"Five... Four... Three... Two... One... We have lift off"
Mars Horizon is a 2020 Turn-Based Strategy Simulation Game, based on The Space Race. It was developed by Auroch Digital.The player selects one space agency and builds ships, capable to leave the planet's atmosphere. From then on, and after improving the base and researching new technologies, further glories await: the first artificial satellite, reaching and studying the moon, sending probes to the close and the distant planets. And of course, the famous manned trip to the moon. But don't slack, because the other space agencies are also in this, and will try to get to those milestones first!
The ultimate goal of the game is to be the first space agency to land people on Mars.
Tropes:
- Alternate History: There was a space race in the real world, and there was a winner at the several milestones of it (first ship to the space, first artificial satellite, first man in space, first EVA, etc; and of course first man at the Moon). By playing a space agency other than the winner of those milestones you can change the outcome and do it first... or play the correct one and be beaten to it.
- And There Was Much Rejoicing: When the mission is accomplished, Mission Control celebrates.
- Artistic License – Space: All the ships, celestial bodies and studies about them are real, and the encyclopedia has an entry for the real ones, with real-world information in case you want to know. And of course, a real photo of each. However, the endgame of the game is to send a manned mission to Mars, and to achieve special missions on the planet before that (such as retrieving stones and returning to Earth). This goes into the terrain of things that real-world space agencies have not managed yet, so the illustrations are an artist's interpretation by necessity. Of course, a caption is explicit about that, just in case.
- Badass in Distress: When a manned mission ends, the rocket falls to the ocean, using parachutes. Several ships arrive to the place to rescue the brave astronauts.
- Boring, but Practical:
- Saturn and Titan rockets. From mid-game onward, they are your workhorse to get things to orbit fast and cheap, allowing to fulfill all the request missions for badly needed funding and science at lowest possible cost. They are also great for all the "big" missions that require to send a probe into the outer planets.
- Once building payload for non-milestone missions, prototype module (-50% construction cost, but worse performance) is a way to go. Those missions exist to provide funding and thus the less you spend to make them happen, the more money you are left with in the end.
- Career-Ending Injury: Few random events can lead to any given astronaut being wounded and due to the time spend in space without proper treatment, ending up unfit to flight after returning.
- Cool, but Inefficient:
- Additional boosters. Unless you are stuck with insufficient science to get better rocket, it is always cheaper and faster to just build something that doesn't require boosters to get into space. Using them in any other scenario will bloat the budget and worse, increase construction time significantly.
- The variety of the missions that go to the Outer Solar System. They take years to finish their flight, can go wrong on multiple stages and worst of it all, block your mission slots for more trivial things that could get you to Mars. They are still incredibly cool to pick if you can only afford an on-going mission.
- Just like in real life, space shuttles are terribly inefficient in the long run and require additional infrastructure, while the game further lacks the advantages they offered for orbital maintenance. Once you unlock reusable rockets, shuttle is completely obsolete.
- Fission Mailed: Even if your mission fails at any stage or the rocket outright explodes at the launch, you still get experience from that failure, allowing to do better next time.
- It Kind of Looks Like a Face: After taking the first photos from Mars, some people saw the photos of some mountains and claimed that it was a face. It is just an effect caused by the shadows, but the agency can choose to entertain this notion (to keep public support up) or to be firm that it is nonsense (for an extra science).
- Mini-Game: The operations of the ship in space take the form of a mini-game: there are several resources available (data, navigation, power, etc.) and the player must collect enough of some of them, and perhaps avoid a losing condition (for example, in a re-entry mission the mission may generate heat each turn, and it must be kept below a certain limit). If the player wins the mini-game, the rewards for the mission are increased.
- Mission Control: All missions are controlled by loads of scientists at the base. We see them when the ship is about to be launched, and we see them again celebrating when the mission was accomplished.
- Moon-Landing Hoax: Many years later, one of the astronauts you sent to the Moon is criticized by a conspiracy theorist who accused him of having made it all in a film set. Let's just say that the press congratulates him for making a great landing a second time...
- Railroading: Despite being an open-ended game, you are more or less forced to recreate historical milestones of the Cold War space race, while further missions are always locked behind linear research gates to cross. And while you can theoretically just collect research from non-milestone missions, you will be severely underfunded and hard-pressed for research points without doing all the "big" stuff.
- Random Number God: Randomness is inherited part of the gameplay. Rockets exploding during take-off despite everything being perfectly planned and prepared, astronaut breaking an arm while fixing solar panels, some important part breaking during launch, making a probe fail a decade later when passing next to Neptune... Then there are positive aspects, like unexpected critical success granting extra options in mission control Mini-Game, or getting a string of well-paid request missions or an international mission with other agency that will improve relationships to unlock their construction team. And then there are things like your mission bonus, which is always randomly assigned, or lack of a launch window for 2 years straight.
- Scifi Writers Have No Sense Of Scale: The "main" screen, where you are informed of progress and can advance turns, is the Solar systems, with all its planets in line, click any of them and you can see the missions available. Needless to say, not to scale.
- Slave to PR:
- Support rating. Your agency is being funded for delivering results, measured in support, both from governmental bodies and the public. Fumble handling PR and you will quickly end up trapped with insufficient funds to keep going, which will further stall your space exploration and kill any chances for reaching important milestones, which will further hurt your support.
- Few of the traits of your agency rely on this: your get bigger fallout for any potential failure or only benefit if being first in milestone missions. As long as you avoid problems, those traits provide nice bonuses, but the second something goes wrong, you're screwed.
- Inverted with Soviet default specialty: they suffer far less penalties for their missions failing.
- Take That!: When you make a big achievement first, a rival agency may ask to disclose the scientific data about it. You can deny doing so with some humiliating press statement, it will hurt the relations with that agency, but increase public support.
- Tech Tree: It has three ones: missions, buildings and ship parts.
