homage to Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. Land on Mars, build solar panels and greenhouses, and try not to pass out during dust storms. Eventually your colonists split into factions: Greens who want to terraform and Reds who want to preserve Mars.
There’s Chill Mode for players that just want to build & hang, and Conflict Mode that introduces the Red v. Green factions. Reds sabotage, the terrain slowly turns green as the world gets more terraformed.
Feedback welcome, especially on performance and gameplay!
Comments
This is so cool. How are you going to simulate Michel's longing for Provence? Seriously though I adore the trilogy. I started a Mars storymapping project which incorporated Underhill, Senzeni Na, the Moholes etc. a little while back too:
Awesome work love it
Terraforming Mars is a board game that heavily references these novels which i highly recommend.
I visited the site on my Android phone with Firefox. It loads and the UI fits the screen, however it seems slow. Words appear at 3 or 4 characters at a time, then there is a pause, then another 3 or 4 characters. Some music when characters appear, then it stops, then it starts again. I muted it soon.
It looks nice, so I hope to give it a try from my laptop. The Mars trilogy was a great read. When I saw the title of this Show HN I said, oh wow!
By the way, dust storms could be a plot device but are they really that bad with so low air pressure?
Played for a bit, liked the aesthetics so I bookmarked it to come back to it later and discovered a bug. On mac/chrome, I hit CMD + D to bookmark. By doing so, I setup some kind of autowalk bug where I kept walking to the right. I couldn't stop myself from walking, even pressing WAS temporarily stopped me but as soon as I let go, I kept walking right.
Got power water and o2 but can’t seem to scroll the list of items to build for food on Firefox/iOS (should also be Safari/iOS) since it selects on tap before the scroll.
I must have missed something because my HP keeps ticking down until I pass out and get warped back to the command center. Eating food and resting do not seem to change the situation.
Had 1000 of each resource, lots of income, landing pads and habitats, but never got more colonists?
Do you have permission from the publisher for an adaptation? If not, you're taking a legal risk basing it off the books.
I am on Firefox and it does nothing, no movement, just flashing resource monitors with zero values...
Lovely series. One of the first science fiction series I read that gave a proper anarchist culture a shot. (A big thing most people don't understand about anarchism is that it's not a violent, crime ridden, disorderly society without rules, but rather a society built on the idea that everyone deserves care, and we should all put in some effort to achieve that in a self organizing way.)
Loved seeing things like gift economies, self organization and free association, and a general care for both the people and the planet in those books.
Hmm, I just get a black screen on my iPhone when I click your link.
Did you use any existing stuff like the mars-sim project? https://mars-sim.sourceforge.io/
I'm on mobile (Android, Brave), and I can do everything but interact with the people. Am I doing something wrong?
When the mars space elevator was brought down and wrapped around mars TWICE was one of the most memorable moments of any book I've ever read.
Interesting game, love the design.
Struggled a little before understanding the instructions.
Surviving Mars (2018) is another really good game in this category.
Made me think of this gem:
https://www.myabandonware.com/game/ultima-worlds-of-adventur...
It is hard to understand and play... maybe make it more obvious. I made a solar panel, it says I should assign staff...
I would love to play if it would work. And music, thank god for the mute button.
dear god make the music quiet by default